A QUESTION OF BELONGINGNESS: LIVED EXPERIENCES OF INDIAN YOUTH IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

This thesis investigates how everyday experiences of racism can give insight into the boundaries and contestations of belongingness by Indian youth in Singapore and, how Indian youth can still exercise agency in how they renegotiate belongingness and identity. This study examines 10 Singaporean Indian youths’ experiences. In undertaking everyday Indian cultural practices, Indian youth come to feel belonging to the Indian community. In contrast, when encountering everyday racism across institutional contexts like school and mandatory conscription, as well as non-institutional contexts such as taking public transportation, Indian youth come to feel they do not belong in everyday majority-minority ethnic interactions. There are also experiences of ‘in-betweenness’ that fall outside the dichotomies of belonging or not belonging. Indian youth can simultaneously feel a sense of belonging and not belonging to the larger Indian community, thereby feeling they neither belong with their Indian or Chinese peers as they undertake an ongoing journey toward reconnecting with their culture. The agential role of Indian youths in negotiating their identity and belonging is also discussed. Despite state efforts to neatly differentiate racial categories, Indian youth manoeuvre and renegotiate their identities within these rigid racial categories. They reconstruct their experiences of belongingness with the Indian community by affirming their Indianness through sharing experiences of racism with fellow Indians and reconnecting with the culture as well as reaffirming other Indian friends to continue partaking in Indian cultural practices. These various strategies aid interlocutors to manoeuvre within the everyday racism they experience and cement their belongingness as Indians.