citizenship imaginations is Siva Gopal Thaiyalan’s doctoral research that aimed to advance a call to recognise young people’s lived citizenship experiences beyond just their formal and public forms of expressions – in ways that pays attention to their lived and everyday experiences of citizenship. Lived citizenship is concerned with not just what young people do as citizens, but also their imaginations of citizenship which involves their ability to critique society, political and economic injustices in their everyday lives. Such a quality of mind becomes expressions of their citizenship with an aim to maintain, continue and repair the world in order to live in it together as well as possible. The research involved 40 young Singaporeans aged 17-25 who were involved in focus-group dialogues, followed by a photovoice project that accompanied a one-on-one debrief of the photos to dig deeper into their meanings behind their imaginations. Some of the imaginations are showcased below:
This research was conducted with human ethics approval from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand (#23673). The materials here are published with participants’ informed consent and only their self-selected pseudonyms are used here.
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Courtesy Conversations [Curry, Male] – “When I saw this, I was thinking “oh, they must be talking to each other” cos [sic] it is very rare you see two Courtesy Lions* facing each other. This is just something that’s missing cos nowadays you don’t really see it anymore.”
*Singa the Courtesy Lion was created in 1982 to educate the public on courtesy and graciousness through a campaign. On 15 May 2013, Singa wrote a letter of resignation stating that he was too tired to continue facing an increasingly angry and disagreeable society.
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Muslim food stall [Lester, Male] – “[this] is the Muslim food stall … I always go to this food stall not because it taste the best but you just sort of appreciate the fact that you can have different culture [sic], different types of food you can have in everyday life. That’s not an easy thing unless you are in Singapore … this photo encapsulates what it means to me to be in a multi-culture society. This Muslim food stall always has long queue but I’ll always be loyal this … I have a good friend who is also a Muslim. So we enjoy having meals together, enjoy the time just chit-chatting while queuing and sitting at the same table with the same type of food. I think it brings along the ideas of multiculturalism in Singapore and I really appreciate that our ‘forefathers’ have paved the way for multi-racial society. Now we are so harmonious that you can get to enjoy all these things. It’s time for us to start to appreciating this and not just take it for granted.”
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Everyone thinks that someone else would do it? [Watson, Female] – “I went in (the train), I didn’t see the tissue paper at first but later when I was using my phone, I saw it … at first I thought like everyone saw it because it was right at my feet. Maybe they thought that it was me that threw it but it’s not me. So I just like waited until it was my stop, I picked up and then walk out of the train and threw it … it’s so obvious on the floor, but nobody picked it up.”
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Give it up for others [Doraemon, Female] – “it’s very important for those [of us] who are healthy and fit to give up their seats on buses … for those who are sick or not feeling very well, they can get to sit down … I don’t mind … but if they are fit and healthy … and if there’s [sic] people who need the seats more than us … it is a natural act to give up their seats … a lot of people focus on their handphones so much … even if there are elderlies standing beside them, they also don’t know … I feel that they need to be more aware and considerate of their surrounding.”
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Who am I? [Jo, Female] – “my family is like very typical … you know the term ‘bananas’; yellow on the outside but super white on the inside. Cos nobody in my family speak Chinese even my grandparents don’t speak Chinese because they were all educated {in English]. So back then they totally tried to erase Chinese from their system because they want to push for English. Chinese New Year is like ‘celebrate for the sake of celebrating’. It’s not like anything special because my family already meets up like every week. Maybe sometimes, you bring the Chinese New Year food and then meet and pretend to be Chinese. Chinese New Year doesn’t really mean that much to us. But over these last couple of months, we’ve been learning a lot about culture cos I take Lit(erature). We did some Singapore Lit and I started to realise there’s a lot of things to learn from the Chinese culture as well. So I took this (photo) because these are like Chinese New Year decorations outside my house and I found them quite pretty and I feel that it’s good that even as we are moving towards becoming more westernise, we are still trying to preserve our culture”
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May this be my lucky year! [Bobby, Male] – “This happen to be outside the library with all the predictions for this year’s zodiac signs. I think that is quite traditional. I don’t follow it but I like to see. Singapore doesn’t really have much identity but this is the few remaining. We are the only Asian country that probably celebrate all four (major) religious holidays. I think it’s important because we are very multi-racial … at least if we have this kind of thing, we kind of show appreciation to it. They are still part of the society. You don’t want to neglect them. Being multi-racial, it’s kind of Singapore. You don’t want it to go away.”
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How much can be done to alleviate poverty? [Emma, Female] – “I took (this photo) when I was reading … it was kind of depressing because it reminded me of the kids I’m teaching … so there’s one girl who is … I guess she’s from a higher SES (socio-economic status) and the language she uses … really amazes me and then like the rest they would just struggle to speak in proper sentences. Especially this one girl, she was brought up by her grandma cos her parents separated … it just pains me … it’s called the ‘reading catastrophe’ and it talks about how at a young age … there’s a difference between the children coming from a low SES and high SES and the amount of exposure that they receive, the experiences and along with that is the number of words that hear every day. I can’t remember the exact figure but it’s really massive. They said that how from the age of 3, they can predict your trajectory of vocabulary growth all the way until like Primary 6 and then even after that. So it will constantly be an increasing gap between those two kinds of children … it just made me question actually what can policy do to alleviate this kind of issue of poverty?”
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A place where I feel at home [Annie, Female] – “I feel like running track really holds a very important place in my heart. I feel like running itself, it is something that I do not only because as a way to keep fit but I see it also a bonding activity with my friends … friends that I feel like they value your friendship over a lot of things … I find it a joy to work (run) with them.”
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Void deck is not void [Chrysanthemum, Male] – “there is a shop that has been there [at the void deck] since I was born and it’s still running well. It’s a place where you go down in the middle of the night, and it is the same guy [running the shop]. It’s like you have this kind of relationship with the community space at the void deck. You have funerals there, you have weddings there, you have kids playing soccer, even though it’s illegal. So, the void deck is something very special to me because there’s so many things that can happen at the void deck. People fail to realise that the place is called a void deck like there should be nothing there but there’s so many things going on there. The main point I want to bring across is that I really treasure my void deck because there’s been a lot of thing that have happen there that shaped my view of my community. They are very specific occurrences like my aunt’s wedding, my uncle’s wedding, my cousin’s wedding, my neighbour’s funeral, a group of students from a nearby school got arrested because they set fire to a motorcycle at the void deck. All at the same void deck … to me the void deck has so many appearances … it just means something to me.”
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What needs to be preserved? [Barney, Male] – “I think as we progress, we are somehow neglecting our heritage. When it comes to all those all buildings, they are getting demolished to make way for the MRT [Mass Rapid Transit]. And also when they were disputing about building that new (MRT) line where they have to cut across that nature reserve, I felt like it’s quite sad that in the end it has to be done.”
imaginations 