Governing Difference: Urban Policy and Multiculture in Singapore
An online talk by:
Louisa May Khoo
PhD Student, UBC School of Community and Regional Planning
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
12:30 – 2:00 p.m. (PST)
[ Abstract ]
I begin with a brief overview of Singapore’s immigrant history and current immigration framework to support Singapore’s ambition of a global city. I then outline the differentiated responses that Singapore has taken to govern multicultures across the local versus foreign populations. In doing so, I ask: How can policy interventions be mobilized to shape people’s capacities to live with difference? I turn to Singapore’s toolkit encompassing spatial interventions through urban planning and design, social policy and conceptions of ‘others’ to illustrate the ways through which diversity is governed in Singapore. I suggest that these institutional structures supporting a ‘differentiated difference’ illuminate Allport’s contact hypothesis despite critique otherwise of its simplicity and irrelevance. I conclude with tentative remarks on how the Covid pandemic outbreak in foreign workers’ dormitories might reshape the way difference is practiced in Singapore.
[ Bio ]
Louisa has been an urban planner and policy researcher in Singapore for many years. Her research sits at the intersections of urban governance and marginalised communities. She is currently an International Doctoral Fellow with the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) at UBC. She is also Senior Assistant Director with the Centre for Liveable Cities, Singapore.
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