Bursting the bubble: spatialising safety for privileged migrant women in Singapore

Abstract

This paper develops geographical work that is attentive to, and critical of, how safety is lived and narrated. In contrast to previous work on safety that focuses on fear, the paper looks at safety as something more than aspiration for women. To do so, the paper utilises the metaphor of the ‘expatriate bubble’ to explore how safety is constructed and experienced by privileged migrants within Singapore. Utilising research from two projects, we argue that we need to think about how gender and Othering intersect to construct safety. In doing so, we think about how we can use conceptualisations of privileged migrants to research how safety can be understood and therefore practised more widely.