Project

Singapore Runaways

Hidden behind a shelter in Singapore are hundreds of distressed migrant workers of different nationalities waiting for their cases to be heard and hoping to move on. These people are victims of human labor trafficking, child labor, and emotional, psychological and physical abuses.

Women are most vulnerable to these types of abuses, but even male migrant workers are subject to exploitation. Migrant workers from China, Bangladesh, India and other Asian countries go to Singapore to work as construction workers with little protection from local labor laws.

In this project, photojournalist Xyza Bacani documents the lives of migrant workers in Singapore who left their home countries to seek a better economic future for their families but ended up being exploited.

'Invisible' Domestic Workers In Singapore

Migrant workers are invisible people,We are like air. People need us but they don’t see us. We exist to please them, to serve them, but they don’t really see us as part of the society.

Meet the Journalist: Xyza Bacani

Xyza Bacani discusses her story on migrant workers who run away from their employers in Singapore and the power imbalance between agencies, employers and migrants that encourages exploitation.