Glopo Engagement Activity: Personal Motivation

My Global Politics EA is, in truth, not my original plan; initially, I wanted to investigate the impacts and policies regarding the refugee crisis, and refugee management, in Italy. However, given that the COVID-19 situation has rendered an engagement activity in Italy an impossibility, I believe that my chosen engagement topic, that is, the CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian, Other) policy in Singapore, follows a very similar theme, and dips into many similar topics, as the refugee crisis. Both topics deal with the concepts of social integration, trans-ethnic harmony, and coexistence (though these elements are far more pronounced within my original idea of the refugee crisis, given that the refugees, and the countries they are immigrating to [in my case, Italy], have much less in common than the ethnicities of Singapore, united under a Singaporean national Identity). Because of this, while I was not able to pursue my chosen topic in Italy, I will be able to study a topic that is similar, though perhaps not as immediately salient, as the refugee crisis, here in Singapore. Furthermore, both topics regard matters of public policy and its impacts in facilitating and promoting ethnic harmony; for my Italian engagement, I wanted to meet with the city of Milan’s primary assessor of social policies regarding management and integration of refugees, and work at a refugee camp, to gain a firsthand perspective into the effects of said policies. Similarly, in Singapore, I hope, within my engagements, to gain a strong foundation, and a good perspective, on the effectiveness of efforts to promote racial harmony and strengthen the Singaporean national identity within the CMIO policy, as well as analysing the nature of many criticisms levelled against the policy.