The Produced Injured: Locating Workplace Accidents Amongst Precarious Migrant Workmen in Singapore

Serious workplace injuries and fatalities amongst migrant workers are an increasingly documented concern in critical literature on precarious migrant labour. Explanations vary as to why migrant workers experience a disproportionally high incidence of workplace accidents, with existing literature identifying risk factors such as dangerous and demanding working conditions and lack of adherence to safety standards, as well as socio-cultural and political barriers negatively affecting migrants' health-seeking behaviour. This paper aims to extend these discussions through a closer examination of the role of two inter-related factors emanating from the political economy of Singapore's migrant labour regime in creating a context of heightened vulnerability and risk. These are: the organisation of migration (including fees/debts and deportability), and contract fraud and deceptive recruitment (including wrongful deployment and substandard living conditions). To frame discussion in the paper, I introduce the concept of the 'produced injured', which refers to those whose vulnerability to injury results from processes related to the political economy of migrant labour.