Resettlement of Bukom Kechil: Southern Islanders and the making of the housing nation in Singapore

Abstract

This article seeks to tell the story of how the development of Singapore's multiracial housing nation involved resettling all of the islanders on one of the Southern Islands, Bukom Kechil. Little has been written about the development of the housing nation vis-a-vis the Southern Islands, about its manner and consequences. The aim of the essay is to study the resettlement of a particular small island population into, relatively speaking, a large city with a completely different physical and socioeconomic ecology. In what follows, I will examine four key mechanisms that underpinned the resettlement of the Southern Islands and un-homed its majority Malay population: (1) the harnessing of key institutions, such as gotong royong, for political canvassing, (2) the appropriation of the land by the state, (3) the pecahan (breakup) which un-homed the Malay islanders, and (4) the tight political and economic alliance with global investors.