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Chinese Journal of International Law Advance Access originally published online on January 29, 2009
Chinese Journal of International Law 2009 8(1):205-231; doi:10.1093/chinesejil/jmn041
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved

DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY

Migrant Workers as Citizens within the ASEAN Landscape: International Law and the Singapore Experiment

CHEAH Wui Ling*

Correspondence: * Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore (email: lawcwl{at}nus.edu.sg). The author would like to thank Kevin Tan for his critical eye and Thio Li-ann for the lively discussion. Warmest thanks also to Michael Ewing Chow and John Gee for taking time off their busy schedules to share their activist experiences with the author.

Using both legal and sociological definitions of citizenship, this paper examines how the international community, ASEAN countries and Singapore have responded to the migrant worker question.

The first part of this paper uses ASEAN examples and interrogates the question of migrant worker citizenship from an international legal or policy perspective, particularly recent efforts to construct a differentiated citizenship for migrant workers within destination States based on an inclusionary principle.

The second part of this paper then undertakes a close case study of foreign domestic workers or "maids" in Singapore. I examine how maids are depicted as non-citizens under Singapore's law and policy, how Singaporean non-governmental organizations have sought to counter this and how the latter may be guided by internationally developed concepts of differentiated citizenship and the inclusionary principle.


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