Migration as a Spiritual Pathway: Narratives of Chinese Falungong Practitioners in Singapore

Abstract

Owing to Falungong's illegal status in China, ethnographies on the qigong style often rely on fieldwork conducted with its members in other countries. Although most of these practitioners are ethnic Chinese immigrants, little is known about the role that Falungong plays in their migrant experience. This paper attempts to fill this gap by providing an ethnographic account of the migrant experiences of mainland Chinese Falungong practitioners in Singapore. I seek to demonstrate that Falungong's other-worldly cosmology allows these migrants to construct a narrative that re-frames their disenchantment with the Chinese modernisation project and their subsequent departure to Singapore as an eschatological pilgrimage in search of a spiritual promised land.