The local headlines for the last few days have been dominated by the news that there are plans to house up to 500 foreign workers in the Serangoon Gardens area. Residents in the estate have voiced their concerns about security issues and social problems that will arise from converting the former Serangoon gardens Technical School in Burghley Drive into a foreign worker dormitory. This forms the perfect backdrop for my research topic, “ Are foreign workers in Singapore being treated fairly?”
In a dialogue held recently with MPs of the area, residents voiced their concerns regarding the dormitory. Some spoken and unspoken fears range from the valid like foreign workers littering, loitering or spitting, to the imaginative and absurd ones like stealing, molesting children, creating a foul smell, speaking (too) loudly and robbing old people. In general, these residents acknowledged the important contribution of the workers, but they just do not want them housed in their estate, so close to their community.
With this information in our hands, I would like to do an attitudinal survey that aims to answer my topic research question. In particular, I would like to find out how the students from NUS feel about having foreign workers living among them, and their attitude towards them. It would be interesting to see the results of this research since the target respondents belong to the educated and privileged lot of the Singapore population, and they of all people should be able to know the importance of the workers to our economy. They should be able to differentiate between valid and invalid concerns better too.
My hypothesis is that the population with more affluence and power would be more adverse to the workers living so close to them. By interviewing both local and foreign students and knowing about their family income level, we may test this hypothesis. Through my research project, perhaps we can all get a better understanding on foreign workers, and hopefully correct misunderstandings about the workers, so that we can accept them as part of our daily lives.
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3 comments:
hi,
I feel that your topic is a good and relevant one. I would suggest that your target survey group can be the residential students of NUS. I have stayed in Ridge View Resident and there are a lot of foreigners staying in residents, PGP is another good place for surveys.
However, i think that one of the problems you would be facing would be more of a sensitivity problem. Im not too sure of whether people would want to reveal so much of the problems they have with their foreign neighbours or if they would reveal their family income in an interview. It can be a bit sensitive and difficult to ask those questions.
I also think that you would probably need to think of proposing some feasible solutions to allevate the problem, if it exists.
Just my 2 cents. =)
Dear Derek,
Your proposed research topic and hypothesis were clearly presented. As we will be expecting more foreign workers living in Singapore, the interaction between the local and them would certainly bring about social impacts on the society. However, I am concerned with the definition of “fairly-treated” and “valid” vs. “invalid” concerns. Is there a need to be more specific since they are quite subjective? Also, when we mentioned about foreign workers, is there a specific group that we are referring to? For example, is it the highly-educated foreign talents from China, the lowly-paid workers from China, the construction workers from Bangladesh or the expatriate from Europe? It would be more concise if we have a specific target group. If we could succeed in bridging the gap between Singaporean and the foreign workers, our lives would be much more peaceful and harmonious.
Hi
This is a very good topic because it is very relevant to Singapore. This is because we will be expecting more and more foreign workers in years to come. Sooner or later, this problem of Singaporeans disliking the foreign workers to live with them must be tackled.
You mentioned that you hope by doing this project, Singaporeans can learn to understand and accept them. This is very important but also very hard to achieve because there are many cases of molest, theft, rape and others committed by these foreign workers. It is not that these foreign workers come here without causing any problems, the cases they have committed as mentioned above have definitely shun away many Singaporeans. I am sure that many of us (especially girls) feel very unsafe with them around. Thus, if you want Singaporeans to learn to accept them and allow them to live with us may pose as a big challenge in the course of doing this project. Also, I am quite confused, do you want to do on a project on “Are foreign workers in Singapore being treated fairly?” or “Are foreign workers in Singapore being accepted?” From what I read from the newspaper, their living conditions and income are good so I think a better topic to do will be the latter one.
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