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Understanding xenophobia and integration in Singapore schools

The Covid-19 pandemic has again brought anti-immigrant sentiment to the fore of public discourse. Even as we consider the need to foster better integration amongst locals and foreigners, it is equally important to uncover how and why xenophobia occurs in specific situations in Singapore.

The author says his study of how race might play a part in the formation of friendships and relations amongst a group of 28 top-performing students (both local and immigrant) challenges how xenophobia and integration is typically viewed here.

The author says his study of how race might play a part in the formation of friendships and relations amongst a group of 28 top-performing students (both local and immigrant) challenges how xenophobia and integration is typically viewed here.

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The Covid-19 pandemic has again brought anti-immigrant sentiment to the fore of public discourse. 

This includes a recent commentary published in TODAY encouraging interaction between students of local and international schools, so as to curb xenophobia. 

Even as we consider the need to foster better integration amongst locals and foreigners, it is equally important to uncover how and why xenophobia occurs in specific situations in Singapore. 

Developing a better understanding of the latter will then help inform the manner in which we try to promote intercultural communication and affiliation.

THE SITUATION IN SINGAPORE SCHOOLS

For a number of years now, the Singapore Government has been recruiting top-performing students from neighbouring countries on scholarships, so as to augment our local talent pool, as well as to build Singapore’s soft power. 

This is partly why Singapore’s secondary schools and universities today are a microcosm of our cosmopolitan society, where local students inevitably meet and develop forms of (dis)affiliation with those who are immigrants. 

As is observable and common knowledge, the majority of immigrant students are recruited from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), since the assumption is that they should fit in with the majority racial grouping here readily.

In my research (that has recently been published in the Journal of Language, Identity and Education), I sought to examine whether and how race might play a part in the formation of friendships and relations amongst a group of 28 top-performing students (both local and immigrant).

They talked about their experiences whilst attending the same elite secondary school in Singapore and local universities.

What I found was that instead of race, these students referred to themselves and others in terms of Singaporean-ness. 

They used different labels of nationality and the varying amounts of time they have spent as immigrants in Singapore to mark themselves and others as different.

Thus, labels of PRCs, Viets or Indons were used by Singaporeans to refer to individuals from China, Vietnam, and Indonesia. 

Negative stereotypes of poor English proficiency and forms of anti-social behaviour were most attributed to students from China. These accounts, however, were produced not just by Singaporeans, but by immigrants themselves. 

So students from China who have moved to Singapore at age 15 would characterise themselves as more like a Singaporean and produce the same anti-PRC discourse to describe recent arrivals from China at the university level. 

Crucially, students from China described how they would avoid speaking Mandarin in the presence of their Singaporean peers, for fear that their accent and choice of words would signal their status as immigrants.

They would even dissociate themselves from more recent immigrants from China.

LESSONS ON XENOPHOBIA AND INTEGRATION 

This reasonably complicates our usual view of xenophobia and integration in two ways.

First, overt Chinese practices, such as speaking PRC-accented Mandarin, are seen as an impediment to affiliating with Singaporeans, even if these individuals were recruited precisely because they were assumed to be culturally compatible with the majority Chinese racial group. 

Interestingly, it is the Vietnamese and Indonesians who appear more embraced by the local student population. We cannot assume that racial similarity is an overarching factor that facilitates integration.

Second, these accounts of anti-PRC sentiment emerge as a result of inevitable distinctions made by individuals in terms of cultural and social practices, such as the manner in which one speaks, or the way one dresses. 

It is not simply due to differences in nationality. This is why even students from China themselves will resort to the same discriminatory language when referring to more recent arrivals from China.

Such a situation is not unique to our schools, nor idiosyncratic to the small sample size of my study. 

It is seen in National University of Singapore Associate Professor Elaine Ho’s interviews with “new” Chinese immigrants, where similar distinctions are made by them in terms of 老新移民 lao xinyimin (an earlier cohort of PRC immigrants) and 新新移民 xin xinyimin (a newer cohort of PRC immigrants). 

In a Hawaiian high school, applied linguist Steven Talmy observes how newly-arrived immigrant students are pejoratively labelled fresh-off-the-boats by earlier immigrants. 

In all of these examples, institutional labels of immigration become appropriated by individuals as a source of cultural differentiation.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

What then does this mean for our efforts at promoting integration between locals and immigrants?

It might suggest a need to rethink our assumptions regarding supposed racial and cultural similarities that we employ in selecting immigrants. 

One could argue that our CMIO model is not exactly fit for purpose when it comes to social assimilation of immigrants.

Notwithstanding the tendency for people to make cultural differentiations, certain social practices can be promoted amongst immigrants that could facilitate affiliation with Singaporeans. 

As my research and others such as Singapore University of Social Sciences Associate Professor Leong Chan-Hoong have found, Singlish use is a far stronger marker of localisation than ethnicity. 

That is, one’s identity and sense of Singaporean-ness, regardless of whether one is born here or an immigrant, appears to be largely expressed through the use of Singlish.

For the students in my study, Singlish was what they claimed to use on a daily basis, and which allowed the immigrants among them to form friendships with Singaporean peers. 

It might be that one solution to promote integration has been under our noses all this while – our beloved vernacular, Singlish.

But can the Government encourage the use of Singlish amongst immigrants without diminishing the value of Standard English? 

Why and when should we ever embrace Singlish as a wider social practice? 

These are questions worth pondering as Singapore deals with increasing tensions between demographic diversity and national identity.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Luke Lu is a lecturer in linguistics and multilingual studies at the School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University.

Related topics

xenophobia Education schools racism Singlish

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