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We are a group of 5 Secondary 3 girls from Nanyang Girls' High School and for our Community Education project, we decided to work on the topic of migrant workers. The reason for our choice is because migrant workers are an essential part of Singapore. They contribute to Singapore economically, playing a particularly significant role in the industry and construction sectors. Without these migrant workers, Singapore would suffer from the severe problem of a shrinking workforce, which would in turn affect the economy. Unfortunately, despite their great contributions, we often hear of migrant workers being treated unfairly, facing low wages and poor working conditions. Hence, we chose to focus on them as our topic.
In order to learn more about migrant workers, we approached Migrant Workers Centre (MWC), who agreed to work with us. After a brief training session to give us some basic background knowledge of the Employment Act for migrant workers, we got to experience picking up phone calls directed to the MWC helpline and helping to answer some of the queries that migrant workers have. Afterwards, we interviewed some migrant workers off the streets about their lives in Singapore. With the help of MWC, we managed to gain a more in-depth understanding of the migrant workers at the end of the project.
Generally in Singapore, people tend to have certain stereotypes of the migrant workers. Some common misconceptions are that migrant workers are loud and unruly and they often commit crimes. However, after interacting with them, we felt that they are actually just like all of us, working hard here so that they are able to provide for their families back home. Most of them are also quite friendly and actually enjoyed talking to the locals. Perhaps it was because of the difference in our races and nationalities that we had these misconceptions about migrant workers, or maybe it was the lack of understanding we had of them. Either way, since we do not normally interact with migrant workers, our thinking were shaped mostly by what we hear from those around us, with nobody to correct the false beliefs. However, after spending some time interacting with them, the fact that our races and nationalities are different melted away and we were able to treat them just like one of us.
One of the challenges that we faced when interacting with the migrant workers is that we did not really know how to approach them and start the interview because what we had in mind was just to ask the questions that we had already prepared beforehand and get the answers. But we learnt that we should not treat the migrant workers as just the subjects of our interview and the answers to our questions. Instead of simply approaching them and questioning them one by one, we can strike a conversation with them as we would with our friends or family members, perhaps by talking about something we share in common or something that we find interesting. This will make them feel at ease and they will be more willing to share their experiences with us as well.
Migrant workers are vital to our society, contributing to our nation by taking up jobs that Singaporeans are not willing to do. Most people know that their jobs are tougher than the average Singaporean and that it is not easy for them to be working in a foreign land and facing various problems, but we are still not able to treat them like how we would with our peers. And since there has always been minimal interaction between locals and migrant workers, they have not been able to integrate into our society. Thus, to make them feel welcome and better integrate into our society, we can take the initiative by having casual conversations with them or even just by giving them a smile whenever we see them on the streets.
Remember, a smile is a universal welcome, so don't be stingy to give them a smile! 
Hu Biying, Wen Haiyan, Zhang Kexuan, Lim Si Min & See Jia Hui, Jessica
Nanyang Girls’ High School
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