Singapore is one of the few global cities in the world with no informal settlements. Despite this, there is a clear presence of socially segregated areas, related in particular to the practices of unskilled migrant communities who move to an urban environment to provide services for the big city. The paper analyses the reasons and nature of the ‘geographies of inequality’, by using the keys to interpretation proposed by Wacquant on the relationship between forms of social segregation and globalisation. The paper also takes a look at polices. The phenomenon may in fact be understood as part of a government strategy towards these recently migrated poor groups in the population in which the controlled access dimension seems designed to create a ‘temporary two tier social structure’ which does not encourage integration.
Keywords: Inequality; urban segregation; integration