This paper describes foreign domestic workers' (FDWs) vulnerability in Singapore. Due to the lack of regulatory laws mandating employers to pay health care costs and FDW ineligibility for national plans given their transient contract labor status, FDWs depend on employer generosity to provide for this need. Presently, the state's interest only includes particular aspects of FDW “health.” The argument here is that the discourse of perceiving FDWs as sexual ‘bodies' and transmitters of other infectious diseases is a metaphor for how the state perceives them — useful to Singapore for economic gains as long as they do not bring on costs.
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