Concluding Reflections

Abstract

In this chapter, I evaluate my findings and also allude to their wider implications. This book has illustrated that Singapore, distinct in its own right but also bearing similarities to many other globalizing cities, has a division of labour strongly supported by migrants. The work identities of the labour migrant, commuter worker and cosmopolitan professional come with specific class realities facilitated by labour market change and much wider processes and spaces within and beyond the global city. These realities must always be read through a nexus of power relations in which different types of workers are discursively and materially attributed different values. The rise of global cities has been essential to the assertion and spread of neoliberal ideas and practices. This spread is never homogenous but is instead contoured by local and regional geo-politics, political-economic development pathways, migration histories and geographies. Far from being truly open to difference, the forms of cosmopolitanism found in Singapore perpetuate particular kinds of global sensibilities that are themselves exclusionary. These politics of exclusion and inclusion are also not simply polarizing but rather, fragmented and relational. Managing labour as a commodity is far from straightforward. In order for labour to be extracted, people have to be assessed, organized and disciplined through industrial policies and relations.

If “class” is the answer, what is the question?

(Wright, 2005: 180)