International Journal of Communication 12(2018), 4066–4084 1932–8036/20180005 Copyright © 2018 (Mohan Dutta and Satveer Kaur-Gill). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). Available at http://ijoc.org. Precarities of Migrant Work in Singapore: Migration, (Im)mobility, and Neoliberal Governmentality MOHAN JYOTI DUTTA 1 Massey University, New Zealand SATVEER KAUR-GILL National University of Singapore, Singapore Building on this dialectical relationship between mobility and materiality, and drawing on our collaborations with foreign domestic workers (FDWs) and migrant constructions workers (MCWs) in Singapore in cocreating communication infrastructures, we theorize resistance as mobilities in Asia. Technologies of mediation, as markers of mobility in Asian neoliberal marketing campaigns and academic celebrations of the Asian century, strategically erase the possibilities for labor organizing and collective bargaining through which migrant workers in precarious jobs can secure access to fundamental economic rights and basic working conditions. Paradoxically, then, drawing upon our ethnographic collaborations with FDWs and MCWs in Singapore, we attend to the interplays of the symbolic and the material that are reproduced through artifacts of mobility or immobility, offering Asian resistance as a mobile trope. Keywords: migration, construction work, domestic work, human rights, smart city, mobile media, mobility When participating in developing a communication advocacy intervention in collaboration with foreign domestic workers (FDWs) in Singapore that sought to interrupt the ongoing everyday oppressions they experienced, Anna, 2 a 34-year-old Filipina mother of two children who had been working in Singapore for three years, narrated her story of being locked in by her employers whenever they left for work, punctuating a theoretical anchor for mapping communication and (im)mobility. This meant that Anna could not get out of the house when she wanted to and had to wait until her employers returned home to have the opportunity for human communication and interaction, which often was in the form of abuses hurled at her for tasks that were apparently not carried out to her employers’ satisfaction. Her mam (referring to the Mohan Dutta: mohanjdutt@gmail.com Satveer Kaur-Gill: ksatveer@gmail.com Date submitted: 2017 –12–05 1 This project is supported by a grant awarded to the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) by the Office of the Provost, National University of Singapore. 2 The names of the participants have been changed to protect their identities.