Given the ever-growing significance of transnational migration, and particularly in light of recent political discourse on immigration and integration in Europe and the United States, two recent anthologies offer important and timely analysis from a practical sociocultural perspective: Migration and Integration in Singapore: Policies and Practice, edited by Yap Mui Teng, Gillian Koh, and Debbie Soon, and Immigration in Singapore, edited by Norman Vasu, Yeap Su Yin, and Chan Wen Ling. Singapore makes a striking case study: according to the latest census (in 2010), only 57 percent of the city-state's residents are local-born citizens. Another 7 percent are naturalized foreigners, 11 percent are non-citizen “permanent residents,” and a full 25 percent are temporary foreign guests.
Both books revolve around a central paradox. Singapore aspires to be a prosperous global city, and while immigration is essential to the economic, demographic, and political success of the nation, it also challenges the local sense of belonging to a defined “Singaporean” identity. In fact, the books make regular reference to “anxiety”—the dissonance of Singaporeans caught between the need and desire for foreign labor and the worry that foreigners threaten locals' cultural primacy and access to social resources.
The unique value of these anthologies, particularly when read together, is threefold. First, the books extend the already-expansive literature on technical migration policy by focusing instead on practical, nuanced matters of integration. Blending a diverse array of methods, the contributors ask how assimilation is defined in Singapore and how it succeeds or fails in the contexts of civic life. Second, the authors succinctly cover a diverse range of social spaces (e.g., schools, workplaces, and public housing), which should appeal to a broad set of topical researchers.
Better still, the books' lessons have applications far beyond tiny Singapore. The diverse disciplinary representation—the writers hail from political science, human geography, sociology, public policy studies, cultural studies, demography, and other fields—inevitably ensures that even expert local scholars will be treated to new perspectives and approaches. But the authors also take consistent care to detail the nuances of the Singapore context. Thus, while the articles are written exclusively by local academics and seemingly to target a regional audience, scholars throughout Asia (and beyond) should find these texts helpful for comparative research.
Immigration in Singapore can be roughly understood in three loose sections. The first three articles make the case that integration is not a purely political or economic issue, but that it poses a complex set of cultural challenges. The next two contributions examine the practical tensions of “living together,” with particular emphasis on the geographies of cosmopolitanism in “local” neighborhoods, plus boundary-making between local citizens and their live-in foreign domestic workers. The final two articles address practical difficulties inherent in articulating the metrics of integration and in defining the obligations of new members of society (especially with regard to national military service).
In contrast to the broadly multidisciplinary approach above, Migration and Integration in Singapore is thoroughly policy-oriented; most of the contributors hail from the Institute of Policy Studies at the National University of Singapore and most are interested in offering specific recommendations for local actors. Nonetheless, the concurrence in themes and lenses (e.g., housing and education) ensures that the two volumes complement each other neatly.
After a quick demographic introduction by editor Yap Mui Teng (also a contributor to Immigration in Singapore) and a discussion of the social markers of integration, Migration and Integration in Singapore examines integration in the workplace, international schools, and Heartland neighborhoods. The strongest chapters come at the end: two analyses of local media (by Kenneth Paul Tan and Selena Lim) and Terence Chong's rich discussion of anti-immigrant anxieties, which efficiently draws together all the previous chapters.
The two volumes have one shared limitation: they tend to blend Singapore's various noncitizen communities into a single, patchwork discussion. Ideally, the organization between and within chapters would better distinguish between various visa and cultural categories. After all, the expatriate banker, the foreign domestic worker, and the naturalized citizen—to name just a few—introduce wildly disparate considerations in migration and integration.
This conflation aside, both works make ample contributions to a relevant and growing intellectual field.
