“My Boss Is like Family” – a Singaporean Case Study of Race Relations at Work -- CANCELLED

A growing literature on race relations foregrounds cultural ‘contact’  in developing stronger intercultural understanding and forms of community that bridge difference (cf Amin 2002). Yet little of this literature takes the actual site and social field of ‘contact’ as important in mediating difference. The workplace is a special kind of micro-public, where the rules and codes of contemporary working cultures interplay with collegial and hierarchical relationships, which in turn mediate inter-ethnic relationships. In addition media cultures and wider national structures and discourses on diversity resonate through situated encounters difference.

This paper focuses on a case study of low and ‘middling’ workers in a multi-national firm based in Singapore. The case study is drawn from a larger comparative study of inter-ethnic relations in workplaces in Singapore and Sydney. Drawing on the work of Lamont & Aksartova (2002) and others, the paper explores the discourses, scripts, rituals and practices (Noble 2009) workers engage to create or overcome boundaries of difference.

Employees in the case study multinational framed experiences of belonging and collegiality in familial terms, drawing on ideas of reciprocity, care, friendship and intimacy to describe positive feelings towards co-workers of same and different backgrounds. Race and cultural difference was described by most as having little salience in everyday working life. Yet we argue that the quality of collegial intercultural relations at work does not necessarily translate into shifts in racialised hierarchies nor views about cultural and racial ‘Others’ more generally. Indeed, the use of ideas of family and informal modes of recognition and care actually reinforces and legitimised certain forms of vulnerability and discrimination. This is so especially in a context like Singapore which is a highly racialised society with a variegated system of temporary work visas where opportunities, rights, and conditions differentially distributed according to national origin and race.