Disciplining Deserving Subjects through Social Assistance: Migration and the Diversification of Precarity in Singapore

Abstract

Cities are not only associated with incommensurable human diversity but also play a pivotal role in generating, assembling, and mobilizing differences. Alongside neoliberal processes that drive migrant-led diversification in global cities, we are witnessing growing inequality and precarity in populations of long-term residents that are themselves heterogeneous. Indeed, the diversification of peoples in the global city is also paralleled by the diversification of precarity. Yet, the ways in which new configurations of difference are producing more nuanced if still shadowy subjects of citizenship deserve more conceptual and contextualized attention. Although much has been written on the management of migration, far less attention has been focused on the management of multiplying forms of precarity resulting from insecure sociolegal status, disadvantaged labor market position, and deeply inscribed social prejudice. Even less has been documented on how these forms of management set up specific vernaculars about and subjects of citizenship, migrancy, and precariousness. This article addresses social inequality and the relationality of subject making in the context of diversification in Singapore, a city-state that has a particular historical understanding of diversity through a fixed formulaic “multiracialism.” Drawing on state narratives and interview data, we analyze organized social support for both migrants and citizens both by state organizations and nongovernmental organizations to demonstrate the limits and possibilities of change and continuity in the production of precarity in the diversifying city. In doing so, we aim to extend scholarship of the global city beyond the well-debated issue of social polarization in the global city and to highlight the diversity and relationality of precariousness in a contemporary non-Western global city.

城市并非仅关乎无法相互比较的人类多样性, 同时也扮演着生产凑组并动员差异的关键要角。除了驱动全球城市由移民带来的多样化之新自由主义过程之外, 我们正在见证本身便相当异质的长期居住人口中的不均与不安定的增加。全球城市的人口多样化, 的确同时伴随着不安定性的多样化。但崭新的差异组合生产更为细緻且可能仍难以捉摸的公民主体之方式, 却值得更为概念化且脉络化的关照。尽管已有诸多研究书写移民的管理, 但却鲜少关注聚焦不确定的社会法律身份、弱势的劳动市场地位, 以及深刻铭刻的社会偏见所造成的多重不安定形式之管理。这些管理形式如何建立有关公民权主体、移民与不安定性的特定行话, 更鲜少受到记载。本文处理新加坡——一个透过固定的 “多元文化主义” 公式对多样性具有特定历史理解的城市国家——的多样化脉络中, 社会不均与主体打造的关系性。我们运用国家叙事和访谈数据, 分析国家组织和非政府组织对于移民与公民的组织性社会支持, 证实在多样化的城市生产不安定中, 改变与持续的机会和限制。我们藉由这麽做, 旨在将全球城市的文献延伸至全球城市中的社会极化此一受到大幅辩论的议题之外, 并强调当代非西方的全球城市中, 不安定性的多样化与关系性。

Las ciudades no solo están asociadas con una inconmensurable diversidad humana, sino que también juegan un papel crucial en generar, ensamblar y movilizar diferencias. Junto con los procesos neoliberales que controlan la diversificación inducida por el migrante en las ciudades globales, estamos siendo testigos de un avance de la desigualdad y la precariedad en las poblaciones de residentes antiguos, en sí mismos muy heterogéneos. En verdad, la diversificación de pueblos en la ciudad global va también de la mano con la diversificación de la precariedad. Con todo, los modos como las nuevas configuraciones de la diferencia están produciendo sujetos de ciudadanía, más matizados, aunque todavía imprecisos, merecen atención más conceptual y contextualizada. Aunque mucho es lo que se ha escrito sobre el manejo de la migración, menor lo es la atención puesta en el manejo de las formas multiplicadas de precariedad que resultan de un estatus sociolegal inseguro, la posición desventajosa del mercado laboral y el prejuicio social grabado profundamente. Aun menos documentado es el modo como estas formas de manejo establecen lenguajes coloquiales específicos acerca de los sujetos de ciudadanía, migración y precariedad. Este artículo aboca la desigualdad social y la relacionalidad de construir sujeto en el contexto de la diversificación en Singapur, un estado–ciudad que tiene un particular entendimiento histórico de la diversidad a través de un predecible “multiracialismo” inalterable. Apoyándonos en narrativas del estado y en datos de entrevistas, analizamos la ayuda social organizada para migrantes y ciudadanos, para ambos casos por organizaciones del estado y organizaciones no gubernamentales, para demostrar los límites y posibilidades de cambio y continuidad en la producción de precariedad en la ciudad diversificante. Al hacer esto, nos proponemos extender la erudición de la ciudad global más allá de la cuestión, por demás bien discutida, de la polarización social en la ciudad global, y para destacar la condición de lo diverso y la relacionalidad de la precariedad en una ciudad global contemporánea no occidental.

Keywords:

• citizenship
• diversity
• migration
• precarity
• subjectivities

关键词：:

• 公民权
• 多样性
• 移民
• 不安定
• 主体性。

Palabras clave:

• ciudadanía
• diversidad
• migración
• precariedad
• subjetividades

Funding

This work was supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Seed Funding (R-109-000-177-646), National University of Singapore.

Notes

1 This refers to what Rigg (2016, 9) called “Poverty 1.0: the residual poor,” who are challenged by the lack of food, health, facilities, education, clean water, and other “basic needs.” The measurement of who constitutes the residual poor draws on absolute and monetary terms based on poverty lines.

2 This is a group composed of other ethnic minorities in Singapore such as Eurasians.

3 For a detailed explication of the principles that underlie these measures, see Teo (2014).

4 See http://www.wda.gov.sg/content/wdawebsite/L209-001About-Us/L219-PressReleases/06_Jan_2009.html (accessed 2 October 2015).

5 See https://www.iras.gov.sg/IRASHome/Schemes/Businesses/Wage-Credit-Scheme–WCS-/ (accessed 2 October 2015).

6 Having said this, there has also been a greater attention paid to aiding poor citizens. Comcare Long Term Assistance, run by the Ministry of Social and Family Development, is a scheme that provides cash assistance to low-income households who have no access to stable sources of income (see http://app.msf.gov.sg/ComCare/Find-The-Assistance-You-Need/Permanently-Unable-to-Work, accessed 2 October 2015). Child care subsidies are also dependent on income, with the lowest 20 percent of household income receiving about 90 percent of subsidies (see http://app.msf.gov.sg/Assistance/Child-Care-Infant-Care-Subsidy, accessed 2 October 2015). These forms of state assistance are only available to Singaporean citizens, with limited eligibility for permanent residents.

7 For further historical context of race-based self-help groups in Singapore, see, for example Chua (2007) and Hill and Lian (1995).

8 This is the day that marks the end of the month-long Ramadan fasting.

9 This refers to the National Registration Identity Card, which citizens and permanent residents hold in Singapore.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Junjia Ye

JUNJIA YE is Assistant Professor in Human Geography at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637332. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests lie at the intersections of cultural diversity, critical cosmopolitanism, class, gender studies, and the political–economic development of urban Southeast Asia.

Brenda S. A. Yeoh

BRENDA S. A. YEOH is Professor (Provost's Chair) in the Department of Geography as well as Research Leader of the Asian Migration Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge, Singapore, 117570. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include the politics of space in colonial and postcolonial cities, and she has considerable experience working on a wide range of migration research in Asia, including key themes such as cosmopolitanism and highly skilled talent migration; gender, social reproduction, and care migration; migration, national identity, and citizenship issues; globalizing universities and international student mobilities; and cultural politics, family dynamics, and international marriage migrants.