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Mobilizing Migrant Workers’ Rights in “Non-immigration” Countries: The Politics of Resonance and Migrants’ Rights Activism in Israel and Singapore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Adriana Kemp  and
Nelly Kfir
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Abstract

How are the rights of migrant workers mobilized in non-immigration regimes? Drawing on an ethnography of human rights NGOs in Israel and Singapore, two countries that share similar ethnic policies but differ in their political regime, this study contributes to scholarship on migrants’ rights mobilization by expanding cross-national analysis beyond the United States and West Europe and diverting its focus from legal institutions to the places where rights are produced. Findings show that differences in the political regime influence the channels for mobilizing claims but not the cultural politics of resonance that NGOs use when dealing with the tensions between restrictive ethnic policies and the expansion of labor migration. While restraints in authoritarian Singapore operate mainly outside the activists’ circle, in the Israeli ethno-democracy they operate through self-disciplining processes that neutralize their potential challenge to hegemonic understandings of citizenship. Paradoxically, success in advancing rights for migrants through resonance often results in reinforcing the non-immigration regime.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 82 - 116
Copyright
© 2016 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

We thank the NGOs staff and activists in Singapore and Israel that took part in the study for their participation, openness and insights. We are indebted to the editors of LSR and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and constructive comments. We thank the Asian Research Institute (National University of Singapore) for providing academic affiliation during fieldwork. This research was supported by the Yonatan Shapira Foundation, the Shaul N. Eisenberg Chair for East Asian Affairs, the Horowitz Institute for Social Research, and the Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

References

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