Encountering migrant-driven diversity: producing difference in Singapore

Ye, Junjia (2022) Encountering migrant-driven diversity: producing difference in Singapore. Southeast Asia Working Paper Series (1). Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, LSE, London, UK.

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Abstract

Migrant arrival cities, many of which are located outside of European and North American contexts, are experiencing urban growth because of migrants coming from an ever heterogeneous array of backgrounds. The management of migrants at both the level of the state and the everyday is also changing as a response to these shifts. How difference has been conceived, regulated and experienced through encounters in everyday spaces of these arrival cities has been well-documented (Amin, 2012; Watson, 2009; Wilson, 2011). Building upon this body of work, this paper examines the co-production of urban space through managerial practices by the state and the diverse users of the space. I analyse how migrant-driven diversity is produced through pastoral discourses of care and control. Drawing upon qualitative data conducted before regulations at City Plaza, in a neighbourhood in the east side of Singapore, I locate the sites of co-production at the level of policy regulation and at the levels of everyday surveillance in shared spaces where branches of the state such as surveillance technologies, explicit rules on signboards, auxiliary police officers and different groups of new arrivals (i.e. “new migrants”) encounter one another regularly on weekends. I demonstrate that this production of difference from various stakeholders reinforces boundaries of civility through encounters, re-producing the desirable/non-desirable migrant. The arrival city is therefore marked by these diffuse generative forces that both subvert and reinforce dominant modes of belonging.

Item Type:	Monograph (Working Paper)
Official URL:	https://www.lse.ac.uk/seac/research/SEAC-Working-P...
Additional Information:	© 2022 The Author
Divisions:	Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre
Subjects:	J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races J Political Science > JQ Political institutions Asia
Date Deposited:	03 May 2022 08:06
Last Modified:	15 Sep 2023 23:56
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/115016

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