On 19th June 2024, 10 (am/CET) / 16:00 (SGT) ONLINE.
Dr. Yang will give a talk entitled “The Insecure Migrant Middle in Singapore: Research insights on migrant professionals, immigrant teachers, and immigrant parents”
You can join this lecture via Zoom. To register please press here
Abstract
A small city-state with a highly developed economy strategically situated in Southeast Asia, Singapore is a major hub for migration/mobility in the Asia-Pacific region and has one of highest non-resident-to-resident population ratios in the world. While migration research has long noted that Singapore has a bifurcated foreign labour-immigration regime favouring the highly-educated/skilled migrants, more recent research seems to suggest that even the well-educated, professional, middle-class migrants are not exempted from insecurity and precarity under Singapore’s tightening immigration regime since the late 2000s and early 2010s. This talk draws on several strands of migrant-focused research that emerged within the past decade in Singapore, specifically offering insights from published and ongoing research (including several of the author’s own projects) about the settlement and integration experiences of migrant professionals (from Chinese and Indian backgrounds), immigrant-background teachers in mainstreams schools, and immigrant parents whose children go to government schools. It is argued that a common theme characterizing the experience of these diverse “migrant middle” groups in Singapore is a sense of insecurity resulting from increasing difficulties of obtaining a permanent foothold (permanent residency/citizenship) in the country. The paper also sheds light on how feelings of uncertainty, anxiety and precarity manifest in realms such as work and children’s education for these “insecure” migrant middle in Singapore.
Bio
Peidong Yang (DPhil, Oxford) is an Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. A sociologist of education, Peidong’s research concerns the intersections between education and migration/mobility. He is the author of International Mobility and Educational Desire: Chinese Foreign Talent Students in Singapore (2016) and numerous journal articles on topics including international student mobility, identity, integration, and social studies education. www.peidongyang.com