“Temporary Couples” among Chinese Migrant Workers in Singapore

The article examines temporary extramarital cohabitation arrangements between low-wage Chinese female migrants and their male counterparts in Singapore, a phenomenon which is widely referred to by the migrants as becoming a “temporary couple” or “teaming up to have a life.” In the simulated households, the men usually shoulder most of the daily expenses for both members, while the women are expected to take care of the men’s intimate needs and most of the housework. The vast majority of the women involved in such arrangements are married and migrated for work on their own. This article, based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2019, explores how these women perform and understand such temporary intimacies. I first demonstrate that the women enter the relationships as a reaction to the institutional setup that places them in a suspended status, in which they are treated as nothing more than temporary labourers. I then illustrate how the women put the relationship in a state of suspension: they instrumentalize it as a means to maximize savings, and mark it out as a short-term exception that will end abruptly once they leave Singapore. The structurally imposed and self-inflicted conditions of suspension limit the women’s agency to an ambiguous private domain that is away from both work and home. Drawing on my long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this article deploys the notion of suspension as a guiding concept to unravel the tensions and moral anxieties that the women experience with their temporary intimacies.

新加坡的中国移民工人中的“临时夫妻”

关键词：跨国流动, 劳工, 婚外同居, 性别化能动性, 分野。

本文考察了在新加坡的中国低薪女性外来务工者和她们的男性伙伴之间临时性的婚外同居关系，即流动务工者常说的做“临时夫妻”或者“搭伙过日子”。在这些模拟的家庭中，男性通常负担两人大部分的日常生活中开支，而女性则要满足男性的亲密关系的需要并承担大部分家务劳动。这些关系中绝大多数女性已婚，是自己出国务工的。本论文基于2016到2019年之间进行的民族志的田野调查，探索了女性是如何表演和理解这种临时性的亲密关系的。我首先表明女性进入这种关系是对将他们置于悬浮身份的制度性安排的一种反应，因为她们完全只是被当作临时劳工对待。随后我展示这些女性如何将这些关系也置于一种悬浮状态：她们利用这种关系作为自己积蓄最大化的手段，并认定它只是短期的例外，一旦离开新加坡就会断然了结。 本论文采用悬浮的概念，超越了将这种做法视作对具有说服力的主导性意识形态化的权力的抵抗那种解释，而是展示出女性的创业性手段如何进一步固化了现存的性别不平等。结构性原因造成以及自我制造的悬浮处境将女性的能动性局限于一个远离工作和家庭的含糊的私人领域。

Translated from English by Li Guo