Dissipating Stigma, Commodifying Authenticity: Singapore’s State-Driven Spatial Transformation of Historic Little India

• In Event: 40452 - The Structures and Institutions That Shape Place-Making

Abstract

‘Action returns to Desker Road, but it is not what you think’ reads an April 2023 article in the Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times (Sim 2023). The tongue-in-cheek headline refers to Desker Road’s yesteryear reputation as a den of vice, primarily in the form of illegal brothels housing Trans sex workers. The new ‘action’ the article references are gelato shops, pizza outlets, cat cafes and heritage tours – what are sometimes referred to as lifestyle goods – aimed at tourists and local residents with money to spare for such consumption goods What the article does not do is place Desker road’s transformation in context, relating it to the Singapore state’s broader attempts to transform Little India’s character by making it less hospitable to low-wage South Asian migrant workers and more attractive to tourists and local residents with spending power. Drawing on ethnographic and archival evidence, I argue that Little India’s spatial transformation from stigmatized neighborhood to heritage, tourist, and lifestyle destination is a state-driven project that layers a ‘softer’ form of spatial regulation through the deployment of new aesthetics and historical narrative, layered upon a ‘hard’ base of intensified securitization. Together, these strategies tame racialized perceptions of danger and risk in Little India linked to these low-wage migrants, transforming them into palatable commodities for consuming authenticity alongside lifestyle goods, arts, and heritage offerings.

Author

• Subadevan Boyd-Devan, Brown University