ABSTRACT
Local ethnic relations in Singapore are shifting; whereas tensions used to arise from differential treatment of local state-defined races, now they arise from a stronger divide between citizens and foreigners. Even if ethnic tensions among different racialized groups remain significant, in recent years, there have been considerable schisms between citizens and foreign workers, especially workers from Mainland China. Since independence, the government’s official platform of multiracialism aimed to simplify the management of a multiracialized population. However, the 1990s and 2000s have been characterized by a combination of biculturalism and foreign talent recruitment aimed at benefitting Singapore economically from closer cultural relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The city-state’s strategic repositioning in the international knowledge-based economy has been one of staking out a middleman position between Mainland China and Western societies and has not only sustained the national goal of economic development but has also directly impacted local ethnic dynamics. In addition to provoking negative reactions from local non-Chinese citizens, this opening up to the PRC has also reiterated a reframing of Chineseness1 that obfuscates local Chinese historical and sociological distinctions, including Huaren cultures, Peranakans and Babas.2 As such, the local nationalistic sentiments that have surfaced can be understood as a reaction to Singapore’s international repositioning, and these sentiments are manifested concretely through
various forms of protest against the government-facilitated increase in the number of PRC foreign workers, including the 2011 ‘cook curry’ movement.3
