ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a critical inquiry into the intra-racial inequality amongst ‘Indians’ in Singapore – a heterogenous community that is formally recognized as a race group under the state’s multiracial framework. It does so by providing a longitudinal analyses of statistical data that confirm upward mobility to be ensconced within the selective Indian migrant group while also locating economic and educational disadvantage amongst the local Singaporean (i.e. second generation onward) Indians, a majority of whom are sub-ethnic Tamils. This is then followed by narratives from the ethnic community that expose how the lack of structural resources impede educational mobility for disadvantaged local Singaporean Indians, which gets reconfigured as an intrinsic or cultural problem amidst both the uncritical acceptance of race-cultural determinism reinforced by public policy as well as the current identity politics within the ethnic community. In particular, it reveals that the amplification of regional/linguistic and cultural divisiveness between the local Indians and their newer migrant counterparts obscures the classed experiences and material disadvantages that underlie them in the first place. The chapter concludes with future research and policy implications.
