Food and its role in shaping identity among the local and naturalised Chinese in Singapore

Abstract

With the increasing influx of Mainland Chinese migrants in Singapore, tensions have arisen between citizens and new migrants, who are seen as threats to social cohesion. It has become urgent for the Singaporean Chinese to establish a unique culture and identity they can call their own. Food is the main lens in which this paper examines how young naturalised Chinese and Singaporean Chinese undergraduates shape their identities through centring and decentring processes and the utilisation of food tactics. The paper also examines how both groups use food to manage differences between them; and how they have managed to negotiate their own unique form of Chineseness as identity.