Xenophobia against foreign professionals in Singapore : real or imagined?

• Main Author: Rasid, Nur Raisah
• Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/51697
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Xenophobia has increasingly evolved to take on a more politicized form in Singapore in the past few years. Singapore is arguably an immigrant society where the influx of foreigners have in turn, raised anxiety levels among the local population especially in periods of economic uncertainty. Amidst such an environment plagued with animosity between the foreigners and locals, this paper shifts the unit of analysis from the foreign workers as a whole to the foreign professionals in Singapore. By de-homogenizing the category of foreigners, the paper argues that the economic advantageous position of these professionals does shape their experiences and perhaps the concomitant exclusion and/or discrimination by the locals. Underpinning this qualitative paper that aims to explore the experiences of foreign professionals in Singapore are sociological concepts and theories such as Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural capital, John Berry’s acculturation strategies and Gordon Allport’s contact theory. This paper begs the question if xenophobia against foreign professionals does in fact, exist or is imagined through the increased politicized nature of the term.