The Online Citizen Expose: Repatriation Companies

[jia77]

The Online Citizentheonlinecitizen.com/2009/01/toc-expose-repatriation-companies has various other articles written on foreign workers in Singapore. Oh and if you have the time, check out the comments that follow the articles: they can either amuse you or make your blood boil further.

The following is a clearly written piece by Jolovan Wham, social

Comments

[ptechnix]

When I say equals, I mean Singaporean Chinese, Singaporean Indians, Singaporean Malays. All Singaporeans. This is just my observations from my admittedly limited exposure thus far.

Well speaking in terms of race and not class, because I haven't had any personal contact with labourers, my department (and it's a big one) is a complete melting pot of Indians, Malays, and Chinese. My client where I'm based is a government department so it's a huge mix of races.

I've heard that Singaporean Chinese are elitists (this I have no doubts about) and racists but it's wonderful to see none of that where I work. I work in IT and everyone knows how many Indians there are in IT for example.

Maybe the higher up the socio-economic food chain you go, the more these discriminations became prevalent and visible just like in any society.

From what I see, Singapore doesn't seem to be any more racist than any other Asian country in the sense that most Asian countries tend to exhibit some form of xenophobia. Malaysia I would say is even more racist than Singapore and in a much more obvious way. Also in regards to human rights, most Asian countries also don't seem to give a crap about human rights... which is fucked up.

[jia77]

Thanks for this lively debate, you guys!
I agree that Singaporeans can be xenophobic, regardless of whether we're talking about foreign talent or foreign workers. Although, the former , being well-educated, highly paid and enjoying a significantly greater amount of social/job mobility does not bear the brunt of it all as the latter does. We certainly will not hear of repatriation companies being hired by banks or pharmaceutical firms to forcibly remove or constrian their employees to leave the country. Singapore is an extremely classed society - it is just usually not articulated as such in our wonderful first world, built on "meritocracy". This is not just a class issue, but one which also intersects with race - Singaporeans have come to see certain people as more deserving, more suitable for certain types of jobs than others. There is a stigmatized poor urban class in Singapore - but because they are mostly ("mostly" being key because there are also many poor Singaporeans) transient workers, there is the reluctance to deal with their welfare issues. And legalizing "security companies" is another way of ensuring their transience and obedience here.