Singapore, as a society, is not able to properly comprehend, let alone address, the precise problems facing migrant workers, because of three pervasive myths about low-wage temporary migrant workers.
Malay identity is vast, multifaceted and diverse, but you wouldn’t know it from the recent controversial debates over the Presidential election.
To work on multiculturalism in Singapore is to wander in a wondrous maze of diversities and their limitless combinations and exchanges. However, it is also to walk into a minefield of complexity, challenge and conflict in which one can easily get confused and lost, encounter misunderstanding and misjudgement, and experience uncertainty and anxiety.
Both the British colonial government and the post-independence People's Action Party government have used the same three myths to justify their policies. But how true are these myths?
In emphasising racial differences, we are also denying our commonality as members of the same nation. Being Chinese, Malay or Indian, means that we cannot just be Singaporean.
