Trading Barriers: Immigration and the Remaking of Globalization by Peters Margaret E

Author:Peters, Margaret E.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2017-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

SINGAPORE

In 2011, voters in Singapore sent a resounding rebuke to the People’s Action Party (PAP) largely because of its immigration policy, garnering the PAP its worst performance since independence.9 The next year, a wildcat strike by Chinese-immigrant bus drivers over pay disparities with Malaysian-immigrant bus drivers sparked widespread hostility against immigrant workers.10 Opposition to the PAP’s immigration policy further increased in 2013, when it was announced that the draft population target for 2030 would be 6.9 million, of which only 55 percent would be native-born Singaporeans. The announced target led to an unprecedented four-thousand-person protest against the policy.11 After a five-day debate in Parliament, one of the longest debates in Singapore’s history, the government was forced to walk back its policy.12 Since then, the government has enacted a new set of restrictions on both low- and high-skill immigration.

The fact that popular opposition to immigration has forced the government to restrict low-skill immigration is somewhat surprising given existing theories of immigration policy. Organized labor is extremely weak; the government controls the labor unions. Arguments based on immigrants’ use of the social welfare system cannot explain the restrictions either; low-skill immigrants (referred to as foreign workers rather than immigrants) are not eligible to use the social welfare system. Finally, if employers should have a voice in immigration policy anywhere, it should be in Singapore, where the government controls a large stake in many corporations.

How, then, did Singapore get to this point? I will argue in this chapter that the PAP’s immigration policy has been a balancing act between keeping Singaporean companies competitive in an increasingly competitive international marketplace and keeping opposition to the PAP low. The PAP has been able to keep its hold on power in large part because it has been able to deliver export-led economic growth. Yet its ability to provide this growth has been challenged as other Asian countries have developed. At first, it responded to the loss of competitiveness by increasing openness to foreign workers. However, openness has sparked fears that natives would be overrun and the traditional ethnic balance would be lost. In response to the fears that Singapore was losing its competitive edge and that immigration would lead to a backlash, the government has encouraged firms to increase productivity and/or move low-skill production overseas, while maintaining research and development and headquarters functions in Singapore. The focus on increasing competitiveness has decreased firms’ demand for low-skill workers, especially in the manufacturing sector, and pushed the government to restrict low-skill immigration to force firms to be more productive.

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