This chapter focuses on Indonesian migrant domestic workers in the highly controlled spaces of Singapore’s labor regime. It contributes to theorizations of alternative spatialities through a focus on two spaces of sociality that migrant domestic workers have emphasized as significant to their experience of belonging in the city. Specifically, through linking up with one another in public spaces on their days off and via social-media networks, migrant domestic workers develop islands of social connection and ways of inhabiting the city that were unavailable to them in Singapore’s recent past. They continue to be bound by overtly discriminatory immigration and labor laws, as well as by ethno-nationalist hierarchies that socially subordinate them. However, by creating spaces of connection with one another, they are finding new ways to belong in the city. Migrants’ own maps of meaning rooted in their social relations with one another offer alternative conceptualizations of their emplacement in structures of marginality.

This paper explores the ways exploitative labour migration arrangements leading to ‘failed migration’ can extend discussions of transnationalism. Specifically, failed migration produces different sorts of engagements in transnational social fields to those commonly discussed in the literature and in relation to migrants who are considered successful. These departures allow for reflection on key assumptions about the practices of connection and engagement across borders between migrants and non-migrants that typify the operation of transnational social fields, including the ways constructions of gender shape these practices. The paper draws on a case study of Bangladeshi low-waged, transient migrant workers in Singapore. I examine three registers of diluted connection, namely: protecting the family from anxiety; distress for migrants through imposition of censure and suspicion; and the shame associated with exploitation. Moral–cultural frames that inscribe particular economic and social expectations on migrants and, in this case, values associated with ‘being a man’ transferred from home provide a lens through which to understand the reconfiguration of transnational social fields in the context of failed migration. © 2021 Global Networks Partnership & John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Work engagement has attracted increased interest among human resource management scholars and practitioners. Within a family-work context, a population whose levels of work engagement has sparsely been previously studied has been that of employees who have children with special needs/disabilities (SND). These employees frequently face demanding responsibilities at home, a fact that may have implications in the workplace. Drawing on perceived family–work strain and organizational support literatures, we examine whether the disability severity of employees’ children and the support provided by the supervisor may affect employees’ levels of work engagement. Deriving data from two societies, those of Singapore and the United Kingdom (UK), the findings of this research may inform human resource management literature concerning the work engagement of employees who are parents of children with SND. Our two-society data collection rendered 430 usable questionnaires. Employees with children with SND in Singapore (n = 224) reported higher work engagement levels than employees in the UK (n = 206). Also, the research results confirmed that the relationship between child’s disability severity and employee work engagement is moderated by the support provided by the supervisor. Setting the grounds for an international discussion about human resource management and family-support practices directed toward employees with children with SND, implications and recommendations for future research are offered. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.