Mixed Race, Mixed Identities, and Indigeneity: Context and Theory

In the opening piece of this special issue of the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies, “Mixedness and Indigeneity in the Pacific,” Zarine L. Rocha provides context and theory for the issue’s unpacking of mixed race, mixed identities, and Indigeneity

Multiplicity within Singularity: Racial Categorization and Recognizing “Mixed Race” in Singapore

“Race” and racial categories play a significant role in everyday life and state organization in Singapore. While multiplicity and diversity are important characteristics of Singaporean society, Singapore’s multiracial ideology is firmly based on separate, racialized groups, leaving little room for racial projects reflecting more complex identifications. This article explores national narratives of race, culture and belonging as they have developed over time, used as a tool for the state, and re-emerging in discourses of hybridity and “double-barrelled” racial identifications. Multiracialism, as a maintained structural feature of Singaporean society, is both challenged and reinforced by new understandings of hybridity and older conceptions of what it means to be “mixed race” in a (post-)colonial society. Tracing the temporal thread of racial categorization through a lens of mixedness, this article places the Singaporean case within emerging work on hybridity and recognition of “mixed race”. It illustrates how state-led understandings of race and “mixed race” describe processes of both continuity and change, with far-reaching practical and ideological impacts

Mixed Race, Mixed Identities, and Indigeneity: Context and Theory

In the opening piece of this special issue of the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies, “Mixedness and Indigeneity in the Pacific,” Zarine L. Rocha provides context and theory for the issue’s unpacking of mixed race, mixed identities, and Indigeneity

Multiplicity within Singularity: Racial Categorization and Recognizing “Mixed Race” in Singapore

“Race” and racial categories play a significant role in everyday life and state organization in Singapore. While multiplicity and diversity are important characteristics of Singaporean society, Singapore’s multiracial ideology is firmly based on separate, racialized groups, leaving little room for racial projects reflecting more complex identifications. This article explores national narratives of race, culture and belonging as they have developed over time, used as a tool for the state, and re-emerging in discourses of hybridity and “double-barrelled” racial identifications. Multiracialism, as a maintained structural feature of Singaporean society, is both challenged and reinforced by new understandings of hybridity and older conceptions of what it means to be “mixed race” in a (post-)colonial society. Tracing the temporal thread of racial categorization through a lens of mixedness, this article places the Singaporean case within emerging work on hybridity and recognition of “mixed race”. It illustrates how state-led understandings of race and “mixed race” describe processes of both continuity and change, with far-reaching practical and ideological impacts

Multiplicity within Singularity: Racial Categorization and Recognizing “Mixed Race” in Singapore

“Race” and racial categories play a significant role in everyday life and state organization in Singapore. While multiplicity and diversity are important characteristics of Singaporean society, Singapore’s multiracial ideology is firmly based on separate, racialized groups, leaving little room for racial projects reflecting more complex identifications. This article explores national narratives of race, culture and belonging as they have developed over time, used as a tool for the state, and re-emerging in discourses of hybridity and “double-barrelled” racial identifications. Multiracialism, as a maintained structural feature of Singaporean society, is both challenged and reinforced by new understandings of hybridity and older conceptions of what it means to be “mixed race” in a (post-)colonial society. Tracing the temporal thread of racial categorization through a lens of mixedness, this article places the Singaporean case within emerging work on hybridity and recognition of “mixed race”. It illustrates how state-led understandings of race and “mixed race” describe processes of both continuity and change, with far-reaching practical and ideological impacts

Managing the complexities of race: Eurasians, classification and mixed racial identities in Singapore

10.1080/1369183X.2019.1654159Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies474878-89

Orang Cina bukan Cina: Being Peranakan, (not) being Chinese and the social construction of race in Singapore

10.1080/1070289X.2022.2145775Identities304568-58

Tracing Genealogies of Mixedness: Social Representations and Definitions of “Eurasian” in Singapore

Social representations theory provides a key lens through which to approach mixed racial and ethnic identities. The concept and contextual histories of “mixedness” highlight how meanings are ascribed and constructed, and social representations of mixed identities shape and are shaped by what it means to be mixed. This paper explores mixedness in Singapore from a social representations perspective, drawing out and comparing the state representations of the Eurasian community, and social experiences of mixedness. Utilizing data from 30 interviews with participants who self-describe as Eurasian, the paper explores the interactions between historical and contemporary state representations of mixedness and popular representations of Eurasians as a mixed racial/ethnic group in the diverse and racialized context of Singapore. By tracing the genealogy of Eurasian identity (and mixedness) in this context, it contributes to the theoretical development around social representations of mixedness, and how the constructed realities of singular and/or mixed identities interact and develop