Migrant workers and diversity in a ‘Heartland’ neighbourhood in Singapore

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand the forms everyday negotiations of diversity take in the ‘heartland’neighbourhood in Singapore, and through the interactions between Singaporean residents and transient male migrant workers, how migrant workers are perceived and their treatment by locals in the neighbourhood. Following Foucault’s theory of governmentality and discipline, power is integrated within social relations that are structured by the social structure of laws, rules and norms. Thus, I seek to examine the position of transient migrant workers in relation to local Singaporeans in the neighbourhood and how this relates to the macro-structure of the state’s transient labour policies as well as its cosmopolitan narrative. This paper hopes to show how power operates through the state, social and individual level to render transient workers as the vulnerable migrant ‘Other’ in Singapore society.