I am More Chinese than You: Online Narratives of Locals and Migrants in Singapore

Main Article Content

Sylvia Ang
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1379-8499

Abstract

Migrants from mainland China now make up nearly a million of Singapore’s total population of 5.4 million, an influx unprecedented since the nineteenth century. This has compelled both locals and migrants to (re)think their Chinese-ness. Simultaneously, the state produces its hegemonic version of Chinese-ness with Mandarin as an important signifier. This discourse has been increasingly challenged by residents with the advent of the internet as a platform for alternative views. This article suggests that by endorsing Singaporean state discourse that defines Chinese authenticity as Mandarin proficiency, Chinese migrants deride Chinese-Singaporeans as less Chinese, and therein less Singaporean. In defence, Chinese-Singaporeans appear to present a united front by deriding Chinese migrants’ deficiency in the English language. I argue that, to the contrary, Chinese-Singaporeans’ online narratives show fragmentation within the group.

Article Details

Section
Media Mobilities and Identity in East and Southeast Asia (Peer Reviewed)
Author Biography

Sylvia Ang, University of Melbourne

Sylvia Ang is a recent PhD graduate from the department of Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Melbourne. She has a Masters in Development Studies from the same university and a BA (Political Science) from the National University of Singapore. She has recently published ‘Chinese Migrant Women as Boundary Markers in Singapore: Unrespectable, Un-middle-class and Un-Chinese’ in Gender, Place and Culture. Her current research interests are mobility and transnationalism, the intersection of ethnicity, gender and class, and local modernities.