Navigating Transnationalism: Immigration and Reconfigured Ethnicity

Abstract

Tonkichi restaurant and the 'Gulong-Gulong' are located opposite each other across the intersection of Scotts Road and Orchard Road, at the heart of Singapore's internationally renowned shopping district. They exemplify the spatiality and contours of Singapore's evolving transnational ethnic landscape. The emergence of this new social landscape illustrates the interactions between the state's governance guided by a neoliberal logic and migrant desires and practices in search of livelihoods. Neoliberal governance, as a form of state management, emphasises optimisation and flexibility; it is a way in which a state adjusts political and social spaces in response to the order of global capital. The Singaporean state has exemplified this kind of neoliberal governance since the 1990s, when the "survival" of the nation subtly shifted focus from ethnic harmony to economic excellence as the future of the nation became deeply intertwined with the processes of globalization, and the competitiveness of the nation came to rely on the marketability of its inhabitants. In this essay, we consider two distinct but closely related features of Singapore in the last decade of the 20th century and early years of the 21st century. Both are related to the flow of migrants into and through the national territory and port-city of Singapore.