Biopolitical Geographies of Student Life: Private Higher Education and Citizenship Life-Making in Singapore

Abstract

Drawing on eleven months of fieldwork in Singapore, this article uses the case of young people studying at a private higher education institute to study the biopolitical geographies of student life. I focus on the analytic lens of biopolitical citizenship as one way to understand how biopower works in and through the material relations and practices of social reproduction. I critically examine how young people are engaging with and performing biopolitics in ways that attempt to (re)define what constitutes a “mainstream,” viable, classed, and gendered citizenship life. I also explore students' (“alternative”) biopolitical performances through their critical evaluations of state-led discourses, their ability to invent hope as a way of coping and living, and their online enactment of a form of modest activism. Additionally, this article offers an initial engagement with Kraftl's (2015) theorization of alternative biopolitical projects in educational spaces and introduces the concepts of “pulling” and “pushing” to frame the paradoxical manner in which young people engage with biopolitics.