Open or Bordered? Singapore, Industrialisation and Malaysian Workers

Bibliographic Data

ID12350596
AuthorsStephen Dobb (0000-0002-1576-2994, The University of Western Australia, corresponding author), Kah Seng Loh (0000-0001-9128-9855, The University of Western Australia)
Year2019
Volume43
Issue2
Pages206-223
Publication date2019-04-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAsian Studies Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1035-7823 • E-ISSN: 1467-8403
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10357823.2019.1590312
OpenAlexW2941546250
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited22

This article offers a new approach to the study of Singapore history through an interrogation of the city-state’s borderedness and openness to Malaysian workers during the 1970s and 1980s. This was the period in which the foundations of modern Singapore were laid, as the state opened its borders to meet the demand for labour in the industrialisation program. Yet, this open-border policy was overlaid by a state system of work permits, levies and penalties designed to control migrant labour. The policy turned contradictory over time, attempting to reduce Singapore’s reliance on foreign workers while in practice increasing their numbers. Despite its best efforts, the state was never totally successful in policing the border as workers and employers found ways to circumvent the controls. Regardless, state efforts to adjust border, labour and immigration policies to meet the immediate and imagined contingencies of its modernisation agenda were extensive and relentless. This suggests that we need to consider in more nuanced ways recent notions of borders as zones of transgressiveness that are free from state controls. In the city-state of Singapore during the 1970s and 1980s, the border was a complex zone of both control and transgression

Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Immigration · Industrialisation · Migrant workers · Modernization theory · Openness to experience · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · State (computer science · Work (physics · Asian Studies and History · Engineering · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Socioeconomic Development in Asia

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