A study of street-level bureaucracy in Singapore’s welfare.

Abstract

This study seeks to fill the gap in current literature on street-level bureaucracy in Singapore by melding governmentality and state discourse on welfare in examining the exercise of government in welfare in Singapore. It explores how the role of street-level bureaucrats in welfare work is especially crucial to the success of the neoliberal governing of welfare provision and the population in Singapore. Drawing on in-depth interviews, I argue on the

significance of identifying the apparatus of bureaucracy that is established so as to question the welfare identities, values and attitudes that are accepted, proliferated, or hindered and even suppressed by the state. Respondents reveal the contradictions they encounter with in everyday welfare work, and open up a discussion on how street-level welfare bureaucrats

formulate strategies to cope with the challenges they face – concomitantly revealing the power relations that bind them to their roles as street-level bureaucrats whose duties

legitimise the state’s policies.