FLUCTUATIONS : MATERIAL ENVIRONMENT, VISUAL CULTURE, PSYCHIC SPACE - DECIPHERING MIGRANT SPATIAL REPRODUCTIONS IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

Human migrancy is a ubiquitous phenomenon in our globalised world. Increasingly widespread and complex, the numerous forms of people movement around the globe have given a new shape to our built environment. The immigrants bring along their acquired ideologies, cultures and social practices as they settle in their respective new land, intersecting with the existing urban fabric.

Often than not, the new architecture that is fabricated is materialized in the form of “ethnicised” neighbourhoods, which are considered as miniatures of their homeland. In multicultural Singapore, the different ethnic groups that cohabitate in the city space have had roots in such an urban form. These “ethnicised” neighbourhoods are of central importance to the cultural heritage in the city-state.

Due to a shortage of labour as the nation shifts from a manufacturing to a service economy, a considerable number of migrant labourers from the region have been imported to support the growth of the country. Focusing on the migrant labourers from India, this dissertation seeks to dive deeper into their unique spatial productions through the lens of The Call Home, a local short film depicting the life of newly arrived labourer as he adapts and assimilates into his new environment.

The production of urban space is said to be simultaneously real, symbolic, and imaginary. Through a close examination of the spatial production by the characters in the film, this dissertation posits that spatial production is not only simultaneously real, symbolic, and imaginary, but at differentiated intensities.