Leveraging Connectivities: Comparative Diaspora Strategies and Evolving Cultural Pluralities in China and Singapore

Migrant-sending states are connecting systematically with their emigrants and diasporic descendants through policies known as “diaspora strategies.” Underlying diaspora strategizing are the manifold ways in which states capitalize on past migration and present mobility patterns to advance national developmental agendas. Such agendas are conceived in terms of economic and (soft) political power, respectively referred to as “diaspora-and-development” and “diaspora diplomacy.” This article undertakes a comparative analysis of the diaspora strategies by China and Singapore to ask critical questions about, first, the connectivities between migrant-sending states. Doing so elicits the multidirectional migration flows that connect nation-states, showing how the diaspora outreach of one affects the other. Second, the article examines the (multi)cultural logics that underpin diaspora strategizing and its possible impacts on domestic agendas. Such an approach urges researchers to study the race/ethnicity politics that underpin diaspora strategies.