"Describe an intercultural scenario and interpret it in the light of your understanding of cultural norms."
As Singapore brings in more foreign workers, the problem of intercultural conflicts between Singaporeans and foreign workers will surely arise. I had one such bad experience with those foreign workers last week.
I was returning to PGP on Sunday night at 8.30pm. I was going to take a bus at the harbour front centre bus stop, which had many (at least 30) foreign construction workers there. When the bus I was going to take finally arrived, all the workers rushed to the bus, shouting some words along the way and creating a din. As I didn't expect all the workers to take the same bus as me, I did not run earlier, resulting in me standing right at the back of the long queue.
Then the bus driver opened the back door for passengers to alight. However, seeing the back door opened, those workers rushed to board by the back door, obstructing alighting passengers and avoiding payment of bus fare. This totally shocked me. I felt that those workers are very inconsiderate and uncivilised.
Then as the front door of the bus opened to allow boarding, those workers squeezed and pushed. A Singaporean Malay lady trapped between them found herself losing balance and almost fell. Then she shouted, "Can you all stop pushing?" However, those workers ignored her (I wondered if they understand English). But the bus driver came to her rescue when he heard her shout. He stood up, finger-pointed those workers right in their face and use a stern tone to scold them. Another reason for his scolding was that those workers did not tap their ez-link card upon boarding the bus.
For those who had boarded the bus, they refused to move in. Instead they crowded at the card tapping machine, preventing more people from boarding the bus. And they started chatting happily there. So once again, the bus driver had to ask them to "be a gentleman and move in". Once again, I wondered if they understand English as they did not cooperate.
So the bus driver closed the door and drove off. I could not board the bus and had to wait for the next one. But within a few minutes, a big crowd of workers gathered at the bus stop again. When the second bus arrived, I was smart to run after the bus with them. To board the bus, I had to push my way through just like them.
When I finally secured a seat on the bus, I reflected on their behaviour during the journey. These foreign workers came from a land with high population density. In their country, they had to squeeze and push to board a bus. They had grown up in such a culture. When they came to Singapore, they brought the culture along with them.
However, Singapore does not have such a culture and many Singaporeans feel disturbed by their rudeness (the workers do not feel it's rude as it is their culture). This is only one of the intercultural conflicts between Singaporeans and foreign workers. Together with other conflicts, there are a lot of friction between locals and foreign workers. This explains why Serangoon residents are against converting a school into a hostel for those workers.
Not exposed to the cultures of the workers, locals do not accept them in the society. Not understanding why locals do not accept them (because they see nothing wrong with their cultures), the foreign workers will not be able to change their behaviour and integrate into our society.
I feel that the government should do something to solve this problem. Our construction industry is heavily reliant on those foreign workers. They should be taught the Singapore culture (if there is one), things they should and should not do in public. Only when they have adapted our culture can we live harmoniously in this society.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
RSS Feed (xml)
6 comments:
I do think that they should be inculcated with certain Singaporean societal behaviours. However, it would be difficult for them since it already has been a habit of theirs in their home country and might prove to be somewhat difficult to implement.
Woah… the situation that you were in is really difficult to manage. Though this is cliché, but I think ‘in Rome, do what the Romans do’. So the foreign workers should really be trained to at least learn the ‘using-public-transport’ etiquette and other things that would affect the Singaporean lifestyle. Other parts of their culture can be retained. For example, sometimes I see Indian workers sitting on open fields chatting with each other beside the Jurong East MRT and though it is not a part of Singaporean culture, it does not disrupt life in Singapore and is not a problem.
Possible ways of doing so would be like how people train maids to integrate them into new families: Go through the things that they have to do and how they should go about doing it.
This is a typical for Singapore.
I think immigrants have to have decent proficiency of English because we can hardly communicate well without common language.Thus it can be one solution to change the immigration law into one that limits people poor English proficiency.
More easy way would be to make bus driver have a manual to discipline in Hindi.I think Indian people are very democratic and never use violence when there is conflict in general.So,if drivers know the Hindi a little,it can help greatly.
Though I mentioned that training the foreign workers is one of the solutions, I wonder how feasible it is. They speak in so many different languages. It will be hard to find instructors who speak their language. And who will pay for their courses? But I really hope that one day, they know the proper etiquette would not be a nuisance in the eyes of the public.
Maybe I have gotten used to being the majority group of Singapore -Chinese. Many years ago, when the workers are in low numbers, no one took notice of them. But in the recent years, there are so many of them here that they seem to be the majority race in Singapore instead. Everytime when I see them walking in big crowds, I feel threatened and wonder if they will commit any crimes. It's a weird feeling because in my growing up years, the majority of people around me are Chinese, but now, it's other races.
Maybe this is the kind of feeling that the locals need to get used to.
Hi Tersa, I understand your concern about the attitude of foreigner workers. But I prefer to see thing in another perspective.
First, what you have witnessed (an unpleasant event) are only the result of small portion of foreigner workers in Singapore. The small group of bad behaviour does not reflect the entire foreigner workers’ population.
Second, the affair regarding Seragoon residents is different from your particular unpleasant event. To add, some of the comments from Seragoon residents regarding foreign workers are down right offensive.
I prefer to view things as objective as possible. After all, most foreigner workers are here to earn a decent living. Hope you can learn to accept them.
Hi Victor,
Regarding the Serangoon issue, I have stated in my post that the rejection of foreign workers is due to many intercultural conflicts between locals and the workers. Maybe I am not clear in my post and I shall elaborate here.
Many Serangoon residents could have witnessed bad behaviours of some workers, or they might have experienced it themselves. For example, big groups of workers rushing into MRT without letting passengers alight first. All the bad experiences make the residents stereotype those workers in a negative way.
Singaporeans seem to be more fed up with foreign workers even though locals may be doing the same thing as the workers. I guess it is because foreign workers tend to do things in large groups, thus making their acts more prominent. A second reason could be that being much darker than locals, the workers themselves are very prominent and tend to attract attraction.
I agree that there are some good foreign workers (I have seen them giving up seats to elderly on MRT). However, there are still a large number of them who still have not adapted to the Singapore culture. Only when they have adapted will locals be willing to accept them.
Post a Comment