Arenas of Performance and Support: Illuminating the Diasporic Spaces of White-collar Vietnamese Migrants in Singapore

• In Event: International Migration Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 12. Highly skilled / white collar migration

Abstract

In the last decade, economic and political ties between Singapore and Vietnam have strengthened significantly. This could be fundamentally attributed to both states’ desire to be less dependent on their traditional trade partners in Southeast Asia and the increasing unstable global political climate, which has necessitated movements away from predominantly relying on superpowers for trade exchanges. With blue-collar Vietnamese migrants already a mainstay in Singapore for over 30 years, this emerging economic corridor centred in the Singapore-Vietnam nexus calls for an elaborate investigation of the lived experiences of not just highly-skilled migrants from Vietnam to Singapore but also white-collar migrants from Singapore to Vietnam, both of which have been previously unexplored. These migrants’ abilities to adapt to living in their respective host societies are dependent on the effectiveness of several infrastructures, including regulatory infrastructures provided by the state as well as social and cultural infrastructures garnered through social networks and diasporic spaces. It is crucial to uncover if and how these infrastructures would chart the migratory trajectories of these skilled migrants and offer migratory pathways that may assist or hinder the long-term functionality and sustainability of this emerging economic corridor.
This paper will focus on the functional importance of physical diasporic spaces for white-collar Vietnamese migrants in Singapore. These physical spaces generally assist migrants in securing and maintaining social networks, provide both emotional and financial support and offer an elemental “back stage” for the migrants to reaffirm their traditional norms and identities, away from the “front stage” where they may need to dramatise their adherence to mannerisms and strictures in social settings controlled and managed by their host states. From semi-structured face-to-face interviews with 33 white-collar Vietnamese professionals (between the ages of 23-50) in Singapore, three distinct physical diasporic spaces for these migrants were uncovered. Through these interviews, the variegated functionalities, temporal evolution and processes of place-making in these transnational spaces were illuminated. This paper will showcase how these diasporic zones are critical in shaping the mobilities of professional migrants in the Singapore-Vietnam nexus.

Author

• Robin Ming Feng Chee, Singapore Management University