Ethnic minority professionals’ experiences in Singapore’s multicultural workplaces

ABSTRACT

Studies on inter-ethnic relations at the workplace have largely focused on racism, discrimination and microaggressions against ethnic minority groups. Drawing on findings from semi-structured interviews with 25 ethnic minority citizen professionals in Singapore’s workplaces, this article extends the current literature on inter-ethnic dynamics at workplaces in two main ways. First, by examining the day-to-day experiences of minorities, it lends empirical flesh to the concept of ‘Chinese privilege’, which has mostly been discussed at the conceptual and macro levels of policy and politics. After all, unlike racism, which entails active discrimination, and microaggressions, which involve indirect insults, the manifestations of privilege are much more subtle. Second, this article interrogates the ways in which ethnic minorities negotiate their relationships with their locally born Chinese majority colleagues at the workplace. It argues that a comprehensive approach to analysing ‘ethnic privilege’ should also encompass a study of the everyday dimension of majority-minority relations. This article bears important implications for the improvement of inter-ethnic relations at the workplace, in particular, in informal professional settings and ‘hidden’ encounters where it is often challenging to legislate inclusive policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnic minority professionals
• ethnic relations
• workplaces‌
• Chinese privilege
• Singapore

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Ng Si Han for her assistance in data collection and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Although the sociologically correct term is ‘multiethnic’, ‘race/racial/multiracial’ is the term used by the Singapore government and has become common parlance among Singaporeans. Therefore, it will be used interchangeably with ‘ethnic/ethnicity/multiethnic’ in this article.

2 For the full video, see the following link at the IPS YouTube Channel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izdgdlUl8us. Accessed 9 June 2021.

3 Teh Tarik with Walid, Episode 12: Mei Lin Fung. https://www.instagram.com/tv/CKdIIbdh56P/.