Abstract
This chapter analyzes the in-depth accounts given by 15 female Chinese-Singaporean repeat migrants—who lived again in Singapore—of their transnational biographies. Building on the idea that repeat migrants stay in different societies because of the benefits they hope they will derive from living in different places, this chapter analyzes why and how the repeat migrant women’s performances of their identifications—by reconstructing their transnational biographies—is closely linked to the outcomes of their attempts to realize their cultural, social, and economic aspiration in their transnational spaces. Cross referencing the women’s performances of their transnational positions—which are their accounts of their relations with people and institutions in the different societies in which they lived—with the outcomes of the women’s attempts to construct new and necessary cultural capital in order to access new and desired cultural, social, and economic resources; will provide new and original insight into the complex question of how and why social inequalities are or are not reproduced under increasing conditions of globalization, that is, under conditions that potentially augment the number of accepted definitions of cultural capital.
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Notes
- 1.
Location refers to the characteristics of a place of residence.
- 2.
This number is based on the entry and exit records of Singapore. Included in the count are Singaporeans who were away for a cumulative period of at least six months during the year preceding the count. Thanks are due to the Singapore Department of Statistics for this clarification.
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Acknowledgments
This research is funded by a Tier 1 research grant from the Academic Research Fund, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. My thanks go to all the people who made the time to participate in this study. Thanks to Vivien Won for skillfully conducting the interviews; to the NTU Sociology students for transcribing the interviews and to Sithi Hawwa for ordering the data on transnational migration trajectories. Thanks to Chan Kwok-bun and Philip Kelly for commenting on earlier versions of this chapter.
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Plüss, C. (2012). Chinese-Singaporean Repeat Migrant Women: Transnational Positions and Social Inequalities. In: Plüss, C., Chan, Kb. (eds) Living Intersections: Transnational Migrant Identifications in Asia. International Perspectives on Migration, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2966-7_7
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