Acculturation of Migrants in Work
Sector: Identifying the Facilitative
Role of Mobile Phones
- An Outline of Ongoing Research Rajiv G. Aricat & Dr. Arul Chib
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Contents
• Overview of migration, acculturation & lowend mobile phones.
• Research questions
• Methodology
• A discussion on data collected so far
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Migration
• Low-skilled migrant workers often remain a
transient workforce in the host country.
• Data from UN: the number of international
migrants in Asia by mid-2010 is 61,323, 979,
an increase of more than 6 million migrants
from the same period in 2005.
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Migration in Singapore
• UNDESA (2010): Migrants constitute 40.7% of the total
Singapore population of 4,737,000. Male migrants from South
Asia: 30% of total migrants. Differentiate between foreign
talent and foreign workers; the latter’s status is “perpetually
temporary” (Thompson 2009).
• Unskilled workers are employed in the 3D (dirty, dangerous
and difficult) jobs.
• 53,000 foreigners were added to Singapore’s workforce last
year.
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Acculturation
• Overcoming migration stress and
integrating/assimilating with the host culture
remain essential prerequisites for success.
• Studies on acculturation have become bidirectional in recent years, i.e. just as migrant
groups show different acculturation
orientations, dominant host society also has
its own acculturation strategies.
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The typology
Keep one’s cultural identity?
Relate to other cultures?
Multiculturalism
Melting Pot
Integration
Assimilation
(+, +)
(-, +)
(+,+)
(-,+)
Marginalization
Separation
(+, -)
(-, -)
Segregation
Exclusion
(+,-)
(-, -)
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Acculturation in work sector
• Differences in work ethos of home culture and host
culture (say, India & Singapore)
• Multicultural thinking becomes essential in
Singapore’s organizational context.
• Work commitment is decided by overall well-being
of a worker in host society. Opposite is also true.
• Can communication technologies mitigate the
tension between the learned (home) culture and
the to-be-acquired (host) culture?
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Low-end mobile phones
Low-end mobile phones & services help the
“information have-less” (Castels & Qiu) at the
‘bottom of the pyramid’ keep themselves
abreast with the changing information
structures of developing societies. e.g. ‘Little
Smart’ in China, Wireless Local Loop in India,
pre-paid packages, shared phones, internet
cafes, etc.
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“You choose the country to call to, I
give you the cheapest calling card”
A view from the vicinity of
a worker’s camp in Soon
Lee Rd., Jurong West,
Singapore.
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(A) Place to “call” home?
Invoking emotions
related to home: A
hindrance to
acculturation?
Research Questions
• Is a worker’s overall comfort level in the host
society decided in some measure by the
amount of time s/he spends talking to the
members of his own ethnic community?
Variables: ‘Duration of calls to members in home
culture’ and ‘overall comfort level’.
H1: As the amount of time a migrant worker interacts with the
members of his own ethnic community increases, his overall
comfort level in the new culture decreases.
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Research Questions
• Does the amount of time spent by a migrant worker
talking to the members of his own ethnic community
(family members, friends in home country and
friends from same ethnic community in host
country), have an effect on the worker’s level of
multicultural thinking in the organizational context?
Variables: multicultural thinking in an organizational
context, duration of calls bonding the worker with
home culture.
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Research Questions
H2: As the amount of time a migrant worker interacts with the
members of her own ethnic community increases, her
multicultural thinking in organization decreases.
H3: As the duration of calls bonding a worker with home culture
increases, his work commitment and job satisfaction
decreases, keeping multicultural thinking constant. Similarly,
as the multicultural thinking of a worker increases, his
organizational commitment also increases, when the duration
of calls to members from home culture remains constant.
Sample
Indian workers with either a “work permit” or
an “employment pass”; who work in
construction, manufacturing, oil refinery, etc.
From different states of India, speaking
different languages, with diverse rural-urban
orientation.
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Methods
• Mixed methods: qualitative & quantitative
• In-depth interviews conducted among 10
Indian migrant workers.
• Quantitative data collected from 42 Indian
workers, using a revised version of Mutual
Intercultural Relations In Plural Societies
(MIRIPS) questionnaire (Berry, 2002)
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Sample questions from Questionnaire
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While staying in Singapore, how comfortable are you with the following:
Dealing with people in authority.
Obeying traffic rules as a pedestrian.
Obeying rules in public transport while travelling.
To get along with the overall order and discipline in Singapore.
Status given to workers in Singapore.
I prefer social activities which involve Rajasthani/Punjabi/Gujarathi/UPBihar members only.
I prefer social activities which involve Indians only.
I think I have become a part of Singaporean society.
I will be happy to adopt Singaporean culture.
I am willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond that normally expected
in order to help my organization be successful.
I talk up my organization to my friends as a great organization to work for.
I feel very little loyalty to this organization.
I would accept almost any type of job assignment in order to keep working
for this organization.
I find that my values and the organization’s values are very similar, Etc.
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How comfortable are you with antilittering law?
A view from the
vicinity of
worker’s
dormitory in
Penjuru.
Qualitative results
Hari
Income: Between SGD
500 & 1000 per month
Money spent on
mobile cards: SGD
25/month
No. of dependents in
Kerala, India: 4
Sunilkumar (uses
internet on mobile)
Income: Between SGD
500 & 1000 per month
Money spent on
mobile cards: SGD
25/month
No. of dependents in
Kerala (India): 2
Job: Insulation in
Petrol Plants in various
Islands
Job: Insulation
Qualification: Higher
secondary school
Qualification: Higher
secondary school
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Qualitative results
• Integration appears to be the widely adopted
acculturation strategy among workers.
• Service providers lure the workers with ‘nostalgia’
appeals with promotional SMS-s like, “Listen to
your favorite Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam,
Hindi & English songs on your mobile phone
from as low as $ 1/month. Dial *xxxxx”
• Attempts by workers to use mobile phones in a
goal-oriented manner to improve their
acculturation strategy is absent across the board.
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How do you use mobile phones at
work?
• “When we run out of material stock at work site, we call up the
store keeper and ask for the load, which saves us a trip to the store
– a time saving of half-an-hour.” (Sunil)
• “We leave our camps early in the morning. We wake up at 5 in the
morning and we normally check whether our fellow passengers,
who stay in the other side of the dormitory, have also waken up.”
(Sunil, after prompting by the researcher.)
• “When we go for work in some remote islands, sometimes we find
ourselves caught up at the punching gate, when the machine fails to
register our number. We immediately call our supervisor on phone
and get the problem sorted out. “ (Hari)
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Quantitative Result
1. Regressing logMulticultural_Thinking on
Duration_of_bonding_calls.
N=42
Constant: .877 (p<.001)
Slope coefficient: .150; t = 2.666; p=.012
Results show that there is no significant relation between the
duration of calls strengthening bonding with home culture
and a worker’s multicultural thinking in organization. Hence,
hypothesis 2 is rejected. Even though the results are not
significant in a statistical sense, we may note the direction of
the regression slope.
Quantitative Result
2. Regressing Overall_Comfort on
Duration_of_bonding_calls.
N=42
Constant: 3.158 (p<.001)
Slope coefficient: -0.086; t = -.456; p>.05
Results show that there is no significant relationship
between the duration of a worker’s call that
strengthen bonding with home and the worker’s
overall comfort level in the home culture. Hypothesis
1 is rejected.
Quantitative Result
3. Regressing Organizational_Commitment on
Duration_of_bonding_calls & Multicultural_Thinking
N=42
Constant: .660 (p<.001)
Multicultural coefficient: .117; t = 2.639; p=.014
Bonding_Call coefficient: .041; t=.791; p>.05
R-square: .262
Results show that neither multicultural thinking nor the calls to
home culture has a significant effect on a worker’s
organizational commitment. Hence, hypothesis 3 is rejected.
In the case of multicultural thinking and organizational
commitment, the relationship is very close to statistical
significance, and is indeed very significant in a practical sense.
Limitations
• Illiterates are not sampled; nevertheless, mobile
phones are widely used by them. How they use it to
acculturate is yet to be explored.
• R-square of the model that included multicultural
thinking and calls to home culture is .262. Other
factors that determine work commitment have a
major role to play.
• Diversity of cultures in South Asia and the diversity in
the languages in these regions pose a challenge in
creating standardized questionnaires.
Thanks
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