Singapore is a nation-state characterized by the convergence of multiple diaspora populations. The state and citizens alike cannot ignore a sharpened sense of difference that has led to social tensions between “old” and “new” waves of migrants/immigrants, in particular amongst those considered co-ethnics from India and China. Comparative analyses of Indian and Chinese migration are few, resulting in a narrow understanding of how both impact migrant-receiving societies simultaneously. Our paper identifies commonalities undergirding the racialization experienced by co-ethnic migrants/immigrants in Singapore. We argue that multiple dimensions of personhood–to do with one’s skills, class and legal statuses; performances of “authenticity” and temporal framings of migration; and wider civilisational and developmental discourses–work together to create “polysemic immigration hierarchies”. Singapore’s experience illuminates subtle forms of inter- and co-ethnic racialization–drawing on, yet exceeding, tropes of “colour”. © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The following sections are included: Introduction, RI and ACS, Mr Ismail bin Abdul Aziz, Mr Abdul Karim bin Bagoo, Mr Wan Hussin Zoohri, Dr Ahmad Mattar, Mr Abdullah Tarmugi, Mr Zainul Abidin Rasheed, Conclusions.

Singapore has established a reputation as a country with social harmony. But in recent times, increasing reports on issues of social cohesion have begun to emerge in the media about tensions among its citizenry and between foreigners and migrants. Yet, little is known about youths’ lived experiences of everyday multiculturalism amidst this changing demographic landscape. The discourses on diversities in Singapore classrooms have remained largely within the State’s narrative of race-based harmonious multiculturalism based on inherited colonial racialised categories. This paper investigates the understanding and lived experiences of multiculturalism of students in one secondary school, situating the analysis of everyday multiculturalism within the complexities of local diversities and the structure of schooling in a postcolonial multilingual society.

The complex diversity of urban life in cities is often the cause of social friction but it can also spark change. Densely populated cities are places where individuals find community but they are also places where some communities become marginalised and excluded. In the city-state of Singapore community-based activism is an important strategy for minority groups claiming a right to their place in the city. Conceptualising the margin as a place of refusal, the paper focuses on how Singapore’s LGBTQ communities have contested and negotiated from their place at the margins of the city-state, calling into question the Singapore State’s hegemonic narratives of family and community for heteronormative nation-building. These contestations have resulted in strategies that both adopt and elide individual rights-based narratives that have centred primarily on the repeal of Section 377A of Singapore’s penal code. While the repeal of 377A remains critical, the paper focuses on three examples of Sayoni’s community advocacy, Pink Dot and education, which extend the discourse beyond the issue of repeal, and the single identity category of sexuality. Even as the fight for repeal continues, LGBTQ subjects are resisting, negotiating and advocating against violence, discrimination and making space for love and community in ways that co-opt and destabilise social norms in Singapore, thus occupying the margin as a place of radical openness.