Navigating the Racial Landscape: Malay Youth Experiences of Education and Work in Singapore

ABSTRACT

Scholars have noted the need for both empirical and theoretical research on the unique configurations of race and racism within Asia. This paper explores the racialized landscape encountered by Malay youth during their education and employment in the city-state of Singapore. We highlight the three unique building blocks which comprise the country’s racial landscape, namely (i) race is used as a naming device by the state; (ii) economic and social inequality along the lines of race exist alongside discourses of meritocracy and (iii) discussions of race which can be perceived as offensive are violations of local laws. Based on focus groups conducted with Malay youth on their experiences and memories of their education and employment, we highlight their perspectives on racial stratification. We explore Singapore’s racial landscape within which Malay youth are excluded from networks, silenced through discourses of harmonious multiculturalism, and excluded from Chinese-language-based corporate cultures which are predominant. Our findings suggest that challenging racial inequality in multicultural cities requires the dismantling of systemic systems of stratification. Our analysis contributes to understanding the unique configurations of race and racism in Asia and amongst Asians.

KEYWORDS:

• Singapore
• youth
• education
• work
• race
• Malay

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The state’s racial categorization is known as CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian and Other) and further discussed below.

2 Sai explained that her ‘bond’ was an arrangement between her technical college and a healthcare organization. She worked at the organization in exchange for fees. The bond was referred to as a ‘traineeship’.

3 There are plans to reconsider streaming by 2024.

4 A ‘tudung’ is a Malay word for headcover and carries the same symbolic meaning as the hijab.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: [Grant Number 43520150993].

Notes on contributors

Kiran Mirchandani

Kiran Mirchandani is a Professor in the Adult Education and Community Development Program, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Her research and teaching focuses on gendered and racialized processes in the workplace; transnational service work; critical perspectives on organizational development and learning; criminalization and welfare policy; and globalization and economic restructuring. She is the author of Phone Clones: Transnational Service Work the Global Economy (2012), co-author of Low Wage in High Tech: An Ethnography of Service Workers in Global India (2019), Closing the Enforcement Gap: Improving Employment Standards Protections for People in Precarious Jobs (2020) and Criminalizing Race, Criminalizing Poverty: Welfare Fraud Enforcement in Canada (2007). She also co-edited (with Winnie Poster) Borders in Service: Enactments of Nationhood in Transnational Call Centers (2016).

Tracey Skelton

Tracey Skelton is the holder of the Ron Lister Endowed Chair in the School of Geography at the University of Otago, Aotearoa/New Zealand. The essential elements of her research career focus on people who are socially, politically, and intellectually excluded. Her work has focused on the Caribbean, gender and racial inequality, feminist geographies, and methodological analysis. She has made significant contributions to urban studies, political, social and cultural geographies combined with feminist work on sexualities and critical pedagogies. She is an international leader in the subdiscipline of children's and young people's geographies. Her work has served to challenge the invisibility and marginalisation of young people. She has demonstrated the rich and varied ways in which young people live their lives both spatially and temporally alongside, but differently from, adults. Tracey is the editor-in-chief and co-editor for the Springer 12 volume Geographies of Children and Young People (2013–2019). She was also the co-editor and commissioner of the Critical Geographies Routledge series of 20 monographs and edited collections, spanning 1999-2005. She has published around 150 articles in highly ranked journals combined with book chapters, special issues and edited books.