Buddha‐izing a Global City‐State: Transnational Religious Mobilities, Spiritual Marketplace, and Thai Migrant Monks in Singapore

Abstract

This article proposes an argument that transnational mobilities are culturally and religiously rooted. Religion and human mobility have been inseparable for centuries. I It either encourages border‐crossing movements of clergies and laypersons away from home, or channels human interaction as well as tension across the lines of ethnocultural and national differences. This article uses the case study of migrant Buddhist monks from Thailand, their cross‐border religious mission, and complicating aspects of their religious practices in Singapore to illustrate some subtle roles of religion in the broader context of transnational mobility and settlement in a multiracial and multicultural city‐state. Under Singapore’s racial and religious harmony policy, Thai monks have become mobile agents to spread the Dharma and to serve the Buddhist population under some regulating structure and scrutiny in Singapore.