Urban Kaleidoscope: Urban Space and Racialized Difference in Global City Singapore

Singapore occupies a key node of reference in the contemporary global urban symbolic imaginary. If modernist utopian blueprints never materialize in full, Singapore comes close, marrying a robust economy with environmental sustainability and the successful management of urban diversity. This urban diversity is racialized, structuring immigration policies and the allocation of mass public housing. Yet, this hegemonic discourse of success is limited in three ways. Firstly, it assumes propinquity breeds integration when it might exacerbate difference. Secondly, it ignores how various interrelated socio-spatial configurations of public and private spaces influence social rhythms of contact that reinforce or ameliorate racialized social boundaries. Thirdly, it narrows its lenses to Singapore citizens and permanent residents, excluding migrants who make up a significant portion of Singapore’s total population. Extending our analytical lens to the spatial regulation of migrants provides a more expansive view of the spatial ordering of diversity in Singapore, and its concomitant link to the racialized anxieties of nationhood and belonging. I use multi-sited ethnography to interrogate the uneven terrain upon which South Asian migrants’ spatial practices are regulated and interpersonally negotiated across various socio-spatial configurations. In doing so, I provide a critical and more expansive account of the ordering of diversity in Singapore, with implications for other diverse cities elsewhere.