ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a short history of Chinese migration to Singapore, and why race, ethnicity, and the state matter in this context. It then reconfigures concepts of diaspora and diasporic space to better account for the lives and realities of Chinese Singaporeans, arguing that current conceptions of diaspora and diasporic space have several inherent weaknesses, owing much to diaspora’s conceptualisation as a unifying charter of ethnic identity. The chapter shows how Singapore’s social, historical, and political processes have further complicated these weaknesses, and why it is necessary to redefine diaspora and reconfigure diasporic space into transdiasporic space. It argues that the formation of the nation-state of Singapore, comprised of a numerical majority of Chinese individuals, is at heart a story of race, ethnicity, globalisation and diaspora. Transdiasporic space is made in the encounters and interactions of migratory and diasporic individuals, both during their actual diasporic and geographic movements, as well as in their quotidian lives.
