Renationalisation of space in everyday life in Singapore

As globalisation becomes more and more familiar in our everyday lives, one readily visible phenomenon is the increasing number of migrants from outside the borders of nation states. This influx of migrants inevitably makes societies more complicated racially and culturally, and a ‘multi-racial’ or ‘multi-cultural’ society is no longer the monopoly of migrant societies such as the United States or Australia. This spread of multi-racial and multi-cultural societies in the world, however, does not mean that we have achieved racial and cultural co-existence (among nationals, and needless to say between host society and migrants) without hierarchies. In the face of a constant flow of migrants, both the host states and host societies need to control migrants, to ensure that migrants will co-exist with the host society as the host society wishes. Hierarchy and difference need to be created and maintained by the host society to control the influx of migrants in their everyday life. This paper explores how Singapore society draws a border between itself and female migrant domestic workers. For this purpose, it examines both everyday discourses of Singaporean employers about female migrant domestic workers and the efforts of the Singapore Muslim Converts’ Association to teach such workers to become ‘good Muslims'.     

The re-aestheticisation of poverty: blogging hunger in the age of austerity

This paper examines the re-aestheticisation of hunger and poverty with the emergence of austerity blogs. These blogs, which chronicle personal narratives while re-directing gaze in creating food through limited budgets and in sharing the intimate brutalities of hunger, bring a renewed focus and interest to poverty through daily lived experiences of hunger. Beyond personalising hunger in a climate of austerity, blogs as a symbol of articulation of the laypeople for the general public become interstitial spaces between government rhetoric and media representations, making poverty an intimate, personal and present proposition. Blogs as peoples’ archives of social history are hybrid spaces of personal iterations amenable to public consumption and media scrutiny. In the process these can re-mediate and disrupt the social reality of first-world hunger, inviting a gaze through first-hand narratives. Poverty becomes a contested entity online where blogs perform both resistance and reiteration of the neo-liberal stereotypes about the unemployed and those on benefits.     

The effects of multilevel governance on the rights of migrant domestic workers in Singapore

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the effects of multilevel governance (MLG) on the rights of migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in Singapore, focusing in particular on the case of Filipino MDWs. The paper argues that in the highly centralised, authoritarian setting of Singapore, there are very few instances of MLG in the field of migrant domestic work. The Singapore state has resisted the diffusion of norms and initiatives regarding labour migration at the international and regional levels into the national level, and the dispersion of authority to non-state actors such as civil society. However, there are a limited number of cases of MLG in this area, such as unilateral initiatives of the Philippines to protect its overseas workers, and an agreement between the Philippine Embassy and an association of employment agencies in Singapore. The paper contends that while these initiatives can provide an ad hoc and limited improvement of the working conditions of Filipino MDWs, they do not contribute to improved rights of all MDWs in Singapore. Instead, they increase the inequalities between the different national groups of MDWs, and they may have the effect of perpetuating Singapore’s existing policies with regard to MDWs.     

族群住房配额制：各民族互嵌式社区建设的新加坡实践与启示

作为一项公共政策,族群住房配额制主要被那些不仅将族群隔离居住视为贫困问题更视为一系列社会问题的国家所采用。新加坡作为少有的公开采用这一政策的国家,有其自身特殊的历史原因,其具体政策内容也主要基于新加坡具体国情而自成特色。尽管其政策效果颇有争议,中国的国情与新加坡也大不相同,但新加坡的实践也启示我国,在各民族互嵌式社区建设过程中,抓住当前城市化进程中大量保障房建设的重要契机,科学合理规划公共住房,以增量改革为策略,秉持多元一体理念,完善相关政策体系,形成政策合力,不失为明智之举。     

Strict versus flexible categorizations of mixedness: classifying mixed race in Singapore and New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Classifying and recording population data along racial and ethnic lines is common in many multiethnic societies. Singapore and New Zealand both use racial and ethnic categories in their population records and national censuses, although on different scales, using different methodologies and to different ends. Mixed race identities are particularly difficult to classify within traditionally singular racial categories, and each country has dealt with this in various ways. This paper explores the effects of different forms of classification on mixed racial and ethnic identities. Narratives from 40 men and women of mixed descent highlight the tangible and intangible impacts of categorization along racial lines, and the ways in which mixedness can be tied with belonging. The contrasting examples of Singapore and New Zealand illustrate the ways in which individuals of mixed heritage navigate both strict and fluid forms of classification, and how stories of identity are closely intertwined with institutional classificatory structures.     

Social structure,relationships and reproduction in quasi-family networks: brokering circular migration of Vietnamese sex workers to Singapore

This article proposes an ethnographic examination of the inner workings of unsanctioned informal networks that facilitate the circular migration and labour of Vietnamese sex workers to Singapore. These operations are coordinated by brokers who sell migration services to their clients. I conceptualise them as ‘quasi-family networks’ because kinship bonds, the fact that brokers (‘mothers’) and sex workers (‘daughters’) operate under the framework of a family ethos which allows them to establish intimate and unequal relationships, and socialising and reproductive processes inscribed in the family form, are defining structural features. The study of these organisational and operational traits allows us to consider a new network model in the field of transnational unsanctioned migration for sex work, and to discuss issues of network structure, adaptability and reproduction in repressive market environments in relation to the family form.     

新加坡推进民族交往交流交融的模式分析

新加坡在建国之初,移民人口众多且民族结构复杂,各民族分块居住且隔阂较深,民族认同与国家认同之间张力明显。但新加坡通过政治、经济、文化、社会等综合措施,有效地协调了各单元民族之间的关系、各单元民族与国家的关系,逐渐探索出推进民族交往交流交融的模式,这一模式具有鲜明的特色,主要表现为：一是政党统领、政府推进;二是存异求同、多元一体;三是明确底线、厉行法治;四是因地制宜、注重实效;五是经济为先、多维并举。对新加坡推进民族交往交流交融的模式进行考察与分析,能够为多民族国家处理民族问题提供借鉴,对新时代加强中华民族共同体建设亦有启发。     

Beyond insiders and outsiders: welfare and immigration reforms in 1960s US

Despite the civil rights dialogue used by the gay community, many ‘gay’ organizations and members of the ‘gay’ community continue to exclude men of color from leadership positions and ‘gay’ establishments, thus continuing to add to the notion that ‘gay’ equals ‘white’. Likewise, gay men of color experience homophobia within their racial and ethnic communities. In this paper, I discuss both the subtle and the blatant forms of racial exclusion practised in the ‘gay’ community as well as the homophobia found in racial and ethnic communities to examine how such practices affect gay men of color, particularly their self-esteem and their emotional well-being.     

创新是四川藏区扶贫开发的新选择

在我国进入全面建设小康社会的新形势下,四川藏区如何持续推进扶贫开发工作,乃是当前四川省经济社会发展进程中急需研究和解决的一个重大问题。首先阐述四川藏区的地位及扶贫开发的历程,然后分析四川藏区扶贫开发工作的现状,并明确新阶段扶贫开发工作的模式选择,最后提出新阶段四川藏区扶贫开发工作应采取的对策措施。     

Negotiating postcolonial Eurasian identities and national belonging in global-city Singapore

ABSTRACT

A racial classification regime, partly derived from colonial race categories that solidified during the British Empire, remains a key governance strategy in postcolonial Singapore, sorting citizens into the categories of Chinese, Malay, Indian or Other (CMIO). This racial grid continues to be a simplification of the actual complexity of lived identities and experiences, particularly for people of mixed descent. In this context, we explore the contemporary meanings and resonances of racial identity and national belonging as negotiated among members of a historic mixed-descent community – the Eurasians – in the context of a nation-state built on an institutionally fixed racial template. As a community, Eurasians are commonly attributed to the presence and mixing of especially Dutch, Portuguese and British – but also other Europeans – with an equally variegated palette of Asian cultures, since the 16th century. Based on 30 biographical interviews with self- identified Eurasians of two generations, this paper examines how individual and collective narratives of ‘old’ hybrid identities are changing in relation to the emergence of potentially new hierarchies of racial belonging with the arrival of new migration and the rise of international marriage in globalizing times. Given the lived reality of an expanding range of ‘race’ identities of different permutations and combinations, the politics of choice is played out between countervailing forces which draw racialized boundaries around the community more tightly on the one hand, and liberalize claims to racial and national belonging on the basis of self-identification on the other.     

精准扶贫视角下西藏普及国家通用语言文字存在的问题及对策研究

2018年以来,随着《推普脱贫攻坚行动计划(2018—2020)》的发布,“语言扶贫”逐渐被学界关注,“扶贫先扶智,扶智先通语”成为共识。通过“语言扶贫”,可以最大限度地让普通话与规范汉字在精准扶贫工作中发挥“语言红利”。因此,应该提升农村与少数民族地区普通话普及率,规范汉字使用水平。依据语言调查结果,结合个案研究数据,对西藏国家通用语言文字的使用现状、存在问题进行了描述与分析。从西藏的特殊区情与语言使用情况出发,提出了在西藏普及国家通用语言文字策略,为西藏地区普及国家通用语言文字、提升文化教育素质、推进现实经济发展与文化脱贫提供了有效的建议。     

An exploration of teacher attrition and mobility in high poverty racially segregated schools

The purpose of this study was to examine the mobility (movement to a new school) and attrition (quitting teaching) patterns of teachers in high poverty, racially segregated (HPRS) schools in the US. Using 2007–9 survey data from the National Center for Education Statistics, a multi-level multinomial logistic regression was performed to examine the contribution of teacher characteristics, school setting characteristics, and school climate with a focus on interactions between school climate variables. The findings demonstrated that school climate variables predicted increased odds of mobility and that teacher characteristics, school setting, and teachers’ perceptions of school climate predicted increased odds of teacher attrition. These findings suggest that teacher attrition and mobility from HPRS schools could be slowed by strategic placement of teachers based on their beliefs about students in poverty and students of color.     

Towards a theorisation of diversity. Configurations of person-related differences in the context of youth welfare practices

ABSTRACT

The article proposes a pathway towards a theorisation of diversity. It is argued that diversity can be understood as referring to the complex outcomes of multifaceted processes in which various schemes of classifications are applied to persons and segments of populations. A growing interest in individuals and their qualities, combined with the development of information technologies, has stimulated a proliferation of person-related categories. Diversity offers an analytical lens for studying the relational qualities of various person-related differences, the interaction between categories of different scale and scope and their situational organisation. Thereby, it goes beyond notions of identity, on the one hand, and intersectionality, on the other. In the second part of the article, the outlined framework is applied to the cases of youth welfare practice in Stuttgart and Frankfurt. The focus of the case analysis is migration-related categories and how they relate to larger configurations of person-related differences in the field of youth welfare practice. It is argued that a diversity perspective, as suggested here, allows us to capture an element of opaqueness and ambiguity concerning migration-related differentiations that has implications for the understanding of ongoing debates about discrimination and racialisation.     

Constructions of identity,belonging and exclusion in the democratic welfare state

This article investigates the conflict between a shared national identity and immigration, posed by liberal, instrumental nationalists. They worry that immigration will undermine a shared national identity that is needed to generate trust and solidarity within the democratic welfare state. The article consists of a qualitative study of Swedish and British respondents. The main conclusion is that people experience and interpret their shared identity, ideas of belonging and exclusion in the democratic welfare state differently, with different consequences for the proposed conflict. When identity and belonging was tied to contributions or to institutions, rather than a nation, the conflict between a shared identity and immigration was cushioned.     

构建民族地区新型农村社会福利制度的思考

农村社会福利制度是社会保障制度中的最高层次,保障着农村居民的生活水平和生活质量随着生产力水平的提高而同步提高。本文通过对湖南省少数民族地区农村社会福利制度建设状况的调研,分析了少数民族地区农村社会福利制度建设存在的主要问题,提出了构建湖南省少数民族地区新型农村社会福利制度的思路。     

Constructing nation: national narratives of history teachers in Ukraine

This paper scrutinizes history narratives as a practice of a specific kind of nation-building and analyzes the role of history teachers in this process. Based on 60 semi-structural interviews with history teachers in Ukraine, this paper analyzes three major national narratives used by history teachers to produce specific meaning of social identity among school pupils. This paper shows how history teachers reproduce national identity in their classrooms by altering the teaching program and textbook narratives and by promoting their vision of a nation, rights of specific groups to participate in nation-building process and defining enemies and allies.     

小额信贷在西藏的实践评析

文章以通过长期演化而在世界范围内获得普遍认可的小额信贷典型机制和相应理论为规范,以实际调研获取的数据资料为佐证,力图规范分析和经验实证中国农业银行西藏自治区分行和西藏扶贫基金会在西藏农牧区开展小额信贷近10年所取得的成效.研究发现,在覆盖率和扶贫方面取得良好成效的同时,由于机构自身的性质和西藏农牧区经济的显著差异性,农行西藏分行和西藏扶贫基金会的小额信贷分别存在定位模糊、激励不足和拓展困难等问题.据此作者提出明确农行西藏分行的商业化定位,鼓励邮政银行西藏分行开展小额信贷以促进竞争和培育政策性小额信贷机构的政策建议.     

Debt,precarity and gender: male and female temporary labour migrants in Singapore

As one of Asia’s key hubs for transient workers, Singapore’s migration regime creates particularly gendered streams of labour, especially among lower skilled occupations, as is apparent in two key sectors – domestic work and construction work. Drawing on surveys with Bangladeshi construction workers and Indonesian domestic workers based in Singapore, as well as in-depth interviews with each group, this paper examines gendered issues of temporary labour migration, precarity and risk, as they occur against a backdrop of migrant indebtedness. In this paper, we argue that migrant indebtedness occurs along a spectrum that ranges from less visible, or what we call ‘silently’ incurred forms of debt, through to more ‘resonant’ types of debt that are acquired upfront and thus more readily quantifiable. Using this spectrum of migrant indebtedness, we aim to complicate debates about debt-financed migration by underscoring the ways in which notions of debt and unfreedom can be imbricated with both constraints and opportunities for migrants’ agency.     

On the threshold: becoming Romanian Roma,everyday racism and residency rights in transition

ABSTRACT

This article examines the reaction of welfare state actors and ‘Romanian Roma’ migrants to the political environment on migration in the UK. Based on the ethnographic fieldwork between January 2013 and March 2014, the article focuses on how processes of everyday racism infused understandings of the legal framework for European migrants’ residency rights. The article first explores how state actors developed ideas about ‘Romanian Roma families’ as opposed to ‘Romanian-not-Roma families’ in a context marked by pervasive uncertainty about legal entitlements, welfare restructuring and decreasing resources. Second, I draw on new migrants’ accounts to identify their perceptions and understandings of discrimination placed within their previous experiences of racism and state violence. The article argues that processes of racialisation are subtly enfolded into everyday life shaping the narratives through which both welfare state actors and new migrants understand their situated experiences and future plans. The article reveals the small and mundane practices that reproduce racialised hierarchies which maintain the notion of ‘Roma’ as a group with particular proclivities and the affects for their socio-legal status as European migrants in the UK.     

构建和谐民族地区的社会保障制度建设探讨

民族地区现行社会保障制度尚不健全、覆盖面小、整体水平低、管理不规范、立法滞后,与全面建设小康社会、构建社会主义和谐社会和建设社会主义新农村的需求不相适应。构建和谐民族地区的社会保障制度,则应坚持以科学发展观为指导,坚持从各族群众迫切需要解决的领域建立健全社会保障制度,统筹社保体系完善与资本市场培育,构建社会统筹与个人账户相对独立的新型关系,建立健全社会保障基金保值增值长效机制,坚持农村与城市社会保障制度统筹建设、协调推进,进一步重视提高社会保障制度的运行效率,积极推进社会保障制度和措施的法制化。