Education Infrastructures and Migrant Un/Belonging: Indian Students in Singapore

This project seeks to understand the role of “education infrastructures” in shaping the terms and extent of belonging amongst Indian migrants in Singapore. We define “education infrastructures” as distinct spaces in which youth “learn”, with “learning” encompassing academic, cultural, and religious knowledge. These otherwise separate spaces intersect to form a network of learning – or an “education infrastructure” as we term it – that serves to instruct youth in ways of “being” and “doing” the performance of identity and citizenship. Although these spaces can foster connections and feelings of belonging, they can also give rise to disconnections, as tensions are exposed between the lived experience of being a migrant, and the desired outcomes of these different, and sometimes divergent, spaces of education. Our study will focus on four different types of school and two universities, as well as other spaces of learning beyond the school (such as language centers, or sports clubs) that constitute the education infrastructures within which Indian students are embedded. These locations stretch the construct of education, revealing tensions and slippages that come from navigating the ideals of a global world with the everyday realities of living as a migrant in Singapore. By looking beyond the spaces of the school, we can appreciate how international schools are (dis)embedded from their urban environments, yet also how students learn from the urban spaces they inhabit.