Dissipating Stigma by Constructing Separate Social Worlds: Singapore’s State-Driven Spatial Transformation of Historic Little India

• In Event: Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 5: Ethnic Enclaves

Abstract

In this paper, I join emergent efforts to understand how urban segregation and racialized boundary-making are central to many contemporary neighborhood transformations across the world. I use the case of Little India, a historic ethnic neighborhood in the city-state of Singapore, unpacking how the state has tried to transform its reputation and stigmatized character through security and aesthetic spatial interventions that emphasize certain types of neighborhood heritage while downplaying others. I argue that these interventions interpellate when deployed, creating different social worlds for three primary groups of neighborhood stakeholders the state wants to prevent from interacting, namely: migrant workers, public housing residents, and lastly tourists and middle-class consumers with spending power who are in search of authentic urban experiences. Beyond the specific case of Little India, my study demonstrates how changing urban affect to induce desired social behaviors can change place-based character, offering less costly means of ensuring social control and preserving Little India’s existing racialized social morphology where migrant workers sit at the bottom

Author

• Subadevan Boyd-Devan, Brown University