Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
3-2017
Abstract
This article critically examines the hijab debate in Singapore by drawing upon the lived experiences of Singaporean Malay-Muslim women whose daily lives are fraught with a constant negotiation between their identities as veiled women and the institutionalized constraints that impede their social mobility and voices in the public arena. Drawing upon publicly accessible data and findings from in-depth interviews with Malay-Muslim nurses, the article explores the everyday lived struggles of women working in Singapore’s public healthcare sector organizations. These struggles illustrate a decade-old public debate on the hijab. We show how these women’s narratives reflect their intersectional subjectivities, which unravel dominant state discourses on multiracialism that claim the incompatibility of the hijab with secularism. We argue that a re-positioning of the existing debate beyond its dominant association with race is crucial in overcoming the political inertia that continues to plague the hijab issue in Singapore.
Keywords
Healthcare, hijab, multiracialism, secularism, Singapore
Discipline
Asian Studies | Race and Ethnicity
Research Areas
Sociology
Publication
South East Asia Research
Volume
25
Issue
2
First Page
107
Last Page
121
ISSN
0967-828X
Identifier
10.1177/0967828X17699919
Publisher
Taylor and Francis Group
Citation
WONG, George, & WONG, George.(2017). Voices behind the veil: Unravelling the hijab debate in Singapore through the lived experiences of hijab-wearing Malay-Muslim women. South East Asia Research, 25(2), 107-121.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/4098
Copyright Owner and License
Publisher
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1177/0967828X17699919