By Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh | Yahoo!
Newsroom – 10
hours ago
COMMENT
China-born Feng Tian Wei’s Olympic table tennis bronze medal has
sparked an outcry in this country about what it means to be a true
Singaporean.
Yet the problem is not so much that Ms Feng has failed to integrate
into Singapore. It is that the people who grew up in Singapore,
myself included, have failed to integrate into Ms Feng’s
Singapore—the Singapore of the future.
For better or worse, the era of Singaporean national identity, the
one that our founding fathers tried to establish, is fading.
In many countries, national identity develops from a common tribal
base, whether stemming from ethnicity, as in Japan, or religion, as
in Pakistan. In some other countries, national identity is nurtured
initially through a shared values system—for example, freedom and
opportunity in the United States.
On August 9th 1965, Singapore had neither.
“Some countries are born independent. Some achieve independence.
Singapore had independence thrust upon it, “says Lee Kuan Yew,
Singapore’s first prime minister, in his memoirs.
UNIQUE TRIBAL BASE
Singapore hence tried to establish both a unique tribal base as
well as a shared values system. The unique Singapore tribe
comprises Chinese, Indians and Malays, who speak English, Mandarin,
Malay and Tamil and worship at temples, mosques and churches.
Almost every other person from outside this polyglot tribe was
welcomed into the new Singapore of 1965, but was stuck with the
rather uncharitable, amorphous label of “Others”.
Singapore also ingrained a common set of values in people—hard
work, tolerance, the importance of meritocracy, and the belief in
pragmatism both in day-to-day behaviours and national
policies.
While the economy grew rapidly, Singaporean identity always
remained in flux. Meanwhile, from the mid 1990s till today, a
dramatic experiment in mass immigration as a means to counter low
birth rates has made identity formation all the harder.
In 1990, more than 86% of Singapore’s population was made up of
citizens. By 2011, this had dropped to below 63%. More telling,
given the high number of new citizens from abroad, is the fact that
perhaps less than 50% of Singapore’s total population was actually
born here.
Put another way, Singapore is possibly the only country in the
world where there are more migrants—including temporary workers,
permanent residents and naturalised citizens—than native-born
people. Some like to call the US a country of migrants. Singapore
is much more—it is a country for migrants.
'ASIAN JACK-OF-ALL TRADES'
Proponents of high immigration in Singapore point to the
demographic make-up of global cities such as London and New York as
exemplars. This argument is somewhat defensible from an economic
point of view, but it also reveals the fundamental problem with
Singaporean identity.
London and New York are global cities that are connected to much
larger heartlands. Singapore, largely because of history and
politics, is untethered from our most obvious heartland, the Malay
Peninsular. We have tried to position ourselves as the Asian
jack-of-all trades, a developed world hodge-podge that is both all
of Asia and yet not Asia at all. Again, while this may work
economically, from an identity standpoint, contradictions
abound.
This combination of globalisation, low birth rates and high
immigration has essentially overturned the very essence of
Singaporean identity that our forefathers tried to build. The
traditional notion of “tribe”—Chinese, Malay and Indian—has been
disrupted.
So have our values. Singapore’s meritocracy has long promised that
as long as individuals work hard, they will enjoy the fruits of
their labour, with the best workers rising to the top of the
ladder. Here, again, mass immigration has undermined this
contract.
At the top end, the perception is that the global elite has moved
here with containers of cash in hunt of lower tax rates, and is
creaming off the spoils of Singapore’s growth. At the bottom end, a
seemingly endless stream of low-cost migrants from neighbouring
countries has allowed businesses to keep wages low, squeezing out
hardworking Singaporeans who face spiralling living costs.
Finally, mass migration has dented Singapore’s attempts at
inter-ethnic integration. Ethnic enclaves have now formed,
including a rather posh Indian one in the East Coast and a more
humble Vietnamese one in Joo Chiat.
With birth rates unlikely to rise rapidly, and immigration likely
to continue, albeit at a more moderate clip, it will be interesting
to see what happens to this fragile, embryonic, 47-year old
Singaporean identity.
Perhaps the reality is that Singapore cannot build both a national
identity and a global city identity. We are actually in the midst
of a transition from the former to the latter. A global city
identity is much more fluid, less rooted, than a national identity.
The migrants of today will probably never integrate like the
migrants of yesterday. For them, Singapore is just one of a
patchwork of identities they hope to stitch together as they
journey through life.
MODEL OF THE FUTURE
And that, strangely, represents the optimism in this identity
story. There are few countries in the world where race, religion
and language are depoliticised to this extent, where it is so easy
to set up a business, where people from all over the world can
visit so seamlessly.
By unwittingly de-emphasising national identity, and ultimately
nationalism, Singapore is creating a model for a future where
nationhood, ethnicity and religion should not matter.
This transition from a solid albeit nascent national identity to
the more fluid global city identity will have implications for
mindsets, personal interactions and national policy.
For instance, if we embrace this global city identity, Singaporeans
should not care if Ms Feng never learns any English. She does not
have to sound like us to be one of us.
There are also many policy implications. In a global city, it makes
little sense, for example, to maintain ethnic quotas in HDB housing
estates, when all over the country little ethnic enclaves have
formed.
But there remains one major problem with this transition from a
national identity to a global city identity. Many have been left
behind. Social inequality has risen rapidly over the past two
decades.
The only way for all Singaporeans to accept the pros and cons of
living in a global city is if we can actually participate in it.
Addressing inequality—including in education, employment and
income—remains this global city’s greatest priority.
So, the end of (national) identity, but the start of something
new?
This is an excerpt of an essay published on IPS Commons.
