Privilege, Prejudice, Predicament: “PRC Scholars” in Singapore—An Overview

Abstract

With the rise of educational mobilities worldwide, students’ experiences of educational sojourn, especially that of the Chinese Mainland students, have come under greater research attention in recent years. Amongst diverse kinds of Chinese students/scholars abroad, this paper focuses on a type that finds themselves in a unique country under equally unique circumstances: Chinese students studying at pre- and undergraduate levels in Singapore under Singapore’s government-sponsored “foreign talent” scholarship schemes. Based on an ethnographic study conducted over a 16-month period in China and Singapore, this paper presents an overview account of these Chinese student-scholars’ sociocultural experiences in Singapore under three headings: (1) privilege—how Singapore’s “foreign talent” policy endows considerable privileges, opportunities, but also responsibilities on these Chinese students; (2) prejudice—how and why these PRC “foreign talents” encounter certain local discourses of discrimination and exclusion; and (3) predicament—how they sometimes experience complex and conflicted feelings about being made Singapore’s “foreign talent.”