Assimilation as multiracialism: The case of Singapore's Malays

The myths of meritocracy and multiracialism ‘explain’ between them both the ‘fairness’ of the Singapore system and the subordinate role of the non-Chinese minority races. They also purport to assure the minorities that they enjoy full status as members of the nation-building project and that their cultural and religious mores are embraced and protected within its framework. Using the Malay minority as its case study, and arguing from archival, oral, official government and secondary sources, this paper argues that the Singapore systems of meritocracy and multiracialism have not been concerned primarily with intercommunal tolerance since the 1970s, but are now programmes of assimilation of the racial minorities into a Chinese-dominated society.     

If you look like me,I'll talk to you: a preliminary study of ethnic identity and inter‐ethnic interaction among women in Singapore

In Singapore, government policy is for equal but separate development of the four major ethnic groups—Chinese, Malay, Indian and other. In this study, I attempt to gain some preliminary views of how strongly women identify with their own ethnic group and how freely they are prepared to interact with people from other ethnic groups in non‐work‐related situations. I confine my study to females for two reasons. One is that traditional ethnic dress is common among females in Singapore but much rarer among men, and this makes a strong non‐verbal statement of identity. The second reason is to avoid differences between males and females, which I did not wish to pursue within the limits of this exploratory study. The findings of my pilot investigation indicate that intra‐ethnic spontaneous interaction is more likely to occur among women who display a strong national identity. Moreover, younger women, who were exposed during their school years to the government's recent drive to nurture ethnic and cultural differences, are less open to inter‐ethnic interaction than are women in their 30s and older, who grew up when the government drive was towards creating one common national identity for the people of Singapore.     

Pension policy in China, Singapore, and South Korea: An assessment of the potential value of the notional defined contribution model

The rate of population aging is increasing in the developing world and the trend is particularly dramatic in East Asia. One consequence is sharp increases in old-age dependency ratios which have major implications for the sustainability of current public pension schemes. These trends are pushing pension policy experts in many of these countries to search for new pension models that are more suited to the increased demographic pressures they will be facing in the decades ahead. In this article we discuss five alternative public pension models with a focus on the newest of these models, the notional defined contribution (NDC) approach. We consider three countries with very different pension systems in place, two from East Asia (China and South Korea) and one from South East Asia (Singapore). The central question we address is which (if any) of the limitations in these existing models might more adequately be addressed using a variant of the NDC model. We conclude that the NDC model has the most to offer China and the least to offer Singapore.     

Singlish or Globish: Multiple language ideologies and global identities among Korean educational migrants in Singapore1

South Korean early study abroad students and their parents in Singapore negotiate and redefine the values of Mandarin, English, and Singlish used in Singapore in an attempt to forge their own transnational identities. In this process, these Korean migrants tend to place more emphasis on metapragmatic discourses; that is, how to speak the languages appropriately. They then use such metapragmatic evaluations to justify their use of the local varieties and practices of language in Singapore. Their discourses are based on two language ideologies –pragmatism and sociolinguistic competence – which are examined here as alternative forms of language legitimacy that coexist with the dominant notion of legitimate language. These multiple language ideologies provide the basis for Korean migrants’ emerging notions of the ‘Asian global,’ a desirable transnational subject who is more practical and sociocentric than the conventional image of high‐ranking elites, with greater adaptability to various local situations. ????? ?? ????? ???? ??? ????, ???? ??? ???? ???? ????, ??, ???, ????? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ???. ??? ??? ?? ????, ??? ???? ????? ??? ?????? ??, ? ?? ??? ??? ? ??? ???, ??? ??? ????? ???? ?????? ?? ?? ????, ??? ??? ??? ???? ??? ???? ??? ????? ? ????? ????? ?? ??? ??. ??? ??? ????? ??? ????? ????? ??? ???? ? ?? ???????? ?? ????, ??? ??? ???????? ?? ???? ???????? ???? ??. ??, ??????? ??? ?? ?? ???????? ??? ??? ???? ‘???? ???’? ??, ? ??? ??????? ?? ???? ?? ???? ????? ??, ?? ??????? ???????, ??? ??? ???? ???? ? ??? ? ?? ???? ???? ??? ??? ????. [Korean]     

Comparison of leadership styles in Confucian Asian countries

The purpose of this study was to examine the overall impact of four leadership styles (charismatic, directive, participative, and supportive) in four Confucian Asian countries, China, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, by reviewing recent studies conducted in those countries. By reviewing 38 studies selected from 430 studies published between 2005 and 2016, we identify the impact of the four leadership styles in the four Asian countries. We start with the research question and purpose, and then propose criteria for selecting the relevant recent studies followed by a review of cultural heritage and its influence on leadership in the four Asian countries. We summarize and review the studies and, finally, discuss the theoretical and practical contributions of this study.     

Reconfigured Everyday Lives of Children from Divorced-Parent Families in Singapore

With the termination of a marriage, children involved inevitably experience dramatic changes in different facets of their lives. This article makes use of narrative accounts of divorced single parents to investigate how their marital dissolution has impacted and changed their children's lives. Empirical data was collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 25 Singaporean divorced parents. Within the policy and social context of Singapore society, I highlight transformations in three specific aspects of the children's lives: one, the reconfigurations of familial relationships and formation of a new family unit; two, the creation of and adaptation to new family practices and routine; three, the adoption of new social identity following parental divorce. This article hopes to present a more nuanced understanding of the divorce experience by emphasizing both the precarious and productive aspects in the children's lives, contra to the existing divorce literature that typically focuses on the former.     

Constructing poverty in anti-welfare Singapore

In recent years, attention on the issue of poverty in Singapore has been increasingly placed in the spotlight. This study examines the various types of attitudes among Singaporeans and how they are formed, relating them to the broader institutional context of Singapore. A mixed method design is employed where clusters or groups of attitudes are derived through the use of cluster analysis. Subsequently, discourses of poverty and welfare attitudes are construed through qualitative interviews with the aid of Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. Quantitative findings point to three clusters of attitudes: ‘Conservatives’, ‘Liberals’, and ‘Sui Generis’. Qualitative findings, however, show that ‘Sui Generis’ ultimately align themselves closer to either ‘Conservatives’ or ‘Liberals’ in their discourses of welfare. In fact, respondents in all three clusters reproduce state discourses, albeit in varying ways. In essence, this study explicates poverty and welfare attitudes as a product of social identities premised on subjective notions that are shaped by state discourses of meritocracy, self-reliance and anti-welfarism. It is thus argued that current socio-political constructions of poverty ensue a paucity of major welfare reform in the near future of Singapore.     

Death of a child: Perspective of Chinese mothers in Singapore

The grief of Chinese mothers is examined in a phenomenological exploratory study. Grieving for the deceased child is moderated by diverse Chinese religious beliefs intertwined with cultural practices. Five aspects of grieving include giving meaning to the child’s life and death, quality and assurance of the afterlife, the function of crying, and a continuing bond. Extrapolating from the mothers’ grieving are questions related to the implications of children’s death for other family members and the significance of the interconnectedness of the self, others, the environment and the universe in processing a crisis through religion and spirituality in multicultural social work.     

Becoming cosmopolitan: encountering difference in a city of mobile labour

ABSTRACT

Many who move countries today do so for work, and labour mobility – both temporary and permanent – is the mechanism by which countless people (both movers and stayers) come into contact with cultural difference. The domain of mobile labour is thus an important context through which to consider the transformative possibilities of encounters with racial and cultural difference. Situated within debates on everyday multi-culture and vernacular cosmopolitanisms, this essay considers the question of intercultural encounter at work in relation to the layered histories of race and variegated citizenships of mobile labour in Singapore. Exploring the micro-nature of cosmopolitan practices, the paper considers under what labour conditions might an outward-looking cosmopolitan sensibility and a convivial openness to otherness emerge among migrant workers, as against a set of survival-based intercultural capacities. I reflect specifically upon two cases of ‘incongruous encounter’ in workplaces reliant on precariously employed migrant labour: a mainland Chinese man and a Filipina woman who, because of Singapore’s racialised system of work visas, find themselves working in South Asian restaurants in Singapore’s Little India. They both engage ‘cosmopolitan practices’, yet their sensibilities differ sharply. Their stories highlight how, in a place like Singapore, the ‘encounter’ needs to be understood within a regime of mobile labour, situated racial hierarchies, and a highly stratified system of work visas. I further suggest that situational factors such as the nature of work including its spatial and temporal qualities, the mixture of co-workers, and recognition relations with superiors all mattered in framing the affective atmospheres of encounter. In a context of forced encounter, I argue that learnt capacities to function and interact across difference should not necessarily be romanticised as a cosmopolitan sensibility.     

Social Policy in Singapore: Insights from a Social Work Perspective

Social work practice, irrespective of the location of practice, is shaped by local conditions, particularly the laws and policies applicable to the practice. Most governments adopt some form of institutional arrangements pertinent to local conditions to meet local needs, such arrangements in Western contexts commonly being described as the welfare state. In other contexts, notably the East Asian context, the Western welfare state has been deemed inappropriate for meeting local needs. In this discussion there will be a focus on arrangements developed in Singapore, a country in the East Asian region. Although Singapore has eschewed any notion of a welfare state, this discussion will demonstrate that it does have in place a range of policy responses to meet Singaporean needs and that these measures are consistent with the frameworks adopted by emerging Confucian welfare states.