foreign workers - not in our backyard please

LAST year Singaporeans objected to the dead being sited near them when people in Sin Ming estate protested against the building of a funeral parlour there.
This month they are objecting to the living. Serangoon Gardens residents are up in arms about foreign workers being housed in a vacant school building within the estate.
You can bet on it: 'Not in my backyard!' will be heard more frequently in Singapore in the coming years. With land already scarce and the population still growing, the contest for space can only get more intense.
Anecdotally, I have heard of protests against columbariums, kindergartens, car parks, childcare centres, playgrounds - necessary facilities all, just 'not in my backyard'.
The real contest is however not about space. It is about power, pride and prejudice.
Power, because the ones most vocal in these protests and petitions tend to be middle-class folk, the socio-economic equals of their MPs and the bureaucrats who make decisions on siting of facilities.
Pride, because inherent in any group's attempt to push some facility away to another part of Singapore is an implied statement that their area is superior and entitled to the right not to be encumbered with undesirable amenities - or what one blogger has called 'disamenities'.
Prejudice, because underlying many of these protests are stated and unstated fears and assumptions.
In the Serangoon Gardens case, all three came together when residents got together to start a petition against turning the Serangoon Gardens Technical School building into a temporary dormitory for 1,000 foreign workers.
Serangoon Gardens is a staunchly middle-class estate that dates back half a century. Unlike nouveau riche middle-class Singaporeans, its residents are largely English-speaking and socially conservative.
Their spoken and unspoken fears: The foreign workers will litter, loiter, spit, steal, speak loudly, molest children and rob old people.