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Riots and Rights: Law and Exclusion in Singapore’s Migrant Worker Regime

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2015

Jaclyn L. NEO
Jaclyn L. NEO*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Law, National University of Singapore
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Abstract

This article examines the legal framework regulating unskilled and low-skilled migrant workers in Singapore. It argues that the current legal framework discriminates against these migrant workers and conceptualizes them as undesirable for inclusion in the wider society. This, it is contended, is premised on the assumption that migrant workers could be sequestered from the local population to some extent. This article provides some challenges to this assumption, highlighting instead some of the broader social and political consequences of this exclusionary legal framework. Consequently, it is argued that a more inclusive and integrationist approach is needed, and some positive developments are highlighted.

Keywords

immigrationmigrant rightsdiscriminationsocial exclusionintegration
Type
Research Article
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , May 2015 , pp. 137 - 168
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press and KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 

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Footnotes

*

LLB (Hon.) (NUS), LLM (Yale), JSD (Yale), Assistant Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore. I would like to thank Juay Wei Tian for her valuable research assistance. Correspondence to Jaclyn L. Neo, National University of Singapore, Faculty of Law, 469G Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259776. E-mail address: jaclyn.neo@nus.edu.sg.

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