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Against the background of rapid technological change and globalisation, worker upskilling and reskilling is an important plank of Singapore's manpower policy. It serves not only Singapore's economic interests, but its social imperatives too, as the country strives to forge an inclusive society. However, Singapore's non-professionals, managers, executives and technicians (non-PMETs) workers—who are at greatest risk of job redundancies—lag behind their PMET peers in training participation. This paper analyses existing policy measures to encourage skills upgrading among non-PMETs, before examining the case studies of Denmark and Norway. The paper then delves into five recommendations to make training accessible to as many non-PMETs as possible, and encourage higher training participation among them. The recommendations underline the need for a holistic and customised approach to create a more conducive policy environment for non-PMET training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global economic restructuring saw the dramatic expansion of feminised labour and extensive mobilisation of women from less wealthy to wealthier countries to supply reproductive labour. Some migrant women perform unpaid reproductive labour through marriage migration in their roles as wives, mothers and daughters-in-law. The paper seeks to understand the divorce experiences of low-income marriage migrant women in Singapore after their marriage with Singaporean husband has ended. By engaging theorisations on transnational families, the paper discusses the transnational aspects of the women's divorce biographies. Using empirical data collected through in-depth interviews, this article examines how the women work out their transnational divorce biographies in these three areas: one, coping with divorce proceedings and obtaining legal representation; two, working out the rights to remain in Singapore and other livelihood issues; and three, negotiate with ex-spouse over post-divorce co-parenting arrangements. To avoid framing the women's experiences in 'victim versus agent' binary terms, the paper examines both their struggles and strategies using a transnational, intersectional feminist framework. This analytical perspective allows the paper to discuss how unequal effects of globalisation and intersection of the women's social identities shape their divorce trajectories, in terms of the struggles they face and strategies they employ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The link between globalization and the spread of English is well established in the literature, resulting in the emergence and burgeoning of studies on the pluralization and localization of English. However, Englishes are also valued unequally and, thus, impact the lives and identities of their speakers differently as well. This paper aims to discuss the politics of Unequal Englishes by mapping out the specific ways inequalities of Englishes are realized in classrooms in Singapore. This requires mapping out accurately both the dynamics of locally produced but globally shaped teaching of English, as well as concrete instantiations of culturally responsive pedagogies which aim to make learning and teaching more nondiscriminatory and equitable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on transnational Higher Education governance has provided a thesis explaining how East Asian states have successfully selectively blended elements of globalisation in Higher Education with their pre-existing regulatory regimes. However, this paper argues that the thesis overlooks the significance of local politics in understanding the formulation of Higher Education policy, thus insufficiently acknowledging the indeterminacy that arises in the globalisation process. To address this argument, this paper examines the transnational Higher Education development in Singapore and Hong Kong and explains how political resistance and corresponding policy changes that emerged in these two societies help reconceptualise transnational Higher Education governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countering the drive to erect walls between nations and communities, the burden is increasingly on educators to develop in students essential skills and dispositions for a more hospitable future. Global education is essentially aimed at addressing the realities of increasingly networked societies and porous exchanges of knowledge, capital, and products among people and groups around the world. This paper examines how global education is enacted in two schools in Singapore and the United States. Given that a central characteristic of the twenty-first century is globalization, global education is inevitably embedded in the discourse of twenty-first century competencies utilized by policymakers worldwide. However, while global education has typically been studied as a singular subject such as Human Rights or integrated into History, Social Studies, or Civics Education, this study differs as it examines two schools that have adopted a whole-school approach to global education. That is, global education is embedded in the culture of schooling and infused across curricula subjects. The first part of the paper provides an overview of global education and its two key emphases – globalism and global citizenship. The second part discusses the tensions emerging from observations of global education in the two schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of cities in the global economy has been studied extensively for the specific case of advanced producer services. Only recently, studies started to broaden the analytical lens and explore the role of cities in 'multiple globalizations' by adding insights from other industries. Apart from showing that different World City Networks (WCNs) are characterized by differing spatial configurations, these studies are incapable of explaining why cities have been articulated into a particular WCN. Building on a case study of Singapore and Jakarta in the WCN of the upstream oil and gas industry, the study demonstrates the potential gained by adding flesh to the study of cities in 'multiple globalizations' through qualitative insights. The findings reveal how very different state roles have contributed to the shape of this particular WCN. The paper thereby illustrates how this recent field of research on cities in 'multiple globalizations' may advance beyond the mere description of city network structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How have the globalisation of real estate and the rise of a transnational class of super-rich homebuyers challenged conventional analyses of local residential property markets? What analytical tools and concepts can we deploy to understand the dialectical tensions between the local and global; fixity and motion as well as the deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation of real estate by the super-rich? Drawing on Singapore as a case study, this paper interrogates the new ‘spatial fixities’ of the super-rich housing market at two inter-related scales of analysis. At the national scale, this spatial fixity could be interpreted in terms of the attempts by the Singapore ‘property state’ to attract high net-worth individuals to reside and invest in the country as a ‘quick fix’ way to boost national capital. At the global scale, this new spatial fixity of highly mobile super-rich can be seen in their territorialisation strategies to constantly seek out new safe havens to physically ‘park’ and grow their wealth beyond the traditional confines of national boundaries. Insofar as these two kinds of spatial fixes both complement and feed off one another via conspicuous real estate development, they also risk colliding and generating social contradictions that may potentially threaten their symbiotic relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper aims to establish a framework being conceptually able to explain a variety of internationalization strategies and related activities employed by port managing bodies (PMBs), as defined by the European Sea Ports Organisation (ESPO) in 2018, considering their hybrid nature. Having identified a potential to further the existing literature on port policy and strategy in general and port internationalization strategy in specific, the paper examines theoretical frameworks and methodologies from the literature on international business that could be applicable to this field. The main objective is to define a conceptual and analytical framework to examine PMB international strategies, which include both inward and outward steps, also discriminating various internationalization patterns (operating modes). In particular, we investigate if the success (or failure) of PMB outward operations is affected by inward (previous) steps. The contribution tests and validates the proposed conceptual model through multiple embedded case studies, which originate from diverse economic and institutional settings in Rotterdam, Shanghai and Singapore. The paper provides a meaningful insight into discrepancies that could exist in internationalization strategies adopted by conventional business firms and PMBs since they are envisaged to show different trajectories in a number of areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of exchange-rate movements on inflation in eight Asian countries. Results from an open-economy Phillips curve are; first, the Markov-switching open-economy model confirm that the two-state Phillips curve outperforms alternative models to study inflation dynamics. There is considerable heterogeneity in the pass-through estimates for Asian countries, with Singapore exhibiting the lowest exchange rate pass-through (ERPT). Regime-dependent pass-through estimates are sensitive to average inflation and it should be factored in when forecasting inflation rates. Second, the extent of pass-through is considerably lower and far from complete in a low-inflation regime, endorsing Taylor hypothesis. Third, in the majority of the countries, we find support for global disinflation in domestic inflation that has strengthened over time. The main takeaway is that globalization matters for Asian inflation dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article re-examines the contents of Singapore’s Thinking Schools Learning Nation (TSLN) and Teach Less Learn More (TLLM) educational initiatives, introduced and implemented to promote change and to prepare Singaporeans for a twenty-first century knowledge-based economy. Adopting a critical realist perspective that enables investigations into complex social systems, the paper highlights the concepts, change process and possible outcomes of change proposed by realist social theory. An explanatory critique responding to the question, ‘What social structural changes were implemented by the TSLN and TLLM initiatives, and why?’ is developed, tracing the programmes of change in TSLN and TLLM. Findings reported in 2013, by a local large-scale research project, has made claims about the ineffectiveness of the initiatives in bringing about desired changes in classroom instructional practices. The critique questions—given Singapore’s recent and consistent successful performances in international benchmarking tests—whether it is only in the classroom that educational change that matters, counts. It suggests that despite making strong statements about the limited effectiveness of the TSLN and TLLM initiatives, many programs introduced and adopted by primary, secondary and post-secondary institutions, especially under TLLM, were left unexamined by the research project. The explanatory critique theorises that two kinds of changes have taken place—the reorientation of pedagogical practices in post-secondary institutions and extensions of what already exists in the primary and secondary sections. The paper concludes by highlighting some implications the explanatory critique have for research into educational change in general, and for educational change in Singapore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the trade policies and practices of Singapore based on the latest WTO trade policy review. Though Singapore's trade policies have been effective and contributing to its remarkable economic performance, it also faces problems and new challenges in the modern globalisation era. Reviewing Singapore's policies also provides guidance for other small open economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses John Hudzik's (2015) Comprehensive Internationalization as a conceptual framework to examine how two Singaporean universities, the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU), leverage internationalization as a means to achieving 'world-class' status. Document analysis, semi-structured interviews and campus observations are used to provide a cross-case analysis of the universities' strategies related to partnerships, student and staff mobility, and internationalization of the curriculum. This analysis is placed against the backdrop of wider state policy to explore the relationship between institutional approach and national context. Overall, the findings suggest that a global frame of reference is embedded in the two universities' visions, and internationalization activities are aggressively pursued to achieve those visions. Factors related to each university's approach to comprehensive internationalization are explored in the discussion section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food safety knowledge is created, validated, disseminated, and acted upon. It is conflicted, contextual, and contingent. The technology has a history, the knowledge has a history, and how everyday people interact with food safety ideas has a history. Taking three historical examples from Singapore – pure food advertising; anxiety about botulism; and the prohibition of saccharin – this paper suggests that food safety helps us reposition food and globalization. Singapore was, and still is, a step in a long supply chain of comestibles that pass into and through the port, in which the identity and location of the producers is obscured by distance, value adding, and the complexities of global trade. With its early engagement with globalization, Singapore also provides a counter to the view that it is only the contemporary iteration of globalization, with its long supply chains, technologies and the media coverage of these, which makes food both unsafe and feared in the twenty-first century. Drawing on Frederick Cooper's critique of globalization, this paper looks at the way that knowledge and anxieties about food safety in Singapore were informed by international media coverage to suggest that they were discursively globalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how the elite schools in Singapore have been recontextualising their pedagogical programmes, as the public education system adjusts to the developmental state's balancing act to continue with nation building while remaking Singapore into a global city. The elite schools have been updating their pedagogical programmes to produce the new generation of national leaders and, at the same time, preserve the formally meritocratic system amidst the challenges of internationalisation and increasing inequalities as Singapore globalises. Sociological studies of the reproduction of elites in schools have largely taken their theoretical cues from Pierre Bourdieu. However, the focus on character building, symbolic capital and cultivation of noblesse oblige is not sufficient to account for the educational reproduction of elites in globalising societies, as least for the case of Singapore. Instead, I draw on the works of Basil Bernstein on pedagogic identities to look at the historical pedagogical realignments in four elite schools in Singapore and argue that the focus has shifted to personality cultivation, emotional control and worlding activism. The result is the shaping of affective identities that promise to empower students to navigate and move between the global and local and engage the class inequalities that they contribute to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roads congestion pricing has been considered as an effective solution following the successful implementation of such programs by many cities such as Singapore, Stockholm, and London. In multiple cases, congestion pricing projects have not been implemented, and multitudinous industrialized countries' governments are struggling to find an effective and satisfactory way of introducing congestion pricing schemes that will not be affected by the public's negative opinion and resistance. The lack of political and public acceptability can, therefore, be blamed for the nonimplementation of many congestion pricing projects in many cities around the world. This paper reviews eight cases where congestion pricing schemes were implemented or rejected, as well as the major influencing factors that enable congestion pricing introduction and acceptability by road users, discusses public and political acceptance of urban road pricing, and provides a valuable guideline for policy and decision-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on ageing populations, which are becoming more common around the world. The article also explores the possibility of cooperation among international cities as its research purpose. The cooperation among international cities is for the transfer of knowledge of adult guardianship system (hereunder "AGS") law and AGS/supported decision-making (hereunder "SDM") practices through the implementation of human resources training. Using fieldwork in Singapore and Tokyo including interviews with AGS/SDM experts and literature research, this article addresses potential collaboration in the areas of AGS/SDM among international cities to advance global concerns about ageing through exchanges that have not yet been formalized by any country or international/regional organization. A proposal is for Tokyo, Singapore, and Istanbul to form a joint project to implement AGS and SDM. Tokyo and Singapore could jointly cooperate with Bangkok, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur on the topic of AGS/SDM, and Tokyo and Istanbul could similarly collaborate with Bagdad, Baku, and Cairo. Cooperation among international cities could lead to friendships to assist one another on common social issues shared by cities and could encourage shared universal values of human rights without large budgetary expenditures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The metaphor of an 'education hub' was initially promoted as also a policy concept for reversing cross-border student flows to the West in both Malaysia and Singapore. The Singapore version of 'Asian education hub policy' represents a distinct economic policy model of higher education which has since also influenced the very Western contexts it was derived from. However, it appears the Singaporeans might have actually borrowed the policy concept from the Malaysians whose aspirations to reverse international student flows to the West was rather aligned to related national capacity development plans as still something of a public good. This paper will use a Malaysia-Singapore contrast to compare distinct developing country (national/regional) vs. developed country (globalised) conceptions of the Asian education hub model. On this exemplary basis, it will also outline an integrated framework to better make sense of the related yet also often conflicting imperatives of privatization, internationalization and marketization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This cross-case analysis explores national level internationalisation of higher education (IoHE) policies in Singapore and Japan. Through comparison of the state level internationalisation strategies, this paper aims to highlight how each country's unique policy environment impacts their approach to IoHE. The analysis suggests that despite the differing national circumstances and ultimate approaches to internationalisation, both states use it primarily as a means to stay competitive in the twenty-first century global knowledge-based economy. This suggests that while IoHE does build bridges between nations, institutions, and individuals within and between regions, within these cases it is being driven by nationally-centred rationales. While some criticize a competition orientation in IoHE, even with such rationales it may still serve to drive greater collaboration and integration among East Asian higher education systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Once regarded as the most essential subject in the national curriculum vital for civilizing the public, English Literature has now lost its place of prominence. In this paper, I focus on Singapore where the subject was a core aspect of the colonial curriculum and where it is currently facing declining enrolment at the national examinations. In the first part of the paper, I discuss how Literature initially functioned to propagate colonial values education in Singapore and how, following Singapore's independence, its goals were overtaken by a nation-state model of values education. Limitations of this model provide the grounds for a transnational model of critical values education that, as I argue in the second part, may be powerfully conveyed through Literature. It is Literature's capacity to facilitate transnational critical engagements with values and explorations of identity especially involving highly sensitive aspects related to gender, race, and religion that represents the strongest justification in the light of its present demise. What Literature offers is the possibility of engaging with values beyond the confines of Empire or nation by grappling with essential questions about what it means to be a cosmopolitan as opposed to a nationalistic citizen inhabiting the world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

• The Singapore state changed its strategic role in engaging with foreign universities. • Singapore moved from importing global knowledge to fostering local skill formation. • More recently set up offshore campuses are more embedded in local skill formation. • Offshore campuses with high levels of embeddedness serve specifically local functions. With operating offshore campuses, universities perform key education and training functions in regional economies worldwide. Few studies have acknowledged universities' expanded role in knowledge and skill formation as both local providers and transnational managers of education and training. Not enough is known about the embedding of transnational universities in local skill formation and varying levels of embeddedness, as well as about the role of hosting states therein and consequences for local economies. This paper addresses this gap in the context of the city-state of Singapore, exploring how skill development at foreign universities has been locally embedded, and why this embeddedness of offshore campuses in local skill formation has changed over time. Empirical evidence is drawn from semi-structured interviews with managers of foreign university subsidiaries. It is found that the Singapore state has changed its role in engaging with foreign universities, from a first phase of importing 'global' knowledge in teaching and training to a second phase of strengthening 'local' knowledge and skill formation. With being distinctively more embedded than older offshore campuses, recently established subsidiaries perform specifically 'local' functions in Singapore's progressing knowledge-based transformation project. The paper provides better understanding of varying/changing levels of offshore campus embeddedness and the interconnections between changing roles of the state, integration of foreign universities and regional development. A further contribution lies in presenting a conceptualisation of offshore campuses with high levels of embeddedness, helping shed light on the dynamics in local skill formation and in foreign actors' functions for the regional economy more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to ayurveda, siddha medical practice and use outside India has hardly been investigated. Based on an ethnography of siddha and ayurveda clinics conducted in 2019 in Singapore, and secondarily, in southern Malaysia, this paper analyzes the development of these medicines in terms of adaptations, transformations, and the strategies or avoidance necessary to respond to clients/patients' demands and to fit in with the regulations for traditional medicines. Whereas siddha medicine is well established in Malaysia, it is hardly discernible in Singapore, represented by only two clinics: a long-standing one reflecting the tradition, and a recent one, illustrating the process of modernization impelled by the institutionalization of medical knowledge. The practice of ayurveda, by contrast, has seen a significant expansion since the beginning of the twenty-first century in these two countries, a dynamism impelled by its reputation abroad which has been spurring Indian practitioners to migrate and popularize it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this paper, I advance debates that argue that we need to reconceptualise global work from a mobilities perspective by looking how the representation of movement connects with the experience of movement. By looking at the imaginative geographies of Singapore for the British corporate expatriate, I explore how the qualitative representation of place is changing within managerial discourses from a hardship to an opportunity. In doing so, the paper argues that we need to combine understandings of the global economic flows that move some transnational migrants with their everyday lived experiences in order to explore what qualitatively makes work global. This allows us to highlight the multiplicity of ways in which transnational migrants can be understood rather than trying to impose singularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As globalisation becomes more and more familiar in our everyday lives, one readily visible phenomenon is the increasing number of migrants from outside the borders of nation states. This influx of migrants inevitably makes societies more complicated racially and culturally, and a ‘multi-racial’ or ‘multi-cultural’ society is no longer the monopoly of migrant societies such as the United States or Australia. This spread of multi-racial and multi-cultural societies in the world, however, does not mean that we have achieved racial and cultural co-existence (among nationals, and needless to say between host society and migrants) without hierarchies. In the face of a constant flow of migrants, both the host states and host societies need to control migrants, to ensure that migrants will co-exist with the host society as the host society wishes. Hierarchy and difference need to be created and maintained by the host society to control the influx of migrants in their everyday life. This paper explores how Singapore society draws a border between itself and female migrant domestic workers. For this purpose, it examines both everyday discourses of Singaporean employers about female migrant domestic workers and the efforts of the Singapore Muslim Converts’ Association to teach such workers to become ‘good Muslims'. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Globalization and financial liberalization have made market participants and policymakers ponder over the importance of financial interconnectedness and shock spillovers. This discussion is in line with the International Portfolio Theory & Diversification. In this context, this study investigates the intensity and direction of return and volatility spillovers of foreign exchange (FX) markets of Pakistan and its major trading partners. Using an innovative research technique by Diebold and Yilmaz (2009, 2012), we separately compute measures of return and volatility spillovers. Furthermore, we also calculate total spillover, directional spillover, and net spillover indices using a daily data set over the period 1995 to 2019. To capture secular and cyclical movements in the trading partners' FX markets, we rely upon a rolling window analysis. Our results, based on the spillovers indices, support the presence of dynamic connectedness among currency pairs of the major trading partners. We also note that among the sample economies, the USA, the EU, Singapore, and Malaysia are the main sources and originators of shocks spillover while Pakistan, India, Japan, Kuwait, Singapore, and UAE are net shock receivers. The rolling window analysis indicates that returns and volatility spillovers intensify during the phases of financial or economic anxiety. These results have some important implications for individuals working on risk management, portfolio diversification, and trading strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy is a resource of strategic importance for cities, a fortiori global cities that rely on tremendous indirect energy embodied in interregional trades of service industries. The assessment of embodied energy in service industries is thus vital to the committed sustainable development of global cities and fundamental to tailor-made local policymaking. This paper applies Multi-Regional Input-Output analysis to the assessment of total embodied energy in service industries in six global cities, i.e., Beijing, Chongqing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tianjin. It is found that Hong Kong and Singapore have relatively lower energy use intensities compared with the four cities located in Mainland China. Service industries consume 17.02∼46.40 % of total embodied energy in the six cities. Coastal cities like Tianjin, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore have higher proportions of transportation consumption. The four Chinese mainland cities consume a larger proportion of coal than Hong Kong and Singapore. The method and the findings of this paper are expected to facilitate both the government and the industries in energy policymaking for a smarter and more sustainable urban economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates voluntourism activity directed by a local university in Singapore. The phenomenological experience of participating in voluntourism is captured in the form of reflective Instagram posts where voluntourists often report attaining a sense of personal growth and development, centering their experiences at the expense of their underprivileged counterparts. By conducting a text and visual analysis of their Instagram posts, we venture that the participants' travel narratives evince a collaborative effort between their transnational mobilities and the subsequent post-trip reflections to linguistically construct a global selfhood in relation to the underprivileged subject. Such self-presentations are deemed to be culturally valuable, and very much influenced by and in congruence with the Singapore government's globalization project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The industrial revolution followed by globalization and multi-nationalization of businesses has enhanced the need for best practices of corporate governance. This paper examines the influence of corporate governance practices on earnings management. Specifically, the core objective of this study is to test whether the roles of board of directors and other key committees influence Earnings Management (EM) through Discretionary Accruals (DAC). This study has analyzed the governance practices of 326 companies listed in the Singapore stock exchange by using the observations of two years. The structural model linking the corporate governance practices and EM through DAC has been tested using Lisrel 9.1 student version. The key findings of the study are: (1) the chances of recording discretionary accruals are high if the board size is big implying that higher control can lead to better management. These controls must come through appointment of more independent directors for Boards that are big; (2) board independence, segregation of duties between the CEO and chairman, sizes of the audit committee and nomination committee have significant positive influence on board size; (3) the nomination committee influences the remuneration committee directly implying that the motivation for recording discretionary accruals is higher leading to higher possibilities of earnings management; and (4) board size mediates the relationship between corporate governance practices (board independence, segregation of duties between CEO and chairman, audit committee size and nomination committee size) and EM through DAC implying that board size is crucial to effect better control. We accentuate that segregation of responsibilities between the remuneration committee and the nomination committee, when the Board size is big, will reduce earnings management through discretionary accruals. These governance practices will reduce the agony of stakeholders due to broken trust. The findings are pertinent to Asian countries where the institutional investors have a very small role to play. The onus of protecting the minority shareholders and foreign investors are in the hands of insiders. This requires effective corporate governance practices. The regulatory bodies must ensure that the practices of good governance are strictly adhered to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents author's views regarding the impact of social, cultural, and political changes on the manufacturing of education in Singapore which aims to serve the national economy and global city aspirations. Topics include cosmopolitan inclusiveness, ideology of manufacturing and relationship between economy-based governmentality and globalization.

Notions of citizenship and citizenship education that were traditionally related to mainly nation-centric agendas are increasingly inadequate in preparing young citizens for the dynamism of societies and complexities of social issues stimulated by globalization. Depending on the political and social ideologies within and across societies, different citizenship education curricula are designed differently to achieve these goals. This article uses the cases of Australia and Singapore to discuss how different forms of citizenship education can contribute to an ongoing construction of a more just and peaceful world. Through the analysis of the social science curricula in the two countries, three key factors that can influence the value of democratic citizenship education in developing 'active' and 'informed' citizens were identified. First, the extent to which democratic values are referenced as the basis for citizenship, hence supporting an understanding of 'politics' in contexts of diversity. Second, the balance to be sought between development of competencies to achieve nationalistic goals and responding effectively to the dynamism of contemporary societies. Third, the extent to which curriculum arrangements support democratic citizenship development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the globalization of care work often faces the persistent challenge of building meaningful connections between the movement of care labour at a global scale and place‐based frameworks of care access and delivery. In addressing this gap in this article, we propose to take a closer look at how the care‐migration nexus produces 'ideal' care workers through a skills regime. Based on the case of elderly care in Singapore, in this article, we demonstrate how state institutions and private agencies attempts to fill local labour needs by producing care workers among both Singapore citizens and migrant women. This leads to contradictory strategies associated with lowering barriers for citizens to enter the elderly care industry, while raising standards and increasing pre‐training demands for migrant domestic workers to perform more 'professional' care work within the household. We conclude with a discussion of how these strategies can be understood as a process of 'filtering'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the linkage between globalization and CO2 emissions in Singapore by using long-term data obtained during 1970–2014. The Zivot-Andrew unit root test corroborates that gross domestic production, economic globalization, political globalization, social globalization, square of economic growth, and carbon dioxide emissions have a unit root at I(0) and stationary at I(1). In this study, the application of auto-regressive distributed lag model finds a significant linkage between the estimated variables. Short- and long-run coefficients confirm that social globalization and economic globalization will be responsible for reduction in carbon dioxide emissions in the future for Singapore. Moreover, this research confirms the presence of environmental Kuznets curve in Singapore. It is proved that a 1% increase in political globalization will increase 2.06% emissions in the long term. The stability of the model is confirmed by diagnostic tests. In addition, policy implications to reduce air pollution are presented in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a comparative analysis of global citizenship education (GCE) in two primary schools, an international school in Singapore and an independent school in Australia, focusing on the implementation of GCE practices through the adoption of international education models - the International Primary Curriculum (IPC) and the International Baccalaureate Programme (IB) respectively, to create hybrid curricula. The research findings indicate that the curriculum and resources, school culture, school leaders' and teachers' values, as well as the utilisation of human and financial resources all influence how the schools engage with GCE in their quest towards internationalisation. A key overarching finding of the research relates to the tensions between critical democratic and educational domains and neo-liberal market rationales, which had significantly affected the schools' decisions in curricula and GCE enactment within both schools. Despite their commitment to GCE ideals, both schools were equally mindful about being distinctive and remaining competitive within their educational markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Study of the trajectory of arts education in Singapore through examination of key policies and government reports suggests that, although the arts and arts education have generally taken a back seat to other national priorities, the government has consistently utilized them for ideological and political purposes. Arts education is typically subjected to the bureaucratic imagination, which assigns to arts education a particular state-sanctioned role. Whether to ennoble students as citizens of a newly independent nation or to endow them with the innovativeness believed to be necessary to a knowledge-based economy, arts education in Singapore has often shouldered the sociocultural aspirations of the ruling elite. This has been true even if the subject has not always been the recipient of unwavering political support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Singapore, land constraints have steered planning policies toward higher-density living such that strangers must coexist in even closer proximity than ever before. As arenas for the enactment of everyday routines, neighbourhood nightlife spaces have the potential to generate a convivial atmosphere for social interactions among different users. Drawing on ieldwork in Toa Payoh Central, we begin by examining the physical environment as the point of departure for our observations on the social and civic qualities of a quotidian neighbourhood after dark, and from which we then discuss spatial planning for inclusive public spaces at night. The indings reveal that good quality public spaces can help promote urban conviviality and social diversity in a globalising city like Singapore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its dramatic metamorphosis from British colonial port to gleaming ‘world class city’, Singapore has become an object of imitative desire for cities around the world, and has even begun exporting its urban planning techniques to countries such as China, Brazil, the UAE and Rwanda. This essay considers some of the implications of Singapore's ascendance to position of aspirational city for the Global South. I begin by reflecting on the distinct spatial technologies the Singaporean state has utilized to elevate itself to a model, neoliberalizing global city. As disruptions of the mimetic desire for Singapore, I analyse several films by Singaporean documentary filmmaker Tan Pin Pin:9th August(2006),Singapore Gaga(2005) and80kmh(2004). The films reveal disregarded and ephemeral perspectives of the city, deconstructing the spatial imaginaries that underpin triumphant narratives of Singapore's rise. Tan's films index heterogeneous desires for differential spaces – communal, rural and transnational – and other linkages beyond the touted ‘network infrastructure’ of the global city. This essay thus complicates those imaginaries of Singapore as a city that has leap-frogged over its conditions of postcoloniality to become the exemplary aspirational city of twenty-first-century global capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many universities strive to become world-class and two of Singapore's universities are almost there, being ranked 12th and 13th in the QSWUR 2015/16. This study looked into the details of indicator rankings and found that the two universities are comparable to those in the top 10 universities in the same ranking in practically all indicators with the exception of Citations. Further analysis of the data of the 58 highest ranking universities with complete data revealed discrepancies in the assigned and attained indicator weights. Moreover, the Academic and Citations categories were not able to be used in stepwise regression calculations. These indicate that the computed Overall result is not what the ranker intended it to be and needs re-interpretation. If rankings are not anchored in statistical ground, discussions on rankings are at the abstract and verbal level, similar to discourses on alchemy (faith) vis-a-vis chemistry (facts). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Singapore economy has undergone rapid growth and structural transformation from a Third World laggard to a First World sophisticated and dynamic economy. It has overcome constraints of land and natural resources by adopting free trade and investment strategies and building on its global and regional maritime and air links. However, despite its very high per capita income, Singapore's technological, innovative and entrepreneurial capabilities are not on par with the most advanced economies. High dependence on foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) and government-linked-companies (GLCs) has contributed to the underdevelopment of local private enterprise and innovation. High dependence on "foreign talent" has also contributed to the underdevelopment of local talent. For future sustainable development, Singapore has to succeed as an innovative economy, and the state will have an important role as facilitator of local innovation and enterprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For several decades, Singapore has experienced a high rate of outbound degree mobility with around 1 in 10 higher education students currently studying outside the country according to UNESCO figures. Singapore’s successful economic development strategy, which has seen it become a key Asian hub for knowledge-intensive industries for internationalized services, has benefited from the presence of large numbers of graduates who have been educated abroad. However, significant numbers of Singaporean students do not return home after their studies, and since the late 1990s, the government has expressed concern about the resulting “brain drain.” This article examines four strategies that have been used by the Singapore government to address this concern: reducing the number of outbound students through improvements to domestic study options, promoting the return of graduates after their studies, engagement with the Singaporean diaspora, and recruitment of incoming international students into the workforce. While data are limited, the measures adopted to support each of these approaches appear to have had some success over the past decade. While the circumstances of each sending country vary, the case of Singapore is illustrative of the types of practical measures that are effectively adopted by governments to moderate the negative impacts of student emigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about the contestation of two different forms of nationalism in Singapore during and after two elections in 2011. Manufactured nationalism is top-down, state-defined and economically driven, concerned mainly about accumulation of national wealth through globalization that would eventually ‘trickle down’ to the masses. This view is promoted by the ruling People's Action Party (PAP). The PAP projects Singapore as a state born out of the party's triumph over colonialism, racial violence, and communist insurgency. Popular nationalism, on the other hand, is bottom-up and people driven, concerned about local issues concerning national identity, social cohesion, and an appreciation (or at least an understanding) of local heritage. Proponents of popular nationalism emphasize a common beginning (birth of independent Singapore on 9 August 1965), shared historical memories (local heritage), several elements of a common culture (such as the use of Singlish), and an association with a specific ‘homeland’ (born and raised in Singapore and, for males, the completion of conscription). They view Singapore as a nation-state with a unique and evolving identity destabilized by a liberal immigration policy. The elections generated considerable attention due to the gains by the opposition parties and the public airing of frustrations against the PAP government. These frustrations are strongly driven by the influx of new migrants, especially those classified as ‘foreign talent’ by the PAP government. In this article, I argue that popular nationalism has emerged in twenty-first century Singapore and examine the debates over the future of Singapore during and after the elections. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article critically examines the sense-making processes of key stakeholders of Singapore's education: a historically dominant city-state, highly-qualified teachers, and high-performing students. The article interrogates the Teaching Schools Learning Nation policy initiative deployed toward achieving a knowledge-based economy. The article uses micropolitics in exploring issues that stakeholders face in the midst of globalization. Findings from research at the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice at the National Institute of Education support key arguments. In exploring sense-making processes, the article uncovers paradoxical interpretational responses of stakeholders implementing the Teaching Schools Learning Nation policy, providing a critique of the city-state's knowledge-based economy ambitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]