Singapore. Singapore's borderlands: Tourism, migration and anxieties of mobility. By Johan A. Lindquist. Singapore: NUS Press, 2010. Pp. x + 193. Map, Plates, Notes, Bibliography, Index.

Abstract

Singapore Singapore's borderlands: Tourism, migration and anxieties of mobility By JOHAN A. LINDQUIST Singapore: NUS Press, 2010. Pp. x + 193. Map, Plates, Notes, Bibliography, Index. doi: 10.1017/S0022463412000252 In Singapore's borderlands, Lindquist sets himself the ambitious task of presenting an ethnography that will offer a new way to theorise globalisation. The challenge he has undertaken is to portray the phenomenon in terms of relationships that bind people together over large distances. His critique of prevailing theories is that they merely comprehend globalisation as movement due to push and pull factors locked in a series of impersonal economic transactions. What he claims is amiss here is the neglect of the 'emotional economy'--that is, 'migrants' emotional debt to home' (p. 8) that keeps them on the move and from returning home if they fail. Lindquist also calls for alternative modes of analysing mobility within an open system unhampered by spatial and temporal constraints. Choosing to locate his study ethnographically among the circulating migrant populations in Batam, Lindquist presents their experiences as they pursue their dreams of globalisation. A quick description of the history of Batam at the start of the book is aimed at scene-setting: how an obscure fishing village lying at the periphery of the Indonesian nation-state has suddenly been encompassed in an economic Growth Triangle plan between Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. This has led to great hopes that Batam will be dramatically transformed into a booming frontier town. In reality, though, a gloomy sense of temporality surrounds the island's development. Batam as a place and life in it are both characterised by 'the belum', 'not yet' (p. 7), where ubiquitous unfinished and deferred building projects and never-ending personal dreams of globalisation are part and parcel of what constitutes a perpetual state of liminality for one and all. Lindquist focuses on three Indonesian concepts--merantau (circular migration), malu (shame) and liar (wild/unregulated/undomesticated)--that are entangled in this state of liminality. Together they form the basis of the emotional economy that marks the landscape of mobility throughout the region. These concepts, which do not overlap but underscore the problem of belonging, are the analytical tools or anchors for Lindquist's provocative call for a new theorisation of globalisation. Many important questions are raised which illustrate the need to consider the cultural and emotional logic of globalisation. …