On Xenophobia

There is something that has been irking me for quite a while, and up until this point I had not really figured out what exactly was the cause of the said irksomeness. But before I launch into a tirade over the mess, let me just simplify the issue to just one word.

Xenophobia.

That seems to be a really hot topic these days, what with the massive global-scale machinations of the labour market, where anyone anywhere can be part of the supply of both skilled and unskilled labour. Sounds lovely, isn't it, free market principles at work, correcting the imbalances that exist in each of the domestic markets to ensure maximal economic output. But as almost every developed nation has discovered, this fluidity of the global labour market has created the rather uncomfortable position of xenophobia, a word that hasn't seen the light of day since the end of World War II a good fifty odd years ago.

But why xenophobia? Aren't we all humans at heart? Haven't we learn from the mistakes of our forebears that discrimination was one really good way of ensuring that we will never have true peace? I think that it is not the case for some people to actually fear foreigners, but the circumstances that surround it are causing such reactions to occur with startling frequency. It is not so much as the numbers that is causing the xenophobia, but the general perception of clustering that is causing the rift.

As a guest in a foreign land, I will not talk much about what I observe here. Instead, I shall use my own country as an example to explain the model that I have regarding the current state of affairs. In Singapore, almost everyone was an immigrant or a descendent of an immigrant---the natural numbers of native Singaporeans who have already lived on the island prior to Sir Stamford Raffles' 1819 establishment of the island as a major port are known to be small. A sense of community was eventually forged during the public housing expansion phase of the HDB, which basically broke up the many kampong communities that were centred roughly along ethnic or cultural lines.

Why the building of a sense of community regardless of ethnicity? I think it appeals to the social nature of humans in general; when forced to be in a new situation surrounded by strangers, one will end up trying to make a few friends here and there, willing to forgo some of one's inhibitions and biases just to maintain the veneer of sanity through building social ties. This is the fundamental way in which the modern Singaporean identity/society is formed. We are united not along ethnic or cultural lines, but by our common experiences, grouses and other generic/ethnically neutral issues.

But of course, that is just a nostalgic history lesson. There are two things that I would like to point out from my anecdote. First, when allowed to develop naturally, people tend to want to cluster with people whom they know, or are at least similar to them in some sense due to the comfort derived from familiarity---this is the formation principle of the kampong in yonder year. Second, it is only when an external force is applied to break up these clusters do you see an effort to take a bold step out of one's comfort zone to adapt to the new surroundings.

The problem with xenophobia in Singapore lies in the fact that the more recent foreigners who are entering the country are still in the ``kampong formation'' phase, where what they do, who they see and where they stay have large amounts of freedom. If we choose to view this from a more utilitarian perspective, there is no incentive for them to step out of their comfort zone and adapt to the new culture that they are currently embedded in, since they have easy access to whatever it is they were bringing in to the country. This is not a bad thing---when one is in a different land, having familiar faces to hang out with is one very good way of ensuring sanity. The problem comes, however, when the group starts to take a life on its own and literally enforces exclusion, either via a superiority complex, or via a cannot-care-less perspective. It is these transformations that end up generating the friction necessary to develop xenophobia.

Do I have a solution for this? Quotas are not going to solve the problem---they will only delay it for another time. Telling locals to be more tolerant is just missing the problem altogether. I think that the important thing that needs to be done is to remind the foreigners who end up being in a country for the long term that they are guests of their host country, and that they have a social incentive of not being a clique. That last bit will prove to be the hard part in any solution involving population integration.