ARI Working Paper Series

Following a brief background on Singapore’s development from a product of overlapping diasporas to a multiracial nation, this paper gives attention to the dynamics of renewed streams of transnational labour flows in the current decade and its impact on notions of “race,” as inflected by nationality. As Singapore joins in the global competition for transnational talent and at the same time becomes more dependent on unskilled migrant workers to perform 3D work in the city-state, it is inevitable that ethnic relations among groups and individuals in Singapore will become more complex.

The paper examines the dualistic nature of Singapore’s foreign labour policies and how the transience/permanence divide is predicated on ‘skill’. It argues for the need to think in less racialised categories and to build multiple bridges criss-crossing ‘race’ and ‘nationality’. Even as more attempts need to be made to socialise “new immigrants” into Singapore’s multicultural society, it would be important to bear in mind that fluidity is and will increasingly be the quintessential experience of the twenty-first century. Permanent settlement in a host country marked by a change of citizenship is becoming less common; more pervasive now are different forms of attachment to and identification with the host country which allow room for subscribing to different identifications. ‘Race’ as a fixed and immutable category which overrides all other categories is not useful in successfully navigating in a globalising world.

Full text is not available, this working paper is withdrawn, as it has now been published as ‘Yeoh, B.S.A, Bifurcated Labour: The Unequal Incorporation of Transmigrants in Singapore.  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie (Journal of Economic and Social Geography), 97, no. 1 (2006): 26-37.