Singapore: Hungry for Foreign Workers at All Skill
Levels
By Brenda S.A. Yeoh
National University of Singapore
January 2007
Established as a British trading colony in 1819, the history and
fortunes of Singapore, an island-state located between Malaysia and
Indonesia, have been closely intertwined with migrants and
migration.
Today, Singapore's population of almost 4.5 million includes
citizens of Malaysian, Chinese, and Indian descent as well as
thousands of foreign workers from across Southeast and South Asia.
Not surprisingly, the country has four official languages: English,
Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil.
Singapore, which became an independent nation in 1965, has few
natural resources and limited space. Yet it has become a
first-world country since the 1980s, due in large part to its
transformation from a manufacturing to a service-driven economy. As
a result, it has become even hungrier for foreign workers at all
levels of the labor market.
Read more here: http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?id=570