Singapore's success as a global city is in no small part attributable to its stance on foreign labour and immigrants, illustrated by a largely welcoming but discerning immigration regime to fulfil vital socio-economic needs. However, this fairly liberal policy on immigration has been met with substantial disquiet over the last decade. Xenophobic tendencies have surfaced periodically and have been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic.This edited volume spotlights these contemporary issues on immigrant integration in Singapore, and adopts a functional approach by explicitly bridging academic and practitioner perspectives. The chapters are organised into three sections. The first section on Challenges discusses various dominant trends — obstacles to immigrant integration based on ethnicity, culture and religion, and the fear and associated emotions that characterise reactions to immigration. The second section focuses on Communities, their perspectives and lived experiences in Singapore society. The latter differ substantially depending on migrant statuses and are contingent on social capital defined in relation to locals in the city-state. The last section seeks to illustrate the various Solutioning endeavours in tandem with the contentious nature of immigration. These concrete efforts range from ground-up initiatives, community-based collaborative approaches and government programming; all seeking to advance immigrant integration in Singapore.

Between 2000 and 2010, Singapore witnessed a huge influx of foreign migrants. The proportion of permanent residents in the total population increased from 7% to 11%, while the share of non-resident foreigners has risen from 19% to 25%. This was as much the result of the spontaneous movement of labour to economic opportunities, as it was of active policy direction by the Singapore government. The social impact, both beneficial and disruptive, of this movement was felt at all levels of society, and brought other attending public policy issues to the fore. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach with a focus on policy and practice, this book examines the social, economic, and political issues that have arisen with the influx of foreigners in Singapore since the turn of the 21st century. Drawing on empirical research, it documents the impact of increasing levels of immigration, and provides an analysis of the longer-term implications of these trends, with each chapter covering a different aspect of socio-cultural, political, or economic outcome arising from intercultural contact and adaptation. The contributors also provide policy suggestions to ensure Singapore continues to be a harmonious nation and a cosmopolitan and vibrant global city. Migration and Integration in Singapore: Policies and Practice will appeal to students and scholars of Southeast Asian studies, migration and social policy, as well as to practitioners and policy-makers with an interest in migration in the region.

Ethnic and religious differences, a widening socio-economic divide, tension between foreigners and locals. These are some of the contemporary challenges to integration in Singapore. How we navigate them will determine the type of society we become. This book gathers the best social scientists in Singapore to examine issues of ethnicity, religion, class, and culture in order to understand the many different fault lines that run across the multicultural city-state. These essays are written in an engaging manner and are designed to present the authors’ expertise to a wider audience.

This edited volume focuses on how multiculturalism, as statecraft, has had both intended and unintended consequences on Singapore’s various ethnic communities. The contributing authors address and update contemporary issues and developments in the practice of multiculturalism in Singapore by interfacing the practice of multiculturalism over two critical periods, the colonial and the global. The coverage of the first period examines the colonial origins and conception of multiculturalism and the post-colonial application of multiculturalism as a project of the nation and its consequences for the Tamil Muslim, Ceylon-Tamil, and Malay communities. The content on the second period addresses immigration in the context of globalization with the arrival of new immigrants from South and East Asia, who pose a challenge to the concept and practice of multiculturalism in Singapore. For both periods, the contributors examine how the old migrants have attempted to come to terms with living in a multicultural society that has been constructed in the image of the state, and how the new migrants will reshape that society in the course of their ongoing politics of identity.

This study traces the socio-political effects of immigration on Singapore and its population, a topic that has been the subject of intense debate in the nation as its population grows increasingly diverse. Beyond the logic of economic imperatives, the book aims to explore the larger consequences of taking in large number of immigrants, and its analysis should appeal to scholars of migration, social change, and public policy.

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Even as the 2013-2017 “migration crisis” is increasingly in the past, EU countries still struggle to come up with alternative solutions to foster safe, orderly, and regular migration pathways, Europeans continue to look in the rear-view mirror.This Report is an attempt to reverse the perspective, by taking a glimpse into the future of migration to Europe. What are the structural trends underlying migration flows to Europe, and how are they going to change over the next two decades? How does migration interact with specific policy fields, such as development, border management, and integration? And what are the policies and best practicies to manage migration in a more coherent and evidence-based way?