Impact of mobile phone on the acculturation of South Asian migrant workers in Singapore

The study examines how migrants’ communication over mobile phone as well as their appropriation of the technology affects their acculturation in host society. A pluralistic-typological approach towards acculturation helps understand the phenomenon as assimilation, integration, marginalization and separation. Previous research has shown that integration leads to migrants’ optimal adaptation to the host society. This study investigated the effects of mobile phone calling and of acculturation on the adaptation of low-skilled migrant workers in the host country’s social and work domains. The study followed a mixed methods approach and drew on data from survey questionnaire and in-depth interviews with 462 male migrant workers from South Asia in Singapore. Scales representing the quadri-modal model failed in construct validity, suggesting that the model was not applicable for the population under study. Instead, scales of cultural identity and multiculturalism in workplace were used to represent acculturation. Cultural identity, multiculturalism, and mobile calling to host cultures had positive effect on migrants’ organizational commitment, whereas multiculturalism in workplace positively affected migrants’ social adaptation. Analyses of qualitative data yielded four mobile phone user types – convenience seeker, experimenter, group communicator and austere user – and three acculturation types: culture connoisseur, culture campaigner and culturally petrified. Analysis also revealed the links between user types and acculturation types and produced the hyphenated categories: convenience seeker/experimenter- culture connoisseur, group communicator-culture campaigner and austere user-culturally petrified. The research advances scholarship in acculturation by incorporating migrants’ amount of mobile phone interaction with host and home cultures into the theoretical schema. The social constructivist position of technology’s meaning being constituted dynamically by social usages has been verified in an intercultural context.DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (WKWSCI

Mobile/Social Media Use for Political Purposes Among Migrant Laborers in Singapore

Political participation has generally been evaluated among civic resident populations using the indices of voting and campaign participation. However, migrants’ engagement with politics in their home country has become increasingly virtual with the advent of mobile/social media, suggesting a need to go beyond traditional theorizations. This article tries to understand how affordances of new media are leveraged by migrants with different political orientations as they engaged politically with their homeland. Two contexts were identified to understand their transnational political exchanges: (a) elections in homeland India, and (b) the backdrop of various civil society movements. In-depth interviews were conducted among 31 Indian migrants in Singapore with diverse political ideologies and linguistic backgrounds. Calling, messaging, sharing of news stories/posts, and commenting were the most commonly used mobile affordances. Social constructivist tradition in technology appropriation found support in the way respondents tested the affordances of mobile/social media before adding them to their usage repertoire. Due to limited political entitlements and lack of leeway in work schedules, no goal-oriented use of communication technologies was made. Political discussion hardly led to political action—such as demonstrations or public speeches—in the host country.Accepted versio

Collective appropriation and cooperative uses of mobile telephony among Burmese fishers

Early research on mobile phone adoption among fishers followed an economistic perspective, focusing mainly on access to market price information. Researchers called for investigations into collective and cooperative uses of the technology. Responding to these calls, we explored Burmese fishers’ use of mobile phone in the realms of social life and business, mainly related to information seeking and sharing among community. Interviews with 23 fishers in three regions in Myanmar suggested that both social and commercial as well as individual- and community-oriented uses were prevalent. Mobile phones helped channel information on price and market demand among a limited number of fishers, especially the boat owners and fish dealers. The other segments in the fishing labor hierarchy desisted from individual ownership of the phone, while opting for a more community-based appropriation. A nuanced picture of use and non-use of mobiles emerged alongside fishers’ socio-economic status and patterns of fishing.Accepted versio

Social Integration of Male Migrant Workers in Singapore: The Enabling and Constraining Roles of Mobile Phones

Acculturation research has explored the relation between orientation of migrants towards home and host cultures and predicted their adaption to the host society in different domains of life. Migrants’ mobile phone communication with friends’ networks in the host country as well as to family and relatives in the home culture has been supportive in the adaptation process. We investigated whether migrants adapted differentially to life and work domains, and probed further into the reasons behind it. Data from survey questionnaire (n=519) were analysed to test the relationships between: (i) acculturation (parsed as ‘cultural identification’ and ‘multiculturalism’); (ii) mobile communication to home and host cultures; and, (iii) adaptation outcomes – indicated by life satisfaction and organizational commitment. Results showed that multiculturalism positively affected life satisfaction and organizational commitment, while cultural identity positively affected only organizational commitment. Mobile communication to other cultures positively affected organizational commitment, whereas calling to home culture did not affect either life satisfaction or organizational commitment. We suggest the host society to actively interact with the labor migrants in order that the actual potential of mobile phones as bridge between cultural divides can be actualized. The research advances scholarship in acculturation by incorporating culturally-salient mobile phone communication into the theoretical schema

Belonging and communicating in a bounded cosmopolitanism : the role of mobile phones in the integration of transnational migrants in Singapore

The unabated influx of transnational labour migrants has been accompanied by complex societal fissures, from differential policies to the creation of isolated cultural geographies. In Singapore, citizens voice their aggravation caused by transients’ lack of acculturation, and the resultant risks posed to the cosmopolitan vision of the state. We examine the intersection of transnational acculturation with mediated communication via mobile phones within the domains of life and work. Data from in-depth qualitative interviews (75) allowed for thick descriptions. We find that, despite encountering heterotopic practices, transnational migrant workers engage in a phenomenon we label ‘bounded cosmopolitanism’, or the ability to engage in learning, enjoy economic growth, and embrace cultural hybridity, to escape the shackles of race, class, and gender. Mobile phones play a significant role in providing open participatory spaces; yet; this phenomenon signifying openness, innovation, and acceptance is restricted to organizational workspaces. We therefore conclude with comments on the implications of applying management perspectives to broader societal challenges, and propose shifting of the discourse from the bounded confines of the organization to that of society.Accepted versio

Mobile phone appropriation and migrant acculturation : a case study of an Indian community in Singapore

This research explores how the mobile phone appropriation patterns of an Indian migrant group in Singapore are linked to acculturation strategies. The circular model of mobile phone appropriation was adopted to investigate aspects of usage and handling, prestige and social identity, and metacommunication. Following a pluralistic-typological approach, acculturation patterns identified relate to migrants’ maintenance of cultural identity and relationships with the Singaporean host society. In-depth interviews among 33 low-skilled male migrants from an Indian Malayali migrant community reveal that the four appropriation types convenience seeker, experimenter, group communicator, and tabula rasa were linked to three acculturation types observed: culture campaigner, culture connoisseur, and culturally petrified.Published versio

Migrant mothering and mobile phones : negotiations of transnational identity

Transnational mothers working in foreign countries face the challenges of providing “intensive” mothering to their children from a distance, and risk being subject to the “deviancy” discourse of mothering. This paper investigates the role of mobile phone usage, via voice, text messages, and social networking sites, in dealing with the tensions and ambivalence arising from transnational mothering as a dialectical process. We surveyed 42 Filipina and Indonesian foreign domestic workers (FDWs) in Singapore using a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods. FDWs addressed tensions arising out of societal expectations of motherhood and their own anxieties about children’s well-being. The reluctant obsessive struggled to maintain a balance between an intensive nurturing style and a deviant mode of mothering that respected the growing independence of the children. The diverted professional had to balance the financial empowerment of being the primary breadwinner with the risk of surrogate motherhood for the employer’s children subsuming the care provided to her own. The remote-control parent shared mothering responsibilities with caregivers, usually relatives, who acted as a contradictory proxy presence for intensive mothering. The incomplete union of stressed marital parenting put further pressure on the romantic and sexual identities of migrant women. Transnational mothers utilized mobile phones actively as a tool to negotiate and redefine identities and relationships that created fissures in their sense of self. These included the management of third-party relationships, withholding of emotions or information, and engaging in counterintuitive phenomenon such as restricting, or actively dis-engaging from, mobile phone usage as a communication strategy. The paper calls for future research into the multiple, and interacting, social identities assumed and managed by transnational mothers, and the complex role played by mobile phones in the constant process of negotiation by agentic, self-relective and multifaceted women.Accepted versio

Silent but brewing: Reactive ethnicity and interculturality among chinese students in Singapore

The study takes an indirect approach towards the intercultural experience of migrants and explores how they perceive discrimination from host society and in turn stereotype it. Previous studies have highlighted how interculturality facilitates the adaptation of migrants in the host country. This study explores (i) how face-to-face (FTF) and mediated contact and perceived discrimination predict stereotyping, and (ii) how contact, perceived discrimination and stereotyping predict interculturality. A web-based survey was conducted among university students from the People’s Republic of China (n = 585) in Singapore. FTF contact reduced stereotyping better than mediated contact. Perceived discrimination increased stereotyping of the host society by migrants, whereas stereotyping negatively affected interculturality. The study calls for better contact between locals and the migrant population