Renegotiating multiracialism: the grassroots integration of new migrants’ ethnic identities in Singapore

ABSTRACT Through a study of Singapore’s integration and naturalisation processes, this paper examines how the Singaporean state has negotiated the twin challenges of embracing cultural pluralism in its population while also forming a common national identity. Employing Benedict Anderson’s conception of ‘bound serialities’, it argues that the Singaporean state has developed a framework of multiracialism to imagine the Singaporean nation through three serialities or collective identities. First, the Chinese, Malay, Indian and Other (CMIO) categories organise individuals into groups that have clear cultural identities. Second, the CMIO categories constitute a fixed image of the multicultural Singaporean nation. Third, being Singaporean requires an ethos of accepting the cultural differences that the CMIO structure represents. However, such a top-down imagining of the multicultural nation is increasingly challenged by the arrival of new citizens who embody alternative imaginings of their own ethnic and national identities, raising questions about the continued effectiveness of Singapore’s multiracialism.