Wednesday, October 15
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The Hidden Labour: How Singapore’s Households Outsource Care in the Age of Capital

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When we speak of professional deep cleaning services Singapore, we speak not merely of immaculate surfaces or sanitised spaces, but of a complex architecture of labour that reveals the profound contradictions of contemporary urban life. Singapore's cleaning industry consists of 1,200 companies employing approximately 58,000 cleaners, yet behind these figures lies an entire economy of care that has been systematically outsourced, commodified, and rendered invisible to those who benefit from its execution. The Economics of Domestic Exhaustion The rise of comprehensive cleaning services in Singapore cannot be divorced from the broader pressures of late capitalism, where workers in the cleaning industry labour an average of 44-45 hours per week, whilst the households they serve navi...