UNFREE; INDENTURED; INFLUENCER

Abstract

Academic scholars from various disciplines have critiqued the nature of migration regimes in which foreign domestic workers (FDW) are hired, drawing from the fields of social, health, and economic justice. We focus on FDWs in Singapore, where these conditions are enforced and rationalized through laws and government-owned-media that entrench socially constructed divisions. This paper considers how the reality of “influencers” who are "unfree" challenges social media studies’ assumptions about what, and who, is a "content creator." The paper offers a walkthrough of the TikTok advertising interface, in order to understand how FDWs adapt to the platform’s environment of expected use (Light et al, 2018). How do TikTok’s platform norms guide and pressure users to adapt to its advertising goals? How do unfree subaltern users adapt to these limits? How, amidst multiple layers of restriction, do FDW influencers use the platform for building self-authored stories of social status and heightened visibility?