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How about Singaporean men who marry foreign women and abuse them? Many of these women have to endure abuse and keep silent, especially if they have children, ‘cos their visa status is at risk and dependent on their local husbands.
Why is that not in this article? https://twitter.com/interchris/status/1360769417534078977
Why is that not in this article? https://twitter.com/interchris/status/1360769417534078977
This article conflates so many experiences.
- A couple who dated for a year, now husband claims his wife won’t have sex with him
- Men matched by agencies to foreign women
- Sham marriages
- A couple who met while she was working in SG
These are all very different?!
- A couple who dated for a year, now husband claims his wife won’t have sex with him
- Men matched by agencies to foreign women
- Sham marriages
- A couple who met while she was working in SG
These are all very different?!
The article seems to conflate the idea of men marrying foreign women (note: they mean women from developing countries, notice how it’s not about women from US/Europe) with sham marriages, and implicitly suggesting a decrease in men marrying foreign women is a good thing.
The article says 4,828 Singaporean men married foreign women last year, and this is a low compared to the past decade.
There are thousands of these marriages every year, for years, and >500 people were convicted for sham marriages in the past 3 years.
That’s a tiny proportion.
There are thousands of these marriages every year, for years, and >500 people were convicted for sham marriages in the past 3 years.
That’s a tiny proportion.
Women make up 70% of migrant spouses here, and unless they have their own work visas, they are entirely dependent on citizen spouses for the right to remain. See @awarenews’ research: https://www.aware.org.sg/2020/06/immigration-policies-disadvantage-migrant-wives-june-2020-report/
Some migrant spouses have also been hit hard by #COVID19. They might be working to support their families, yet aren’t eligible for a lot of the schemes the government introduced to help Singaporeans during the pandemic. Many lost their jobs entirely. https://www.aware.org.sg/2020/05/migrant-spouses-support-singaporean-families-but-struggle-to-belong/
I’ve spoken with migrant women who have left/were trying to leave marriages that had either broken down or were abusive. What awaited/awaits them: anxiety over employment, housing, and even more importantly, the right to remain, especially if they have SG children.
A society and narrative that views marriages with foreign women from developing countries as inherently suspect hurts migrant spouses. It’s also a deeply classist, racist, and misogynistic view that casts foreign women as manipulative, scheming, and untrustworthy.
This @stcom article sheds no light on these urgent problems faced by migrant spouses, who should not have to live in such precarity. Instead, we get lazy conflations and generalisations that add to the atmosphere of hostility and suspicion against marginalised women. 
