Public discourses and social integration : a case study of Mainland Chinese workers in Singapore

• Main Author: Ng, Hui Min
• Other Authors: Xiao Hong
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/66162
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This study adds on to the debates about co-ethnic relations and identity formation by looking at how the Mainland Chinese migrants are represented in the public discourses circulating around Singapore - a city-state with a majority ethnic Chinese population - and in turn how they may then represent themselves while narrating their experiences living and working in Singapore. A Foucauldian lens is adopted in examining how these discourses structure their self-representations and in turn how they constitute the self to normalize and reproduce certain experiences of inequalities. Findings reveal that while the Mainland Chinese have demonstrated an ability to subvert the dominant discourses, their agency have also been partners in accepting and reproducing them. This study hopes to shed light on the fact that the discursive construction of the Mainland Chinese migrants is socially imagined, while masked as some “immanent” difference, it renders certain politics invisible and are instead regimes of thought that seek to exclude and self-empower.