ABSTRACT

This talk explores mainland Chinese migrants’ claims to belonging and citizenship, and the host society’s denial of such claims. Contrary to claims from mainland Chinese professional migrants that they are like Singaporeans, Singaporean-Chinese segregate between a “middle-class” us and a “working-class” them. This talk analyses how Singaporean-Chinese imagine the Chinese, especially female migrants, as marked by bad dressing, poor hygiene and sexual immorality. For Singaporean-Chinese, these markers position Chinese migrants as of the lower classes. This talk concludes with a critical consideration of how migrants’ middle-class background or the possession of formal citizenship may not indicate a right to belong.

DETAILS

July 22, 2:00pm in Singapore or 4pm in Melbourne time.

Register via Zoom here.

SPEAKERS

Sylvia Ang is Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University. Her research with migrants in and from Asia is interested in the production and experiences of difference and inequalities, with a focus on ethnic relations, class, gender, postcolonialism and decolonisation.

Kung Chien Wen is assistant professor in the department of History at the National University of Singapore. His research straddles the fields of Sinophone history, Chinese migration and diaspora, the Cold War and decolonisation in Southeast Asia, and modern China in the world. His first book, Diasporic Cold Warriors (Columbia University Press, 2022), explains how the Chinese in the Philippines became Southeast Asia’s most ardent overseas Chinese supporters of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) from the 1950s to 1970s.

ABOUT THIS SERIES

The Singapore Studies Junior Scholar Seminars are organised by AcademiaSG, an international and independent collective of Singaporean scholars, as part of our mission to promote research on Singapore.