The influence exerted by the habitus of social service practitioners on the outcomes of welfare appeals, is corroborated by the ‗bitter‘ experiences of some working poor Malay families:
You see all the household items in my house are complete. But I never bought a single thing! They are hand-me-downs… Yes, during home visits, when the workers come and check, they question so much… It‘s like they stare at everything in your house, when clearly, I‘m telling you they are hand-me-down(s). (2G, F7)
Working poor Malays, especially those who were younger or had body tattoos, were frequently interrogated or viewed with suspicion whenever they sought aid.
Faced with these stigmatizing undercurrents, many were tongue-tied. Some merely submitted, in the hope that their applications for assistance will be
approved. Others retracted their welfare applications altogether, often as the last means of preserving the remnants of their dignity. Here, my informants‘ ‗silent‘
withdrawal can also be interpreted as stemming from their lack of cultural capital to deal effectively with covert forms of institutional prejudice against the poor.
Interestingly, some social service practitioners revealed the role of discretion during welfare disbursement:
A couple of days ago, a rejected applicant created a scene somewhere and finally, my boss just decided to approve. [Really?] Yes, they just approved. That is my superiors‘ discretion to give or not. Because they may have ‗balance‘ money that they can use to give to others based on their discretion or not lah. (SSP1)
If you have a problem, don‘t make it [just] your [own] problem… Make it everybody‘s problem, and then you start something [get what you want]. What I mean is make the problem big ah! (SSP7)
These social service practitioners let slip that whilst ‗silence‘ normally begets no positive results in one‘s welfare application, creating ‗commotion‘ does otherwise. For working poor Malays, the more ‗aggressive‘ they are with their demands, the more likely they are to be successful in claiming their welfare benefits. For social service practitioners, it appears that discretionary disbursement sporadically occurred to diffuse ‗troublesome‘ applicants and contain the problem of poverty, shoving it into ‗invisibility.‘
‗Race‘ is also an important underlying principle, which affected the habitus of different social actors, across varying situations. For instance, several working poor Malays revealed their experiences with welfare rejections:
Sorry to say for Malay social workers, there‘s this one. She like want to help, don‘t want to help [us]... That’s the weird thing. Even though she’s Malay, she looks down on us [italics added]. (3G, F6)
When we switched social workers from Malay to Chinese, our financial help [Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund] was stopped. The [Chinese] social worker we met was okay, but she said: ―Don‘t you want to switch your daughters from madrasah [religious school] to secular schools?‖ From then on, we already know something was ‗there‘
[amiss]… She continued: ―You already know it‘s expensive, so why didn‘t you change? I told my wife: ―Forget it. We are not here to fight.‖
Formally, they [Chinese social workers] keep repeating to ask help from Mendaki and that they cannot help. It‘s like I‘m Malay, I should ask for help also from Malay organizations. If Malay [social worker], this problem won’t happen. (2G, F8)
From the data, there are two plausible explanations as to why working poor Malays are denied help. First, it may be caused by the divergences between the habitus of Malays and non-Malays. To put it simply, non-Malay social service practitioners may be less willing than Malay social service practitioners, to disburse national-level educational aid to poor Malay-Muslim students from madrasah (F8). Second, it may be due to the tendencies of working poor Malays to interpret the rejections of individual social service practitioners in racial terms.
In Chapter 4, I have shown that the Malay working poor have acquired a habitus, which heightens their consciousness of their ‗ethnic minority‘ status. Here, F6 construed the rejection as a ‗puzzling betrayal by a fellow Malay‘ whereas F8 read it to be a ‗discriminatory act by a non-Malay.‘
Whilst F6 and F8 may be dismissed as the isolated grumbles of the working poor, a few Malay social service practitioners have made similar claims:
We have worked with other non-Malay social workers who say: ―You give them help ah? Their house so big, you know?‖ But how do you know that‘s their furniture? It could be hand-me-downs. Some refused to give them financial assistance because of their ‗wealthy‘ projection...
Because during home visit, rumah class [the house is well-off]! Maybe low-income Malay homes are well furnished and very clean... But for the houses of other ethnic groups, it can be piled up with newspapers, giving the impression of poverty... Maybe Malay social workers are more empathetic to this, we can contextualize why this is common for our own people. With other FSCs, there are non-Malays… It may not be
discrimination per se, but it could be a cultural difference and perception of what‘s happening. (Malay, SSP5)
SSP5‘s statement indirectly sheds light on the problematic shortage of Malay social service practitioners, and its unintended repercussions. In lacking the cultural capital that is relevant for their Malay clients, non-Malay social service practitioners were likely to misunderstand the peculiar circumstances framing their ethnic practices as a ‗cultural‘ deficit (through no fault of their own). As SSP5 aptly illuminated, the graver problem occurs when this disjuncture in habitus, ends up curtailing the Malay working poor‘s access to welfare. On the other hand, some Malay clients also resisted confiding in non-Malay social service practitioners due to language barriers or unfamiliarity (SSP8):
For me, the challenges would be how to convince them [Malay clients].
Because no matter what, I‘m not Malay. No matter what I say, they still have the difficulty [to trust me]. They will think: ―You are not Malay, you don‘t understand my culture.‖ (non-Malay, SPP8)
Similarly, social service practitioners problematized the ‗inward-looking‘
tendencies of working poor Malays to approach Malay bodies or officers for help:
Sometimes, we have to blame our own Malay families. Whenever they want to ask for help, they go to MUIS or Mendaki. So very few actually come to ask for help from other places... If at PA (People‘s Association), those who come are usually Chinese! If our people, can count with your fingers! This is the thing with Malays. They don‘t ask for help when actually got a lot of sources available. Easy said, maybe Malays are stupid... Oops! (laughs) (Malay, SSP2)
In addition, other Malay social service practitioners also castigated their Malay colleagues for imposing their middle-class values when assessing a welfare applicant:
Actually, I am very critical of the way Malay-Muslim organizations give out welfare to our own community... I mean when you hear these people (welfare officers) saying: ―We can‘t give too much face to our own
people. Wait they will climb all over your heads!‖ Seriously, what do you mean by that? It‘s really about ‗colour‘ [discrimination] lah... Our own people don‘t help their own community. (Malay, SSP2)
A few Malay leaders extended this claim, as reflecting a larger concern — the growing social distance between middle-class and working poor Malays:
Another problem I see is that those who have moved up don‘t want to come back. Sometimes when you have moved up, you think you‘ve made it and think this is applicable to all and you become sort of patronizing… You want to help, you are genuine… This is the trend I‘ve been seeing for the last two years. I met a Malay boy and he said: ―I don‘t play soccer.‖ And I‘m was thinking: ―What are you talking about?‖
Then suddenly it dawned on me, he doesn‘t want to be associated with the Malay community because soccer is Malay… So I composed myself and said that back then, I played soccer for the engineering faculty. I was the goalie, and represented my faculty. Then he said: ―When I grew up, I didn‘t have Malay friends.‖ So, you realize that it is to signal that I‘m different from this kerak [decadent group]... It‘s a dissociation. (CL1)
A common thread cutting across these statements is the pervasiveness of the multiracialism ideology, and the accompanying community ‗self-help‘
discourse, and how they have influenced the habitus and practices of social actors.
Leveraging on racial ties (social capital), my Malay informants, across divergent class backgrounds, placed greater expectations on Malay social service practitioners or leaders rather than non-Malay ones, to help needy Malays.
Furthermore, it also appears that some non-Malay social service practitioners were predisposed to relegate welfare responsibility to Malay-Muslim bodies rather than national organizations, when particular ‗Malay-Muslim‘ issues were raised (ie. helping needy madrasah pupils).
By subscribing to these discourses, my interviewees have generally developed a habitus, which is inclined to misrecognize poverty as a ‗community‘
problem, rather than a ‗class‘ issue. Although mainstream financial schemes were
available, at the level of practice, welfare assistance was primarily channelled and/or sought through community ‗self-help‘ organizations, which were already strained by the dearth of funding and manpower. This mismatch between the undersubscription of available national resources (field) and the oversubscription of welfare from Malay organizations (habitus), coupled with the rhetoric of multiracialism and community ‗self-help‘ (discourses), indirectly worsen the existing bottleneck in social services for poorer Malays.