Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T11:43:55.576Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘We are not like them’: stigma and the Destitute Persons Act of Singapore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2021

Harry Tan
Harry Tan*
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore, Singapore
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: harry.tan@nus.edu.sg; harrykwan_17@hotmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Using a legal-consciousness approach, this paper discusses the issue of stigma and law from the perspectives of a group of older homeless people in Singapore. Focusing specifically on the Destitute Persons Act 2013 Rev. Ed. (DPA), the paper shows the different ways in which homeless people make sense of, negotiate, resist or succumb to the stigma of a homeless identity ascribed by the DPA. From these experiences, two fundamental problems with the DPA are highlighted. First, the DPA imposes a homeless identity that is entangled in archaic legal definitions that often do not relate to contemporary experiences of homelessness in Singapore. Second, the enforcement of the DPA legitimises a differential treatment of homeless people, without addressing the broader complexities of homelessness.

Keywords

law and societysociologyhomelessnessethnographystigmaDestitute Persons Act
Type
Special Issue Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 17 , Special Issue 3: Stigmatisation, Identities and the Law: Asian and Comparative Perspectives , September 2021 , pp. 318 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bauman, Z (2004) Identity: Conversations with Benedetto Vecchi. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Beier, AL (1985) Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560–1640. London/New York: Methuen.Google Scholar
Beier, AL and Ocobock, P (2008) Cast Out: Vagrancy and Homelessness in Global and Historical Perspective. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Butler, J (1999) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chambliss, WJ (1964) A sociological analysis of the law of vagrancy. Social Problems 12, 67–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chew, ECT and Lee, E (1991) A History of Singapore. Singapore: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chew, V (2016) Singapore Prison Service. Available at https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_1442_2009-02-11.html (accessed 1 May 2020).Google Scholar
Chua, L (2014) Charting socio-legal scholarship on Southeast Asia: key themes and future directions. Asian Journal of Comparative Law 9, 5–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chua, LJ and Engel, DM (2019) Legal consciousness reconsidered. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 15, 335–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cowan, D (2004) Legal consciousness: some observations. Modern Law Review 67, 928–958.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Certeau, M (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
DeWard, SL and Moe, AM (2010) ‘Like a prison!’: homeless women's narratives of surviving shelter. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare 37, 115–136.Google Scholar
Durkheim, E (1938) The Rules of Sociological Method. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Ewick, P and Silbey, SS (1992) Conformity, contestation, and resistance: an account of legal consciousness. New England Law Review 26, 731.Google Scholar
Ewick, P and Silbey, SS (1998) The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ewick, P and Silbey, SS (2003) Narrating social structure: stories of resistance to legal authority. The American Journal of Sociology 108, 1328–1372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzpatrick, S and Jones, A (2005) Pursuing social justice or social cohesion?: coercion in street homelessness policies in England. Journal of Social Policy 34, 389–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foote, C (1956) Vagrancy-type law and its administration. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 104, 603–650.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, M (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Gilliom, J (2001) Overseers of the Poor: Surveillance, Resistance, and the Limits of Privacy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, E (1961) Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, reprint. New York: Routledge, 2017.Google Scholar
Goffman, E (1963) Stigma: notes on the management of spoiled identity. Reprint, New York: Touchstone, 1986.Google Scholar
Goffman, E (1969) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Government of the Colony of the Straits Settlements (1920) The Laws of the Straits Settlements 1835–1919. London: Waterlow & Sons Ltd.Google Scholar
Goy, P (2017) 12 welfare homes in Singapore help those who are stranded and cannot support themselves. The Straits Times, 12 June. Available at https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/homes-of-last-resort (accessed 9 May 2018).Google Scholar
Gramsci, A (1972) Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Harding, R (2008) Recognizing (and resisting) regulation: attitudes to the introduction of civil partnership. Sexualities 11, 740–760.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harwood, JA (1886) The Acts and Ordinances of the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements, from the 1st April 1867 to the 1st June 1886, Together with Certain Acts of Parliament, Orders of Her Majesty in Council, Letters Patent and Indian Acts in Force in the Colony of the Straits Settlements. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode.Google Scholar
Jenkins, R (2008) Social Identity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Koh, PL (1953) Call for a home for vagrants. The Singapore Free Press, 5 May. Available at https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg (accessed 31 May 2020).Google Scholar
Lee, LY (2019) ‘You don't know our pain’: helping the homeless find their way home. Channelnewsasia, 30 July. Available at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/homeless-in-singapore-cws-msf-11758462 (accessed 25 May 2020).Google Scholar
Lee, YK (1973) The pauper hospital in early Singapore (part I) (1819–1829). Singapore Medical Journal 14, 49–52.Google Scholar
Lee, YK (1976) The pauper hospital in early Singapore (part V) (1860–1873) – section I. Singapore Medical Journal 17, 74–83.Google ScholarPubMed
Lees, LH (1997) The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People, 1700–1948. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mathi, B (2008) Meeting Singapore's nomad families. The Sunday Times, 22 June, pp. H10–11.Google Scholar
May, J, Cloke, P and Johnsen, S (2005) Re-phasing neoliberalism: New Labour and Britain's crisis of street homelessness. Antipode 37, 703–730.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merry, SE (1990) Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness among Working-class Americans. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ministry of Social and Family Development (2012) Numbers and Profile of Homeless People. Available at http://app.msf.gov.sg (accessed 9 July 2014).Google Scholar
National Archives of Singapore (2017) Speech by Mr Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, at the launch of ComCare, 28 June 2005, 3.30pm at the NTUC Auditorium. Available at http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/speeches/view-html?filename=20050628996.htm (accessed 25 May 2017).Google Scholar
Ng IYH (2012) Workfare in Singapore. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ng KH (2019) Homeless in Singapore: Results from a Nationwide Street Count. Singapore: Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS, pp. 1–52.Google Scholar
Nielsen, LB (2004) License to Harass: Law, Hierarchy, and Offensive Public Speech. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Parsell, C (2011) Homeless identities: enacted and ascribed. British Journal of Sociology 62, 442–461.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Parsell, C (2018) The Homeless Person in Contemporary Society. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phelan, J et al. (1997) The stigma of homelessness: the impact of the label ‘homeless’ on attitudes toward poor persons. Social Psychology Quarterly 60, 323–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ribton-Turner, CJ (1887) A History of Vagrants and Vagrancy, and Beggars and Begging. Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith.Google Scholar
Rusenko, RM (2017) Imperatives of care and control in the regulation of homelessness in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: 1880s to present. Urban Studies published online 7 June, https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098017710121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarat, A (1990) ‘The law is all over’: power, resistance, and the legal consciousness of the welfare poor. Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 2, 343.Google Scholar
Scott, JC (1985) Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, S (2010) Revisiting the total institution: performative regulation in the reinventive institution. Sociology 44, 213–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheridan, LA (1961) Malaya and Singapore, the Borneo Territories: The Development of Its Laws and Constitution. London: Stevens.Google Scholar
Silbey, SS (2005) After legal consciousness. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 1, 323–368.Google Scholar
Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, The (1908) Untitled. The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser (Weekly), 19 March. Available at https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/ (accessed 31 May 2020).Google Scholar
Soh, E and Ong, C (2011) Choosing to sleep in the streets. The Sunday Times, 13 November, pp. H14–15.Google Scholar
Tan, B et al. (2015) Outram Prison (Pearl's Hill Prison). Available at https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_1742_2010-12-17.html (accessed 1 May 2020).Google Scholar
Tan, H (2018) Older homeless people in Singapore: an ethnographic study. Unpublished PhD thesis, Monash University, Melbourne. Available at: https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/thesis/Older_Homeless_People_in_Singapore_An_Ethnographic_Study/7264460 (accessed 6 May 2019).Google Scholar
Tan, H (2019) Rethinking individual vulnerability and homelessness in Singapore. In Forbes-Mewett, H (ed.), Vulnerability in a Mobile World. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 29–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tan, H and Forbes-Mewett, H (2018) Whose ‘fault’ is it? becoming homeless in Singapore. Urban Studies 55, 3579–3595.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tan, T (2015) Begging an ‘easy way out’ for some S'poreans. The Straits Times, 2 August. Available at http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/begging-an-easy-way-out-for-some-sporeans (accessed 21 September 2015).Google Scholar
Turnbull, CM (2009) A History of Modern Singapore, 1819–2005. Singapore: NUS Press.Google Scholar
Webb, S (1928) The English Poor Laws: Will It Endure? London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, M (1949) The Methodology of the Social Sciences. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Wong, PT (2019) About 1,000 homeless people sleeping rough in Singapore, first-ever academic study finds. Today, 9 November. Available at https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/about-1000-homeless-people-sleeping-rough-singapore-first-ever-study-finds (accessed 20 May 2020).Google Scholar
Young, KM (2014) Everyone knows the game: legal consciousness in the Hawaiian cockfight. Law & Society Review 48, 499–530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar