For Burmese migrants living in Singapore, the small grocery shops in the Peninsula Plaza are the place to go for the tastes, sounds and sense of home. Shelves are laden with traditional Burmese staples such as pickled tea-leaf salad, pungent spices, felt-and-leather flip-flops and ladies’ batik sarongs. Those hankering for their military-ruled country’s tightly-controlled pop culture can buy Burmese astrology and celebrity magazines, books, movies, music CDs and – astonishingly – the privately-run but heavily-censored weekly news journals now in vogue in Rangoon.

But while clearly a powerful magnet, the Peninsula Plaza’s Burmese shops are not primarily in the business of fulfilling migrants’ nostalgic longings. Instead, those who flock to the tatty downtown mall each weekend have another important purpose: to transfer a portion of their Singaporean earnings to needy families back home.