Eurasian Emigration from Singapore

Abstract

In the late modern era, emigration and concomitant citizenship renunciations in countries that do not allow dual citizenship can be the result of lifestyle preferences or better work opportunities. Although emigration is an integral dimension of cosmopolitanism in an era when national borders are porous, Singapore discourages the emigration of its citizens but prefers its new migrants to maintain cosmopolitan links. This is perhaps anomalous to its cosmopolitan vision. Eurasians of mixed European and Asian ancestry are a small minority ethnic group who have emigrated out of Singapore in large numbers. This work examines how their cosmopolitan politics of belonging have been at odds with the state’s authoritarian tropes of citizenship as ‘push’ factors responsible for this minority ethnic group’s dwindling population.