Singapore-style Cosmopolitanisms From Below: Singaporeans and Foreign Workers in Public Space

In its bid to ascend the global city league, the Singapore government has appropriated the notion of cosmopolitanism as a branding strategy to attract talents from various parts of the world. Responding to the top-down, state-mandated cosmopolitan project, this thesis thus seeks to uncover bottom-up cosmopolitanisms by exploring the sentiments of Singaporeans on the ground.

Taking the concept of cosmopolitanism as a stance towards difference which involves openness to, and tolerance of, diversity, and as being equipped with a particular set of skills which enables one to maneuver expertly amongst other cultures, the project aims to explore Singaporeans’ attitudes towards and encounters with foreign workers in residential public spaces. This is especially significant given the overwhelmingly large numbers of foreign workers congregating in public spaces during weekends. The research also seeks to document the experiences of these foreign workers in order to better comprehend the nature of their encounters with Singaporeans.

Consequently, the fieldwork for the project will involve both ethnographic observations in various public spaces around Singapore, as well as in-depth interviews with Singaporeans and foreign workers of both Indian and Chinese nationalities. In so doing the thesis examines how the axes of race and nationality intersect to influence the way in which Singaporeans perceive and interact with foreign workers, adding depth to current studies on cosmopolitanism which have been often been critiqued for a lack of grounded empirical focus, as well as non-Anglo-American conceptualizations of public space.