The Singaporean Muslim Community’s Road to Social Mobility

This book progresses the nuanced idea that, to truly understand social mobility among the Muslim youth of Singapore, it is imperative to examine how their religious, cultural, and communal values intersect with structural factors in influencing their notion and pursuit of ‘success’.

The book argues that prevailing definitions of success – centred on credentials, income, and occupational prestige – offer an incomplete account of social mobility, particularly for minority communities. Rather than rejecting established indicators of mobility, the chapters situate them within a broader evaluative landscape that recognises multiple dimensions of aspiration and achievement. Drawing on findings from qualitative interviews conducted with Singaporean Muslim millennials and Gen Z, the book illuminates the range of attitudes and behaviours adopted by young Muslims of different professional and socio-economic backgrounds towards their academic and career pursuits. The book foregrounds a ‘values system’ approach, analysing these values in terms of their influence on youths’ outlook towards success, and highlighting their interaction with structural impediments. By foregrounding value systems, the book reframes mobility as a negotiated process shaped by religious commitments, cultural norms, and structural conditions, and advances current understandings of educational outcomes among minorities.

Focusing on the implications for policy, community initiatives, and future research on minority mobility, this book will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and postgraduates involved in sociology and minority studies, the sociology of religion, and Southeast Asian studies more broadly.