Multicultural Citizenship and its Exclusions: Examining Singapore's Little India Riot

The theory of multiculturalism is criticised for reproducing unhelpful links between the state and nation, territory and civic loyalty, and citizenship and national belonging (Appadurai 1996; Bauböck and Rundell 1998; Sassen 2002; Vertovec 1999). Taking a critical approach, this paper questions understandings of the majority/minority, citizen/non-citizen and practices of rights-claiming within the theory of multiculturalism. Unpacking these categories disturbs the association between citizenship, national identity and group-specific rights, illuminating the need for a finely-graded concept of citizenship. This critique further problematises the treatment of recognition as an act of citizenship, where it excludes and/or undermines other claims made. A final contention arises when visible claims (or potential for) are privileged within scholarship as instances of group agency. As a consequence, the significance of looking at the absence of claims is negated, reproducing the silence imposed upon pockets of unrepresented groups and individuals who fall beyond or between the conventional citizen/non-citizen categories. The case of Singapore illustrates these theoretical claims. The city-state’s experience of multiculturalism is related to its postcolonial past, diverse population and racialised policy framework. By analysing three cases, I investigate how the racialised identities of ‘Chineseness’, ‘Malayness’ and ‘Indianness’ are troubling for nation-centric theorisations of multiculturalism. The misrecognition of Chinese newcomers within a demographic ‘majority’ cannot be fully explained through a framework of citizenship that emphasises the plight of ‘minorities’ and rectification through minority rights. Misrepresentations of Malay-Muslim identities suggest that practices of recognition through citizenship and rights-claiming may be complicit in exacerbating the unequal treatment of groups. Unwarranted discrimination against Indian citizens and non-citizens of various kinds also falls beyond the remit of multiculturalism, which focuses on citizenship rights as a solution to group-specific needs.