Politics of the Temporary: An Ethnography of Migrant Life in Urban Malaysia

By Parthiban Muniandy

For more than three decades Malaysia’s economic growth has been driven in part by the skills and sweat of large numbers of migrant workers. The country has become the temporary home for more than two million documented migrants. Many more than that are undocumented, living precarious lives on the margins of society. In cities like Kuala Lumpur and George Town, workers from Indonesia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Burma, the Philippines, Vietnam and China contribute in seen and unseen ways to the lives of others. They are the servers and cooks in restaurants, maids and nannies in homes, street cleaners, construction workers, social escorts, sex workers and micro-entrepreneurs. For the first time, Politics of the Temporary details the rich, complex and often difficult realities of the lives of migrants in Malaysia – experiences that are for the most part hidden from public consciousness and awareness. Through a series of reflective and critical ethnographic notes – and told in the words of migrants themselves – Parthiban Muniandy provides an intimate examination of the many ways that migrants adapt to life in the city, their innovative strategies for coping with pressures of work and discrimination, and their capacity to forge new networks and build informal communities.
​This book should be read by all those interested in the harsh realities of contemporary labour migration and social inequalities in a developing economy.
Parthiban Muniandy is a doctoral student at the Department of Sociology, University of Illinois, USA. He has conducted fieldwork for the past seven years on the politics of temporary migration in Malaysia. He has published on religious movements and democratic politics in Malaysia, global migration, development discourses and US media portrayals of Muslim societies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gerakbudaya London Ltd
• Release date: Mar 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9789670960296

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Restaurants, Cafes, Culture and Identity

chapter

1

Outsourcing Culture?

At the start of field research, I set myself the task of observing and learning about how temporary migrants – those with no plans or opportunities for legal long-term resettlement – have the capacity to foster deep and significant structural and cultural transformations in urban Malaysia. My intentions were two-fold. First, I wanted to help illuminate the multitude of stories and experiences of migrants who are so vital to Malaysia’s economic and social development (for better or worse) by bringing their stories to a broader public audience. These are voices that are rarely heard, even though the sociopolitical debates and discourses surrounding migrants and migration are very common. We rarely hear the voices of migrants themselves, and even rarer still do we take the opportunity and time to learn and understand their lives and everyday experiences from their perspectives and standpoints. Second, I wanted to highlight strong empirical evidence to support my counterargument against a widespread assumption in the migration literature that circular or temporary migrants do not really affect their host societies in a significant way, at least not in terms of ‘deep culture’ or structures. Drawing upon both my own intimate personal experiences having grown up in Malaysia, as well as the ethnographic and historical research I have been conducting on migration for the past six years, I am convinced that so-called circular or temporary migrants are indeed forces of immense cultural and structural transformation in host societies, especially in the everyday lives of people.

Of course, the assumption in the literature has a lot to do with the way migration has historically been understood in very different contexts – postwar reconstruction in Europe, the immense Mexico–US migration corridor, and a more general context of South–North migration. The long-standing assumption among scholars is that people generally move from less developed or poorer places of origin to those that are more developed or richer, and this is coupled with the perception of countries in western Europe and North America as being part of the more ‘developed’ Global North. Socially and culturally, Global North countries are considered to have strongly established and institutionalised norms, rules, practices, laws and structures, while economically they possess well-regulated, predictable, profitable and successful markets and financial institutions. What this means is that these developed societies are able to accommodate the influx of migrants from less developed places without having to experience any significant social or cultural changes. What often ends up happening is that those who fail to assimilate (i.e. adapt and conform to the cultures and social norms of the ‘mainstream’) often end up as part of marginalised ‘ethnic enclaves’ and ghetto communities. With enough numbers, some migrant groups may even be able to form diaspora communities, such as south Asians in Britain or Indonesians in the Netherlands. While their presence may become quite visible as part of the demographic makeup of these societies, they are rarely considered as being part of the cultural and social fabric of the mainstream – one great recent example is the debates among commentators in England about the lack of presence of south Asians in professional football, which is such a crucial component of that particular mainstream.

In the case of the Mexico–US migration corridor, the US represents very unique experiences of migration, which tend to dominate the research and literature as being ‘core’. Migrant experiences in the US are particular to the historical experiences of race and racism, as well as gender, that characterise much of American history – Asian migrant experience, for example, cannot be understood without consideration of the Second World War and the so-called ‘yellow peril’ phenomenon, among other things. Similarly, recent struggles of undocumented Hispanic migrants – as seen through Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act activism – are rooted in a very entrenched racial structure, which over the years (though census tracts, urban segregation, labour transformations, education, security and border control politicisation) has come to construct a broad category of ‘Hispanics’ that encompasses a tremendously diverse population. The American migrant experience tends also to be one of racial preference and the existence of categories of ‘model migrants’ – specific groups of migrants perceived to be better or more ‘attuned’ to the cultures, norms and lifestyles of the mainstream, that is, middle-class white society. Asians, in particular east Asians and Indians, often tend to fall into those categories, which come with their own set of problems and symptoms. At the other end of the spectrum, vast numbers of low-income, non-model migrants find themselves confined to spaces of ‘hidden’ labour – in factories, meat-packing districts and so on. Even in the service sector, migrant workers (especially Mexican and other Hispanic migrants) are usually confined to the backstage – in kitchens, as hotel roomkeepers and as part of cleaning services.¹

In other words, temporary/circular/low-income/poor migrants are generally present but out of sight in societies of the Global North, as far as the way research portrays them. Herein lies a very important and key difference between South–North migration and migrations between societies situated at various ‘phases’ of development (for lack of a better term). It is important to understand and acknowledge that the ‘North’ and ‘South’ distinction is mostly one for analytical purposes to describe inequality at the global level, one that perhaps fuels a flawed view that there is such a thing as a ‘developed’ country. While it is true that many countries, particularly in western Europe and North America (as well as east Asia, for that matter) have wealthier and well-regulated economies, more transparent governance structures and greater institutional accountability compared to other societies and countries, they are also fundamentally different from each other in many ways. To put it simply, they did not ‘develop’ along this same ‘ideal’ path of development, which we hear so often being put forth by organisations such as the United Nations (UN) and the World Bank. These countries did not develop the same institutional arrangements and structures – the US federal government structure is not at all similar to those of Malaysia or the European Union, for example. More importantly, the experiences of each developed country are very different to even be considered to be part of this same category of developed or Global North – just look at the relative positions and rankings of these countries on the Gini ratio and the Human Development Index.

Lumping together a very diverse and different group of countries and societies as part of a collective Global North has only very shallow analytical value and, at worse, reinforces some very problematic perceptions and assumptions about development. In a more humorous way, it makes researchers, scholars and policymakers speak and write in rather convoluted ways about how ‘the North is present in the South, and the South is present in the North’² when talking about development and migration – when basically it is just a way to describe how changes in global inequality are driving new patterns of human mobility. At this period of economic globalisation, it seems much more prudent and practical to treat different societies as ‘differently developing’, with a more nuanced and grounded understanding of development not as teleological but multifaceted and multilayered (similar arguments exist about the idea of multiple modernities, for instance).³ The existence and usage of the analytical categories of North and South are primarily driven by the need to conceptualise, characterise and thus address economic inequality that is produced by the spread of Western liberal (or neoliberal) capitalism, which basically enslave poorer and ‘less-developed’ countries into a structure of crippling dependency and debt bondage.⁴ This structure of dependency is part of what scholars such as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, David Harvey, Saskia Sassen and many others have attributed to an obsessive and irresistible push towards greater liberalisation of markets and capital – that further enhances the dominant economic status of the North and forces other societies to transform and expose themselves to the principles of unfettered free trade, competition and the removal of barriers for market entry.

This still remains largely applicable. There is still tremendous debt bondage and dependency on the part of struggling societies that have to contend with foreign debt, for example. Opening up markets to international competition has been a massive factor in the emergence of sweatshops, indentured factory labour, and even child labour in countries like Indo-nesia, China, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Powerful multinational corporations (MNCs) suddenly find access to subcontract their manufacturing activities to private firms in poorer countries, who then exploit weak regulations and even weaker labour unionisation to impose terrible working conditions and subminimal wages on their workers. This has not changed despite all the activism, protests and advocacy work that has gone on, because of the political realities of contract labour and trade/investment regulations that allow MNCs to escape legal repercussions and accountability for exploitation. We can blame Apple for labour exploitation in China all we want, but it is unlikely to stop the company from continuing to sell their products and make billions each year – and it is even less likely that we will ever be able to find a legal way to hold Apple accountable for labour practices in the factories where their products are manufactured.⁵

However, and this is where things get complicated, to characterise current global inequality as a North–South phenomenon is simply not helpful or useful. Capitalism – if defined as the ideological approach to making profit (surplus) the primary goal of economic activity – cannot be seen as stemming from the North any longer. This is not to say that it is not historically rooted in the Industrial Revolution of Europe (when Marx first described it) or that it gave birth to its current variant (‘neo-liberal’ or ‘late’ capitalism, however it is referred to) in the womb of the Washington Consensus of the 1990s. The important point is that aspects of neoliberal capitalism have already been embedded and taken up by many states and societies, which are categorically non-North. Malaysia and Singapore are almost ideal-typical examples of what John Ruggie calls ‘embedded liberalism’⁶ – where principles of openness and laissez-faire have already been entrenched in ‘national development’ in subtle ways. Mahathir Mohamad, the former prime minister of Malaysia, is famous for being very critical of the West in his ideological rhetoric that pushed Islamic modernisation and ‘Asian values’.⁷ However, the entire national developmental apparatus that grew under his leadership placed economic growth and global competitiveness as core objectives. His Vision 2020 was based on the ambition to make Malaysia a ‘fully developed’ country by 2020, which again speaks to this teleological view of development. ‘Asian values’ is a powerful ideological tool that aims to create an arbitrary distinction between the West and the East, a type of auto-Orientalism or Occidentalism, which plays up the innate hard-working, pragmatic and entrepreneurial character of modern Asians. Coupling Asian values with the ridiculous notion of ‘Malaysia, Truly Asia’, it is in many ways a powerful discourse that seeks to reinforce that separation from the ‘West’ while aspiring to become part of the ‘North’.

My point here is that the values and principles that scholars often attri-bute to the West, those of liberalism and capitalism, have long established roots in other countries and societies. It is far more meaningful to recognise that the profit motive and accumulation principle are nothing new or ‘foreign’ to people in different societies outside the traditional West or North. Market competition is nothing new or foreign either – especially in urban contexts. It seems rather pointless and unproductive to hold Western capitalism accountable for the actions of local Malaysian business people who take advantage of migrant workers working illegally as traders by using their property and commercial spaces to seek rent. Similarly, I do not see the value in pointing the finger at the North for the actions of hyper-rich east Asian, north Indian and Gulf state expatriates, and very wealthy Malaysians who invest millions (if not billions) in residential and commercial property in urban Malaysia, consequently driving up the cost of living for locals, creating new gated communities as well as urban ghettoes (where only poor migrants live) at the same time. Property or real estate speculation is a booming economy driven entirely by the profit motive of capitalism, and it is engaged in by actors not just from the traditional North.

My rather extended tangent into the details of contemporary capitalism highlights a key argument concerning the distinction between North and South that dominates much of migration and development scholarship. The purpose is to suggest that we might find moving beyond that analytical lens to be emancipatory and illuminating. Perhaps the most important effect is that it allows us to treat the notion of development more critically, and less as a stable notion (with a determinable end state), though this is something that most scholars are already emphasising despite the fact that international actors, like the World Bank and UN, are still unwilling to acknowledge it. Speaking specifically with regards to migration, I believe that moving beyond this North–South divide helps us see much more complex, un-predictable and very ‘messy and unwieldy’ pictures of human mobility, to use James C. Scott’s words.⁸ When we stop thinking of migration in terms of people moving from less developed to developed countries (where change is less possible), we open up the possibility of viewing migrants, even circular and temporary migrants, as having agency – not as ‘agents of development’ or ‘service providers’ or agents of anything in particular, but as having the capacity of fostering significant change whatever form it may take.

Which brings me to the question of how temporary migrants affect changes in urban Malaysia. As I mentioned at the outset, my own experi-ences in Malaysia especially over the past six years have shown me enough to say that migrants have been incredibly important in the social and cultural transformation of Kuala Lumpur. People from Bangladesh, Burma, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, the Philippines, Indonesia and the Middle East bring with them different languages, different cultural norms, different lifestyles and different values. Their sheer numbers in Malaysia mean that they make up a very significant portion of the demography (over 3 million estimated in a country of 29 million and 20 per cent of the adult workforce). This, in turn, means that they are not simply a marginal minority. The public presence of low-income temporary migrants is felt most strongly in the service sectors, even though there are far larger numbers in construction and agriculture. This is because migrant workers in service sectors such as restaurants and cleaning/maintenance are present in the everyday lives of urban Malaysians. As I highlight in my ethnography of Kuala Lumpur, migrant workers are the ones who cook and serve our food, clean our public toilets, sell goods and perform other services. Migrant workers from Burma and Bangladesh who work in local restaurants are not confined to the backstage of kitchens and cleaning, but are at the forefront as waiters and servers. In other words, migrants are both present and