3 - Creating National Citizens for a Global City

Summary

We need the resources from a sound, competitive economy to build a world-class home, and we need a world-class home to anchor Singaporeans to create a first-world economy for Singapore. Singapore risks becoming like one of those well-run, comfortable international hotels which successful business executives check in and out. What makes a home different from a hotel is where the heart is. Most homes are less comfortable than a hotel, but they are where the people feel they belong, where they are king and where they can decorate and arrange the furniture the way they like. This, in essence, is what distinguishes a home from a hotel.

(Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, Straits Times, 14 October 1999.)

INTRODUCTION

Former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong's quote provides a typically colourful account of the latest set of perceived challenges facing Singapore. Continuing my exploration into the national response to globalization in Singapore, this chapter turns its attention to the government's project of “globalizing” the nation since the early 1990s and its related efforts to create a sense of home among its citizens. I argue that going global has posed particular challenges to the government, not the least of which is a trend among Singaporeans wishing to emigrate. In this chapter I analyse one of the main governmental responses to these “unhomely” consequences of globalization: the affective citizenship-building strategies put forward in the Singapore 21 policy.