Kellynn Wee
Biographic Data
| ID | 333530 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kellynn Wee |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kellynn |
| FAMILY NAME | Wee |
| SIGNATURE | WEE K |
| AFFILIATIONS | National University of Singapore |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6939-3784 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 136 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Recruitment Agents in a Debt‐Financed Migration Regime
In ‘fly now, pay later’ systems across Southeast Asia, migrant domestic workers accrue a snowballing debt, through recruitment processes beginning in their source villages and ending in their employers’ homes, which they repay through salary deductions. We examine debt as it circulates spatially across borders, temporally over the course of migrants’ recruitment and socially among a chain of migrant brokers and employers. On the basis of qualitat…
If it's held dear, it’ll get pushed through’
Transmedia storytelling is a strategy adopted by media franchises and brands to create participatory story-worlds for their consumers; it incorporates a range of forms, actors, and texts, all of which have varying degrees of narrative authority in determining the events that occur. This article focuses on tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons to show how play cultures in Singapore are shaped by transmedia storytelling techniques. In doing…
Love’s labour’s cost? Gendered migration and intimate labour in Asia
Recognising the need to expand research on intimate labour beyond the predominant focus on intimate occupations in which low-waged migrant workers are often engaged, we highlight in our editorial the processes and exchanges taking place in the provisioning of intimate work.We juxtapose existing research with the articles in this themed section to engender a deeper understanding of how intimate practices and relations are mediated by the orderings…
Migrant Workers in Singapore
Close encounters
Connecting care chains and care diamonds
Research on the globalization of care work often faces the persistent challenge of building meaningful connections between the movement of care labour at a global scale and place-based frameworks of care access and delivery. In addressing this gap in this article, we propose to take a closer look at how the care-migration nexus produces 'ideal' care workers through a skills regime. Based on the case of elderly care in Singapore, in this article, …
Serial migration, multiple belongings and orientations toward the future
The growing phenomenon of serial migrants - people who have moved at least three times and profess belongings to more than two places - challenges the dialogic relationship imagined in studies of transnationalism. This is particularly true in the case of the mobile middle class, which has attracted less attention than the multiple migrations of low-waged labour migrants and the global professional elite. Drawing on interviews with 35 Australian a…
Translating People and Policy
There has been a surge of recent interest in the migration industries that facilitate the movement of migrants, particularly that of low-waged laborers engaged in temporary contracts abroad. This article extends this research to include migration brokers working in destination contexts, thus drawing analytical attention to the arrival infrastructures that incorporate migrants into host societies. Based on ethnographic research involving the emplo…
Social Protection for Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore
Although migrant women from neighboring Southeast Asian countries fill crucial care gaps in Singapore households as live-in domestic workers, their social protection remains uneven, uncertain, and indeterminate. Framed as unskilled work shunned by citizens and characterized by isolation in the privatized sphere of the home, domestic work has invariably become low-status, low-visibility, and low-pay work performed by foreign women engaged on priva…
Choreographing the rhythms of encounter in Singapore's maid agencies
This paper builds on Lefebvre's concept of rhythmanalysis in order to extend our understanding of geographies of encounter in everyday social life. Focusing on the encounters that take place at maid agencies that match migrant domestic workers with local employers in Singapore, we develop the conceptual construct of choreography to show how bodies in spaces of encounter are rhythmically ordered to move through space in particular ways at specific…
Chutes-and-ladders
In order to understand how precarity is created for and experienced by labour migrants, we apply the concept of conditionality – which proposes that a migrant worker’s experience of precarity is contingent on a set of formal and informal conditions, the actions of institutional actors, and migrants’ own resources and strategies – to our study of how employment agents in Singapore and Indonesia recruit and place migrant workers. We develop this co…
Repoliticizing international migration narratives? Critical reflections on the Civil Society Days of the Global Forum on Migration and Development
This paper draws on Pécoud’s international migration narratives (IMN) as an analytical framework to examine the Global Forum on Migration and Development’s Civil Society Days (GFMD-CSD). We analyse the narratives both produced and challenged at the GFMD-CSD, suggesting that while the GFMD-CSD poses a gentle challenge to existing IMN, it falls short of meaningfully (re)politicizing predominant migration paradigms. This is partly due to how the for…
How Unpopular Policies are Made
In this article we contribute to the emerging knowledge on migration policy‐making in two ways. Firstly, we address the relative lack of research on the gendered nature of migration policy‐making. Secondly we contribute to understanding migration policymaking in postcolonial contexts. Based on case studies from Bangladesh, South Africa, and Singapore, we trace the drivers of policy change in these contexts and how the gendered vulnerability of th…
Migration governance and the migration industry in Asia
In the context of Asia, understanding migration governance needs to transcend statism to encompass the 'middle space' of migration. Unlike migration linked to settlement in liberal democratic states of the West, a large part of low-skilled migration in Asia - predominantly circular, feminized, and contractual - is brokered by private recruitment agencies. In adopting migration brokers as a methodological starting point, we make the case for bring…
Bangladeshi construction workers and the politics of (im)mobility in Singapore
The most iconic image of the foreign construction worker in Singapore’s popular imagination is a figure perilously secured by safety harnesses atop a half completed high-rise building. However, we argue that an understanding of the labour process involved in fashioning the migrant worker is predicated on a more expansive understanding of the politics of (im)mobility. In other words, the labour process is not simply secured in the workplace of the…
Cultural mediation through vernacularization
Scholarship on civil society in Singapore has tended to emphasize the structural and institutional constraints on civil society space. Conversely, little attention is paid to the broader cultural and discursive realms in which civil society and state actors operate. This article seeks to address this gap by analysing the day‐off campaign for migrant domestic workers in Singapore. We demonstrate that by employing the cultural mediation strategy of…
Drivers of migration policy reform
While there has been much debate on Singapore’s migration policies, a ‘black box’ continues to surround policymaking decisions. This article examines the dynamics of migration policy reforms in Singapore, using the case study of the mandatory weekly day off policy for migrant domestic workers. Designing our analysis around the three ‘Is’ – ideas, interests and institutions – we argue that the inclusion and formalisation of migrant rights in the p…
Migration governance and the migration industry in Asia
In the context of Asia, understanding migration governance needs to transcend statism to encompass the 'middle space' of migration. Unlike migration linked to settlement in liberal democratic states of the West, a large part of low-skilled migration in Asia - predominantly circular, feminized, and contractual - is brokered by private recruitment agencies. In adopting migration brokers as a methodological starting point, we make the case for bring…
Chutes-and-ladders
In order to understand how precarity is created for and experienced by labour migrants, we apply the concept of conditionality – which proposes that a migrant worker’s experience of precarity is contingent on a set of formal and informal conditions, the actions of institutional actors, and migrants’ own resources and strategies – to our study of how employment agents in Singapore and Indonesia recruit and place migrant workers. We develop this co…
Serial migration, multiple belongings and orientations toward the future
The growing phenomenon of serial migrants - people who have moved at least three times and profess belongings to more than two places - challenges the dialogic relationship imagined in studies of transnationalism. This is particularly true in the case of the mobile middle class, which has attracted less attention than the multiple migrations of low-waged labour migrants and the global professional elite. Drawing on interviews with 35 Australian a…
Social Protection for Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore
Although migrant women from neighboring Southeast Asian countries fill crucial care gaps in Singapore households as live-in domestic workers, their social protection remains uneven, uncertain, and indeterminate. Framed as unskilled work shunned by citizens and characterized by isolation in the privatized sphere of the home, domestic work has invariably become low-status, low-visibility, and low-pay work performed by foreign women engaged on priva…
Bangladeshi construction workers and the politics of (im)mobility in Singapore
The most iconic image of the foreign construction worker in Singapore’s popular imagination is a figure perilously secured by safety harnesses atop a half completed high-rise building. However, we argue that an understanding of the labour process involved in fashioning the migrant worker is predicated on a more expansive understanding of the politics of (im)mobility. In other words, the labour process is not simply secured in the workplace of the…
Drivers of migration policy reform
While there has been much debate on Singapore’s migration policies, a ‘black box’ continues to surround policymaking decisions. This article examines the dynamics of migration policy reforms in Singapore, using the case study of the mandatory weekly day off policy for migrant domestic workers. Designing our analysis around the three ‘Is’ – ideas, interests and institutions – we argue that the inclusion and formalisation of migrant rights in the p…
Translating People and Policy
There has been a surge of recent interest in the migration industries that facilitate the movement of migrants, particularly that of low-waged laborers engaged in temporary contracts abroad. This article extends this research to include migration brokers working in destination contexts, thus drawing analytical attention to the arrival infrastructures that incorporate migrants into host societies. Based on ethnographic research involving the emplo…
Choreographing the rhythms of encounter in Singapore's maid agencies
This paper builds on Lefebvre's concept of rhythmanalysis in order to extend our understanding of geographies of encounter in everyday social life. Focusing on the encounters that take place at maid agencies that match migrant domestic workers with local employers in Singapore, we develop the conceptual construct of choreography to show how bodies in spaces of encounter are rhythmically ordered to move through space in particular ways at specific…
Cultural mediation through vernacularization
Scholarship on civil society in Singapore has tended to emphasize the structural and institutional constraints on civil society space. Conversely, little attention is paid to the broader cultural and discursive realms in which civil society and state actors operate. This article seeks to address this gap by analysing the day‐off campaign for migrant domestic workers in Singapore. We demonstrate that by employing the cultural mediation strategy of…
Connecting care chains and care diamonds
Research on the globalization of care work often faces the persistent challenge of building meaningful connections between the movement of care labour at a global scale and place-based frameworks of care access and delivery. In addressing this gap in this article, we propose to take a closer look at how the care-migration nexus produces 'ideal' care workers through a skills regime. Based on the case of elderly care in Singapore, in this article, …
Repoliticizing international migration narratives? Critical reflections on the Civil Society Days of the Global Forum on Migration and Development
This paper draws on Pécoud’s international migration narratives (IMN) as an analytical framework to examine the Global Forum on Migration and Development’s Civil Society Days (GFMD-CSD). We analyse the narratives both produced and challenged at the GFMD-CSD, suggesting that while the GFMD-CSD poses a gentle challenge to existing IMN, it falls short of meaningfully (re)politicizing predominant migration paradigms. This is partly due to how the for…
Love’s labour’s cost? Gendered migration and intimate labour in Asia
Recognising the need to expand research on intimate labour beyond the predominant focus on intimate occupations in which low-waged migrant workers are often engaged, we highlight in our editorial the processes and exchanges taking place in the provisioning of intimate work.We juxtapose existing research with the articles in this themed section to engender a deeper understanding of how intimate practices and relations are mediated by the orderings…
How Unpopular Policies are Made
In this article we contribute to the emerging knowledge on migration policy‐making in two ways. Firstly, we address the relative lack of research on the gendered nature of migration policy‐making. Secondly we contribute to understanding migration policymaking in postcolonial contexts. Based on case studies from Bangladesh, South Africa, and Singapore, we trace the drivers of policy change in these contexts and how the gendered vulnerability of th…
Close encounters
Drivers of migration policy reform
While there has been much debate on Singapore’s migration policies, a ‘black box’ continues to surround policymaking decisions. This article examines the dynamics of migration policy reforms in Singapore, using the case study of the mandatory weekly day off policy for migrant domestic workers. Designing our analysis around the three ‘Is’ – ideas, interests and institutions – we argue that the inclusion and formalisation of migrant rights in the p…
Migration governance and the migration industry in Asia
In the context of Asia, understanding migration governance needs to transcend statism to encompass the 'middle space' of migration. Unlike migration linked to settlement in liberal democratic states of the West, a large part of low-skilled migration in Asia - predominantly circular, feminized, and contractual - is brokered by private recruitment agencies. In adopting migration brokers as a methodological starting point, we make the case for bring…
Bangladeshi construction workers and the politics of (im)mobility in Singapore
The most iconic image of the foreign construction worker in Singapore’s popular imagination is a figure perilously secured by safety harnesses atop a half completed high-rise building. However, we argue that an understanding of the labour process involved in fashioning the migrant worker is predicated on a more expansive understanding of the politics of (im)mobility. In other words, the labour process is not simply secured in the workplace of the…
Cultural mediation through vernacularization
Scholarship on civil society in Singapore has tended to emphasize the structural and institutional constraints on civil society space. Conversely, little attention is paid to the broader cultural and discursive realms in which civil society and state actors operate. This article seeks to address this gap by analysing the day‐off campaign for migrant domestic workers in Singapore. We demonstrate that by employing the cultural mediation strategy of…
Repoliticizing international migration narratives? Critical reflections on the Civil Society Days of the Global Forum on Migration and Development
This paper draws on Pécoud’s international migration narratives (IMN) as an analytical framework to examine the Global Forum on Migration and Development’s Civil Society Days (GFMD-CSD). We analyse the narratives both produced and challenged at the GFMD-CSD, suggesting that while the GFMD-CSD poses a gentle challenge to existing IMN, it falls short of meaningfully (re)politicizing predominant migration paradigms. This is partly due to how the for…
How Unpopular Policies are Made
In this article we contribute to the emerging knowledge on migration policy‐making in two ways. Firstly, we address the relative lack of research on the gendered nature of migration policy‐making. Secondly we contribute to understanding migration policymaking in postcolonial contexts. Based on case studies from Bangladesh, South Africa, and Singapore, we trace the drivers of policy change in these contexts and how the gendered vulnerability of th…
Choreographing the rhythms of encounter in Singapore's maid agencies
This paper builds on Lefebvre's concept of rhythmanalysis in order to extend our understanding of geographies of encounter in everyday social life. Focusing on the encounters that take place at maid agencies that match migrant domestic workers with local employers in Singapore, we develop the conceptual construct of choreography to show how bodies in spaces of encounter are rhythmically ordered to move through space in particular ways at specific…
Chutes-and-ladders
In order to understand how precarity is created for and experienced by labour migrants, we apply the concept of conditionality – which proposes that a migrant worker’s experience of precarity is contingent on a set of formal and informal conditions, the actions of institutional actors, and migrants’ own resources and strategies – to our study of how employment agents in Singapore and Indonesia recruit and place migrant workers. We develop this co…
Translating People and Policy
There has been a surge of recent interest in the migration industries that facilitate the movement of migrants, particularly that of low-waged laborers engaged in temporary contracts abroad. This article extends this research to include migration brokers working in destination contexts, thus drawing analytical attention to the arrival infrastructures that incorporate migrants into host societies. Based on ethnographic research involving the emplo…
Social Protection for Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore
Although migrant women from neighboring Southeast Asian countries fill crucial care gaps in Singapore households as live-in domestic workers, their social protection remains uneven, uncertain, and indeterminate. Framed as unskilled work shunned by citizens and characterized by isolation in the privatized sphere of the home, domestic work has invariably become low-status, low-visibility, and low-pay work performed by foreign women engaged on priva…
Connecting care chains and care diamonds
Research on the globalization of care work often faces the persistent challenge of building meaningful connections between the movement of care labour at a global scale and place-based frameworks of care access and delivery. In addressing this gap in this article, we propose to take a closer look at how the care-migration nexus produces 'ideal' care workers through a skills regime. Based on the case of elderly care in Singapore, in this article, …
Serial migration, multiple belongings and orientations toward the future
The growing phenomenon of serial migrants - people who have moved at least three times and profess belongings to more than two places - challenges the dialogic relationship imagined in studies of transnationalism. This is particularly true in the case of the mobile middle class, which has attracted less attention than the multiple migrations of low-waged labour migrants and the global professional elite. Drawing on interviews with 35 Australian a…
Migrant Workers in Singapore
Close encounters
Love’s labour’s cost? Gendered migration and intimate labour in Asia
Recognising the need to expand research on intimate labour beyond the predominant focus on intimate occupations in which low-waged migrant workers are often engaged, we highlight in our editorial the processes and exchanges taking place in the provisioning of intimate work.We juxtapose existing research with the articles in this themed section to engender a deeper understanding of how intimate practices and relations are mediated by the orderings…
If it's held dear, it’ll get pushed through’
Transmedia storytelling is a strategy adopted by media franchises and brands to create participatory story-worlds for their consumers; it incorporates a range of forms, actors, and texts, all of which have varying degrees of narrative authority in determining the events that occur. This article focuses on tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons to show how play cultures in Singapore are shaped by transmedia storytelling techniques. In doing…
Recruitment Agents in a Debt‐Financed Migration Regime
In ‘fly now, pay later’ systems across Southeast Asia, migrant domestic workers accrue a snowballing debt, through recruitment processes beginning in their source villages and ending in their employers’ homes, which they repay through salary deductions. We examine debt as it circulates spatially across borders, temporally over the course of migrants’ recruitment and socially among a chain of migrant brokers and employers. On the basis of qualitat…
Migration and Labor Dynamics (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Political science (12 works) · Economics (10 works) · Socioeconomic Development in Asia (9 works) · Economic growth (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Law (6 works)