Super-diversity and the bio-politics of migrant worker exclusion in Singapore

ABSTRACT

For super-diversity to describe the diversification of Asian global cities, it should be discussed with reference to existing regimes governing diversity. In Singapore, the postcolonial state instituted the multiracialism of equality between the ‘races’ of colonial governmentality, so as to manage the ethnic diversity of ‘the plural society’. However, contemporary immigrations disrupted this multiracialism. The political response focused on managing the mobilities of low-wage migrant workers. Drawing on my research on urban change, I show that the this led to the bio-political management of migrant worker mobilities and articulation of the discourse of needs. I argue that the 2013 riot by migrant workers accelerated the production of dormitory space to exclude migrant workers from access to the city and reproduce their physical needs. The case of Singapore shows that we need to ‘moor’ the understanding of super-diversity in Asian global cities to the postcolonial management of diversity and migration.

KEYWORDS:

• Bio-politics
• Exclusion
• Migrants
• Mobility
• Singapore
• Super-diversity

Acknowledgments

For their critical and encouraging comments, I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers of Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power and Agata Lisiak, Brenda Yeoh, Michiel Baas, Magdalena Nowicka, Peter Dirksmeier, and other participants at the Workshop on “Diversity Encounters: Intersectional and Post-colonial Perspectives”, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, 24–26 May 2016, where this paper was presented.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.