How to be Singaporean: becoming global national citizens and the national dimension in cosmopolitan openness

ABSTRACT

This paper looks at how cosmopolitanism is practised amongst Singaporeans who have experienced Singapore’s education reform in the 1990s. Cosmopolitanism in Singapore is tied to state-intervention with a national orientation. To complement Singapore’s push towards cosmopolitanism, the education reform in the 1990s promoted the idea of a national citizen with a global orientation. I looked at 40 Singaporeans born after the year 1990 to investigate cosmopolitan attitudes that have emerged from the tensions between cosmopolitanism and nationalism. To meet the state’s ideals of cosmopolitanism, these Singaporeans employed strategies to practice a particular form of cosmopolitan openness which prioritise national interests. Nationalism and cosmopolitanism co-exist in Singapore and share a dialectic relationship as I argue that these Singaporeans are global national citizens.

Keywords:

• Globalisation
• cosmopolitanism
• Singapore
• foreign others
• nationalism
• education

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Hiro Saito for providing research guidance throughout the project. I would also like to thank the GSE editors and reviewers, as well as Kelvin Low, Ho Kong Chong, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, Lou Antolihao, and A. Aarthi for their help in various stages of my research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Wen Li Thian http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5934-6514

Notes

1 The NE messages were updated with the elaborations in italics in 2007 by the Ministry of Education (MOE).

2 All the quotes from the participants were edited by the author, but care was given to retain the original main points conveyed during the interviews.