1 - The Making of the Singapore Nation-State and the Quest for a National Identity

Summary

The nation is and shall long remain a persistent although modifiable entity.

(Kristeva 1993, pp. 5–6).

In this chapter I present an historical background to Singapore's national development from colony to early nationhood, and detail the various nation-building strategies employed by Singapore's ruling PAP. The first section of the chapter offers a critical re-reading of Singapore's historical legacy and transnational connections up until its independence in 1965.Soon after independence and over the next three decades, the Singapore political elite embarked on the project of nation-building: to create a sense of national identity amongst the heterogeneous and largely immigrant population. Through a range of institutions and institutionalized practices, an official process of national identification was put in place. I will briefly examine the different aspects of this nation-building project in the second section. In the final section, I explore how we might better conceptualize the formation of nationhood in the Singapore context.

I advance two main arguments in this chapter. One is that, because of the circumstances of the formation of Singapore, the “imagined” dimension of nationhood did not emerge smoothly. The early phase of the Singaporean nationalization project was characterized by strategies aimed at reigning in, or binding Singapore's multi-ethnic immigrant population within the boundaries of the nation-state.