Tue 4 Aug 2009
Where are the Singaporeans Left?
Posted by Oikono under The Closet Anthropologist , Armchair Political Scientist , Southeast Asia Forum
(Favela in Sao Paolo, Brazil) Will Singapore’s income inequality reach South American standards someday?
It has been another two years away from Singapore. One sunny afternoon, I stopped by the Redhill Hawker Center for lunch. Two pretty Chinese ladies walk up to the table of hawkers sitting next to me. The hawkers were giving catcalls to the ladies. One of the ladies gets a hawker to buy her a meal. Walking back, she promises to introduce the hawker to a lady of the night. Talking to friends, this fascinating phenomenon seems to have been around for some time. A friend claims that sex workers from China are able to obtain visas legally since 2007. Unofficially, they have been around longer. But what I want to talk about isn’t sex (sorry to disappoint) but rather, foreigners in Singapore.
I knew it was a sign of the times when my aunt married a rich Belgian (and retired as a lady of leisure) and my brother married a Vietnamese. While travelling in China, every other Chinese I encountered seemed able to tell me that someone they know working is in Singapore. My barber in Beijing had a cousin working in a hotel here; the guy who gave me a lift in northeast China had a friend working here; the kebab guy in Dandong knew someone who is a sex worker here. When I was in South America last December, I met quite a few retrenched bankers. Some of them were planning to come to Singapore to look for jobs.
Regardless of where they come from, Singapore’s foreign crowd has gotten way bigger. The government talks about squeezing 7.8 million people on this island. How are they going to do this? [Hint: I doubt it is going to be Singapore’s low birth rate doing the job.] The foreign population has become truly obvious since I left. I spent a Friday night at Clark Quay and as I made my way back to the MRT station, I realized that everyone around me appears to be Caucasian. On some buses, I suddenly realized that the mainland Chinese accent was all around me. And that’s not to forget the Thais, Filipinos and Vietnamese.
I don’t really know what to make of this demographic change. Sometime back, I wrote about an article on income inequality in Singapore called “the Hawker and the Banker.” It struck a chord with many Singaporeans. But I now suspect that the income inequality and rising costs might have roots in our foreign resident policy. One group of workers comes from developing countries. They work in low wage jobs, live in dormitories and eat in hawker centers. The other group comes from developed countries – largely Caucasian with a sprinkling of wealthy Chinese, Indonesian, Korean or Japanese. They get salaries that are multiples of what local graduates get, live in service apartments or condominiums, and hangout in Clark Quay or the city. And never the twain shall meet.
The setting of this picture is the city-state of Singapore. And sitting in the backdrop, the question for Singaporeans must be: what do we make of this? Economically, I believe local graduate salary failed to keep pace with inflation (especially in the city area). The money brought in by the rich expatriate crowd goes into housing, entertainment and fine dining. What do new graduates feel about entertainment and housing costs soaring above their means? If I once winced at eating at Crystal Jade, I now shudder at the thought. In turn, this system requires the poor foreign worker segment, without which the average Singaporean might find Singapore quite unaffordable rather quickly.
And what does all this mean for the Singaporean identity? We asked ourselves this a long time ago, but this question is all the more urgent today. When I read former Prime Minister Goh’s comments on the urgent tasks facing Singaporeans, I wonder if our leaders are out of touch. Does his list of questions resonate with your concerns? What does all this mean for social stability? Will widening income inequality and resentment towards a rich foreign crowd make Singapore a Xinjiang? Sounds ridiculous but just mention the stereotyped rich White man and his Singaporean girlfriend to the average Singaporean male and you can see how resentment roils under the surface…
Note: A college schoolmate from India working at a non-profit here stays at a dormitory with other developing country foreign workers. He will contribute an article here at Oikono eventually to document their story.
August 4th, 2009 at 5:56 am
I don’t see how this:
could possibly ‘resonate’ with anyone outside the governing elite. People are worried about whether life will actually get better (needless to say, people see plenty of signs that it hasn’t been getting better and few signs that it will). Yet our leaders worry about how to convince people that life will get better.
August 4th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
>>Sounds ridiculous but just mention the stereotyped rich White man and his Singaporean girlfriend to the average Singaporean male and you can see how resentment roils under the surface…>>
for an interesting thought experiment, replace the words White with Singapore Chinese and Singaporean with say, Vietnamese.
August 4th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
The “problems” you are alluding to–income inequality, national identity crisis, increase number of foreigners compared to locals—are not new; many European countries have already been experiencing these issues, but the magnitude is probably bigger in Singapore due to its small size. The European countries, IMHO, have not been handling the issues very well. I guess the most extreme of citizenry response is the resurfacing of extreme right-wing groups in Germany, and talk of racist immigration policies.
There is no easy answer but I hope that all this talk of resentment doesn’t escalate into something uglier and more violent. I suspect that solutions/compromises may be harder to reach given that racism lives only in the shadows of the Singaporean public life, and is not publicly addressed or acknowledged.
August 4th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Until Singaporeans 1. work hard, 2. speak English well and 3. develop basic levels of initiative, punctuality and flexibility, employers are going to prefer to hire outsiders. This also suits the government because foreigners cannot vote or even legally express any sort of opinion. It’s the apathy and indolence of the average Singaporean that has brought Singapore to this state, fostered, of course, by a government that is hiding its major financial mistakes of the past 15 years.
August 4th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
[…] 2009 - the kent ridge common: The ideal of equality in our National flag and its reality - Oikono: Where are the Singaporeans Left? - The Temasek Review: How Switzerland and Singapore celebrate their National Days - the kent ridge […]
August 4th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
fortunately, the stereotyped rich White man almost inevitably hooks up with some SPG so ugly that we wont be caught dead with … I dun see a problem.
rich chinamen will have the same taste as locals… but if u have ever been to Shanghai … not an issue either.
August 4th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
qui tacet: I think those are same issues but on a vastly different scale for several reasons
1. Issue less apparent because most of the Vietnamese leave or number of foreigners in those countries are far lower
2. Its hard to avoid ethnicity - Caucasians stand out more.
Norlinda: You are spot-on. Its not a new issue. What’s different is the extent.
August 4th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Neil Bishop,
“Until Singaporeans 1. work hard, 2. speak English well and 3. develop basic levels of initiative, punctuality and flexibility, employers are going to prefer to hire outsiders.”
Hehehe. Suppose I can do all of those. Do you really think I would want to stick around in Singapore to in a job market where wages are depressed? Hell no, I’ll head for the US, HK, the UK, etc.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:03 am
“This also suits the government because foreigners cannot vote or even legally express any sort of opinion. It’s the apathy and indolence of the average Singaporean that has brought Singapore to this state, fostered, of course, by a government that is hiding its major financial mistakes of the past 15 years.”
True true. 66% of those who voted + those who can’t vote = MIW’s dream…
August 5th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
[…] writes about the impact of the rising population of foreigners who work and settle in Singapore. Cancel this […]
August 7th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
[…] “When I read former Prime Minister Goh’s comments on the urgent tasks facing Singaporeans, I wonder if our leaders are out of touch. Does his list of questions resonate with your concerns?” Oikono […]
August 9th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Neil Bishop,
You seem clueless when comes to commenting about Singaporeans. They are as capable as any internationally well-travelled people and those traits that you claimed are missing really do injustice to them.
Problem lays with the way this Gov had handled the immigration policy. They had alienated their own people while at same time took the easy way in fixing the economy and low-birth rate issues. Those policies will not work well for the long-term which already shows it negative sides from falling productivity to increasing fragmentation of Singapore society.
And please, don’t give the old excuse of globalization as the cause. It is NOT.
August 9th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Will Singapore’s income inequality reach South American standards someday?
It already has - look at our Gini coefficient.
Inequality isn’t so bad IF efforts are made to ameliorate it, there’s social mobility and there’s a social safety net.
However…
August 11th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
where are the singaporeans? no kidding. seriously, where’s everyone??
i just came back from the states recently and am shocked to find that most service-oriented jobs have been taken over by foreigners. even the bus drivers!
considering that english is our official language here, i find it ridiculous that service staff can tell me they can’t understand english. there was once i had added difficulties finding directions to a place coz the driver i met not only couldn’t speak english but also had to tell me he’s new to the line and so doesn’t know the names of the landmarks that he passes through.
the thing is i have no problems with foreign talents coming in, but i’m surprised at the lack of eagerness to fit in to the environment here, including learning the language and understanding the culture.
i tried to make comparisons with the states (california), where there were also a lot of foreigners, and wondered why it seems to be different there. i remember being shocked that almost everyone i met in the states spoke american english. even with the variations in accent, you can still tell they were speaking american english. my american friend was amused by my reaction and reminded me that it’s america, of coz everyone spoke american english.
so why then do people not do that here? why don’t the foreigners learn singlish? i know some do, but few work hard at it the way they would learn american english/ culture.
i’ve come to think that the problem could be that our singaporean culture is just not well-established and is less easy to grasp and thus these foreigners continue to talk and live the way they do in their home country.
and i wonder then, if singapore is really ready to have this influx of foreigners? i now feel so threatened by the influx of foreigners that i get the feeling that home is no longer home. there is now an erosion of local culture. despite the country’s efforts some years back to build on the local culture, i’m afraid that might all going to waste. i now wonder the meaning of being back at home. if this is a city like any other, then why should i come back here? other than the fact that my family is currently here?
the widening income gap is also a potential social problem. i grew up during a time when differences of income were not on public display. when you don’t see any beggars on the streets. when luxury goods were not easily available. so while there has always been income gap, it was not really visible. but now, not only has the income gap gotten bigger, it has also become more visible. looking around us, you can easily differentiate the income levels. i would say it definitely takes a lot to get used to the differences. emotions can definitely be triggered. and it’s going take a lot more to keep those emotions down. these emotions could be for better or for worse. it is helpful that people become more concerned about the poor, and it could activate some NGO efforts to provide assistance. but i seem to think that the change has happened too fast, and we lack the infrastructure to deal with the differences.
i like to have a welcoming attitude to the foreigners, and i embrace a world where differences can be understood, accepted and tolerated, but i do think that the scale of foreign influx is definitely creating a negative response amongst locals. it’s confounding us. we were brought up to have no culture bias (or at least pretend to be) but it’s going to be increasingly difficult to hold fast to those values when our values are being stepped on carelessly by unknowing foreigners.
August 13th, 2009 at 8:37 am
I think the language issue comes down to the fact that the service staff are mainly on three year work visas (or shorter) with minimal immigration prospects. Hence, there is no incentive to learn the language.
August 20th, 2009 at 4:31 am
Immigration issues become a problem when too many foreigners come into the country too quickly like the problem we had experienced in UK when large number from the Indian subcontinent came in to take up the low paying jobs. Racial problems started to surface when whole street was taken over and the differences in life style became a source of tension leading to riot. The government must do its homework and now with recession, the government must change its FT policy and look after Singaporean first. After all low/middle income Singaporean did not have it easy as the cost of living is rising fast and wages had been frozen for the last ten years.