(Trans)National Service: Reconfiguring Citizenship through

Conscription in Singapore

Theophilus Kwek

Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Volume 92,
Part 1, No. 316, June 2019, pp. 67-90 (Article)

Published by Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ras.2019.0005

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/728888

Access provided at 26 Oct 2019 18:51 GMT from The Eugene McDermott Library,University Of Texas at Dallas
 JMBRAS, JUNE 2019 VOL 92 PART 1, NUMBER 316, pp. 67–90

(Trans)National Service:
Reconfiguring Citizenship through
Conscription in Singapore

Theophilus Kwek

Abstract
Since 1967, National Service has been the bedrock of Singapore’s defence policy
and a central element in its nation-building project. Unlike most countries
which implement mandatory military service, Singapore’s practice of male
conscription applies not only to citizens but also to a select group of non-citizens
(second-generation permanent residents), creating a unique context where the
traditional associations between national allegiance and military service can be re-
examined. This study first traces conventional understandings of citizenship and
conscription and how they have been shaped by recent global developments. I then
identify three discursive frames—‘relational’, ‘transactional’, and ‘aspirational’—
that non-citizens adopt towards National Service, and examine how their
experience reconfigures the relationship between citizenship and conscription.
Finally, I discuss the agency of the state, and of the wider Singapore public, in a
wider renegotiation of citizenship, and possible implications for policymaking and
future research.

The Author
Theophilus Kwek holds an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from
Oxford University.

Email: theophiluskwek@gmail.com

Keywords
Conscription, citizenship, ethnography, migration, integration
68 | theophilus kwek

Introduction
We will preserve and protect
The honour and independence of our country
With our lives!

Early each morning, the words of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) Pledge echo
across the camps and barracks where young conscripts—who form the bulk of active
units in the SAF—undergo two years of mandatory military training alongside
regulars, reservists and a small number of volunteers.1 Since the passing of the
National Service (Amendment) Bill in March 1967, all 18-year-old male Singapore
citizens and permanent residents have been liable for full-time National Service
(NS), and around 25,000 men are absorbed into the ranks of the SAF yearly.2 Over
the last half-century, NS has come to feature heavily in pop culture depictions
of Singaporean life, and is often described in official and vernacular media as an
established ‘rite of passage’.3 Indeed, beyond routine declarations of allegiance and
acts of service, the NS experience has become ‘integral […] to manufacturing a
Singaporean identity.4
The close relationship between National Service and national identity belies
the fact that a significant number of Singapore’s conscripts are foreign nationals.
While current figures are hard to obtain, Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen revealed in
2011 that 8,800 second-generation permanent residents had completed NS in the
preceding five years.5
According to one government agency, ‘permanent residency’ is a legal status
short of citizenship available to those who have chosen to ‘call [Singapore] home’.6
But unlike permanent residents in many liberal democracies, who ‘enjoy almost
all the same rights as citizens’,7 those in Singapore face a widening gap between
the privileges they enjoy and those afforded to full citizens.8 Moreover, rendering
NS does not provide a guaranteed pathway to citizenship for them. In 2012, Ng
clarified that sons of permanent residents would have to finish NS just to retain
their status, or face ‘adverse consequences’ when applying to work or study in
Singapore.9 Parliamentary Secretary for Home Affairs Amrin Amin reiterated in
2016 that completing NS would be a ‘plus factor’ in their citizenship applications,
but not ensure approval.10

1
Ministry of Defence (2006: 15).
2
Ong (2014). Similar estimates, including of the size of the SAF’s regular force, are
provided in Chan (2019: 44).
3
Cheong (2017).
4
Nasir and Turner (2014: 54).
5
Saad (2012).
6
Contact Singapore (2018).
7
Macklin (2015: 2).
8
Heng (2013).
9
Dass (2012).
10
Chow (2016).
 (trans)national service | 69

This project studies the uneasy relationship between citizenship and conscription
in Singapore and, focusing on the perspectives of its non-citizen conscripts, argues
that both institutions are being re-configured within the Singapore context.
Navigating a system in which conscription bears no explicit link to (or guarantee
of) citizenship has led non-citizen conscripts to re-evaluate the premises of
citizenship, and adopt particular discursive frames towards conscription that differ
from their Singaporean counterparts. But these effects are more far-reaching than
the relative numerical insignificance of non-citizen conscripts may suggest. As I
will show, the findings presented here carry implications for how we understand
migrants’ transnational life-plans, and prompt us to rethink official approaches to
incorporation and assimilation, as well as the implementation and objectives of
universal conscription.
I first situate the relationship between citizenship and conscription, as it
is experienced in Singapore, within a wider theoretical literature on the history
of universal conscription as a bedrock of modern citizenship. This established
understanding of the conscript-citizen is then juxtaposed with more recent
scholarship on how neoliberal logics have come to shape immigration and
citizenship regimes in Singapore and elsewhere. A brief discussion of my
methodology sets out the conceptual basis of ‘framing analysis’ as practiced in
qualitative research, and is followed by in-depth examination of three discursive
frames employed by non-citizen conscripts towards their NS experience. Finally, I
discuss how these frames suggest a reconfiguration of citizenship itself, not just by
non-citizens but also by the Singapore state and its citizen population, with wider
implications for research and policymaking.
I completed this research in 2018, while fulfilling my own NS obligations. As
a Supply Supervisor in the SAF, I had the opportunity to interact extensively with
non-citizens who were similarly assigned to logistical roles. Having had some
academic training in the fields of political science and migration studies, I realized
that their experiences—of squaring transnational life-plans against the costs and
benefits of regularized status in a self-consciously ‘cosmopolitan’ city-state like
Singapore11—would provide a useful point of reflection for larger questions about
conscription as a citizenship obligation.
At the same time, the untimely deaths of two permanent residents while
serving their NS (one in the SAF and the other in the Singapore Civil Defence
Forces) during my stint as a full-time National Serviceman prompted many around
me, citizens and non-citizens alike, to think more deeply about the obligations
demanded of non-citizens in Singapore.12 Though these incidents took place only
after I had completed the bulk of my interviews, and did not influence the opinions
of my interlocutors, the sentiments that emerged in their wake informed my own
perspective. All in all, I had the privilege of serving alongside thoughtful, supportive
men, and hope to bring their voices into a burgeoning global conversation. I am
immensely grateful for their willing participation in the research process.

11
Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts (2005).
12
Kwang (2018); Mahmud (2018).
70 | theophilus kwek

Finally, the Singapore Armed Forces Act strictly prohibits the ‘unauthorized
disclosure of information [which] would, or might be useful to an enemy’.13 It is
worth stating categorically at this point that this article contains no information
about the SAF that is not already in the public domain, nor any information covered
under the Official Secrets Act.14 All original data-points provided are the first-hand
experiences of my research participants, who spoke only in their personal capacity.
Likewise, any findings and conclusions drawn from this study are solely my own.

Citizenship and Conscription

As a political and legal concept, citizenship hinges on the ‘practical reality that
only the nation-state can implement […] protections claimed through recognized
political membership’.15 The protections afforded to members are precisely what
differentiates citizens from stateless individuals; nevertheless, the state is nothing
if not for its members, and cannot implement these protections without their
resources. Citizenship is thus not only a package of rights that the individual
can claim against the state, but also a set of duties which, if withdrawn, would
force the state to default on its protections. In this light, conscription represents
one configuration of the balance of citizenship rights and responsibilities: a
configuration that has been shaped by the exigencies of historical nation-states,
while itself forming a site of contestation over what duties a state can justly extract
from its citizens.16
Insofar as conscription entails enlisting an eligible population to fulfil
national objectives, the categories of ‘citizen’ and ‘conscript’ have always been
mutually constitutive. Michael Hanagan identifies the advent of universal male
conscription in the French First Republic as a ‘major landmark in the recasting of
modern citizenship’.17 Though the Revolutionary Army initially relied on regulars
and volunteers, faltering recruitment after the levée en masse of 1793 prompted
the embattled Directory to adopt the Jourdan Law in 1798, declaring that ‘every
Frenchman is a soldier and must defend his country’.18 This explicit link between
military service and citizenship, Hanagan argues, suggested a new political compact
where a ‘dramatic expansion of citizenship rights’ following the end of absolute
monarchy was ‘won at the cost of vastly increased citizenship responsibilities’.
This process was not unique to France. Indeed, the consolidation of modern
nation-states across Europe in the nineteenth century was accompanied by
‘major international wars involving the mass recruitment of able-bodied young
men through conscription’, forging national myths ‘as the carriers of masculine
identities’.19 In this process, the institutions of taxation and conscription became
essential to ‘the evolution of citizenship as a bundle of contributory rights’.

13
Singapore Statutes Online (1972).
14
Singapore Statutes Online (1935).
15
Ong (2006: 15).
16
Thunder (2017).
17
Hanagan (1997: 397).
18
Lynn (1989: 158).
19
Nasir and Turner (2014: 83).
 (trans)national service | 71

Specifically, as a form of service, (male) conscription was capable of ‘[generating]

a range of entitlements for the soldier-citizen’ and his family, including ‘pension
rights, health provisions, housing and education’.20 Even after the end of World
War II, conscription retained its symbolic relationship with the guarantee of
citizens’ entitlements. This was epitomized by the German Bundeswehr between
1956 and 2011, which enshrined the principle of the Staatsbürger in Uniform
(‘citizen in uniform’).21
Beyond the political quid pro quo of duties and entitlements, however, the
categories of ‘conscript’ and ‘citizen’ also overlap in more direct, embodied
ways. As citizens whose time, loyalties and resources are co-opted for military
service, conscripts are coerced into enacting and representing the state; their
bodies, in other words, become visible extensions of the body politic. Madeleine
Reeves provides a stark illustration of this dynamic in her fieldwork among
conscript soldiers on the ‘patchy’, often invisible, border between Kyrgyzstan and
Uzbekistan.22 Here, the conscripts must ‘bear the state’s legitimate authority’, or
function as the ‘face of the state’, in a context where the state—in its conventional,
‘bounded’ sense—is conspicuous by its absence. In the case of Israel, Orna Sasson-
Levy writes that conscripts are intended to ‘promote and display’ the state and
the values associated with it, including ‘volunteerism, comradeship, equality, and
sacrifice for the collective’.23
Not all accounts of citizenship, of course, treat conscription as integral. Indeed,
though the exchange of rights and duties may have a liberal heritage, conscription
represents a paradox for liberal citizenship because it threatens some of the harms
that the state supposedly protects citizens from. Citing Tilly’s characterization of
the state as a ‘protection racket’, Peter Nyers points out that the state’s duty to
shield citizens from ‘coercion, abuses of authority, [and] limits on freedoms and
entitlements’ is compromised by the fact that the some ‘measures taken to increase
security’ (such as conscription) invariably ‘end up being the same as those which
bring about insecurity’.24 Moreover, although conscription seems to represent an
equalizing duty towards the state, universal conscription is often less ‘universal’
than it claims. Feminist analyses of gendered conscription practices in countries like
South Korea remind us that conscription is capable of entrenching discriminatory
norms, making some citizens’ claims to ‘authentic’ or ‘full’ citizenship more valid
than others.25
In recent decades, what has been conceptualized as a ‘transnational turn’
in citizenship has further complicated the social and political meanings of
conscription. As Brenda Yeoh and Kate Willis argue, increasing global integration
has challenged exclusionary policies around the world and thrown the ‘contrived
and contested identity of the nation’ into question.26 After all, a growing number of

20
Ibid.: 91.
21
Koltermann (2012).
22
Reeves (2011: 914).
23
Sasson-Levy (2007: 484).
24
Nyers (2009: 3).
25
Kwon (2010).
26
Yeoh and Willis (2004: 2).
72 | theophilus kwek

migrants no longer belong to one territorial community but inhabit ‘transnational

social fields’, evident in their daily practices. Not only has this transformation
rendered the notion of geographically-bounded citizenship less relevant, it also
has consequences for conscripting mobile citizens into a territorial army—like
Singapore’s. In Hussin Mutalib’s words, globalization is ‘bound to give rise to
fundamental questions about the Singaporean sense of loyalty and patriotism to
the republic’.27
Transnational integration can be seen as one product of rapid economic
globalization, brought about (in Singapore and elsewhere) by what Wee Wan-
ling calls a ‘market-driven period of international capitalist development’.28 In
particular contexts, this confluence of neoliberal and globalizing pressures has
undone the link between conscription and citizenship. Deborah Cowen sees
the end of conscription in the US as part of a ‘neoliberal project to reconstruct
national citizenship’, where the assumption of universal rights and duties that
once justified conscription is replaced by an individualistic ideal of earning one’s
entitlements through service.29 This, Cowen argues, has not only eroded universal
entitlements, but minted a new social contract where the poor (who join the Army
in disproportionate numbers) must ‘actualize themselves by war-working for
their welfare’.30
In other contexts, however, economic globalization has produced new
conundrums for the conscript, who must square the rooted obligations of military
service (and the familial, cultural and political pressures that come with it)
with increasingly transnational hopes and dreams. Analysing this ‘dilemma of
conscription’ for young Korean males, Kirsten Song argues that military service
structures her interviewees’ transnational life plans in a deep and longitudinal
sense, because the ‘age of conscription overlaps with peak periods for higher
education or early career development’.31 Especially because many of her
interviewees are Korean citizens who have spent extensive periods abroad, the tug
of transnational possibilities forces them to reconsider the symbolic and emotional
value of citizenship itself. As we shall see in the next section, Singapore provides
an instructive counterpoint to these examples.

Configuring Citizenship in Singapore

The status of ‘Singapore citizen’ was introduced in 1957, while the city-state
enjoyed  partial self-governance, but held ‘only nominal significance’ until
separation from Malaysia was formalized in 1965, and sharper distinctions vis-à-
vis non-citizens were enacted. Along with the imposition of travel restrictions at
the Johor causeway, non-citizens (including all those who had ‘no documentary
proof of their birth in Singapore’) were stripped of the automatic right to work, and

27
Mutalib (2002: 54).
28
Wee (2007: 9).
29
Cowen (2006: 167).
30
Ibid.: 181.
31
Song (2015: 61).
 (trans)national service | 73

the onus was placed ‘on individuals to establish their status as Singapore citizens’.32
Today, citizenship may be acquired by birth, descent, registration, enrolment or
naturalization, and—barring an amendment to the Constitution in 2004 to relax
particular restrictions and make descent gender-neutral—the same rules, by and
large, have held sway since independence.33
In contrast with dominant liberal models, Shirley Sun argues from an
analysis of Singapore’s population policies that its conception of citizenship is
weighed towards the maximization of ‘human resources’, rather than the protection
of ‘human rights’.34 Not only are social protections tied to the individual’s paid
labour force participation; the human resources afforded by the population
at large are conceived as the state’s ‘single most important strategic capital’, as
seen in its continuous emphasis on education and other ‘significant investments
in human capital’.35 Comparing the structure of Singapore’s bureaucracy with
that of successful multinational corporations, sociologists Kwok Kian Woon and
Mariam Ali argue likewise that ‘the people who constitute the nation are regarded
by the state as human resources’ in its quest to ‘maximize opportunities for
wealth creation’.36
This characterization of the population as a resource for the corporatist state is
also reflected in the government’s decisions on who should be accepted into the body
politic. Policy documents speak of immigration as a tool to ‘balance the shrinking
and ageing of our citizen population’, with a ‘dynamic and vibrant economy’
being one of the three key goals of maintaining a ‘sustainable population’.37 As
one official at the National Population and Talent Division (NPTD) put it in 2011,
‘suitable’ immigrants are ‘those who make economic contributions’.38 Accordingly,
the status ascribed to migrants is determined by the nature of their contribution:
while higher-skilled migrants are encouraged to enter and settle with ‘employment
passes’, lower-skilled migrants are given ‘work permits’ which allow entry but not
settlement. Permanent residency is afforded to those ‘in the prime working ages of
25-49 years’ who may be suitable for citizenship.39
In contrast to the traditional model of ‘a single, territorialized status’, therefore,
Aihwa Ong observes that Singapore’s embrace of economic globalization has been
accompanied by a calibrated immigration system in which the state grants tiered
protections to its (citizen and non-citizen) subjects based on their ability to fulfil
market-driven expectations.40 In this system, ‘talented expatriates are incorporated
as prototypical ideal citizens’, while low-skilled migrants brought in primarily
for ‘labour extraction’ are excluded from political protection and participation.41
Some analysts even suggest that Singapore’s low-skilled migrants are intentionally

32
Hill and Lian (1995: 26).
33
Singapore Statutes Online (1965); Eugene Tan (2017).
34
Sun (2012: 16).
35
Osman-Gani (2004: 276).
36
Kwok and Ali (1998: 113–18).
37
National Population and Talent Division (2015).
38
Quoted in Sun (2012: 15).
39
National Population and Talent Division (2017).
40
Ong (2006: 15–16).
41
Ibid.: 21.
74 | theophilus kwek

placed in this precarious position to cushion Singapore citizens (who also enjoy
better labour protections) from economic fluctuations. As former Prime Minister
Lee Kuan Yew explained in 2007, migrant labourers would ‘bear the brunt of
retrenchments’ in a recession, thus ‘buffering Singaporean workers’.42
How does universal conscription fit into these understandings of citizenship in
Singapore? As described in the introduction, conscription is seen as a core duty of
citizenship, in both legal and rhetorical terms. At the second reading of the National
Service (Amendment) Bill in 1967, Defence Minister Goh Keng Swee outlined a
need to ‘create loyalty and national consciousness […] speedily and thoroughly’
among citizens, which he felt would be ‘possible only with some kind of national
service’.43 The need to build a committed citizenry has since remained a consistent
justification for NS. Writing in the US Army’s Military Review half a century later,
two senior SAF officers described conscription as integral to forging ‘a common set
of beliefs […] that would define the people of Singapore’.44
At the same time—given this nation-building imperative—those who have
completed NS are able to lay claim on integral elements of national identity. Here,
Bourdieu’s concept of ‘symbolic capital’ is helpful in describing how conscripts not
only fulfil a citizenship duty in the legal sense, but acquire a status that ‘identifies
them with the core of the state’.45 As Derek Da Cunha argues, conscription affords
those who have participated in it a tangible ‘common denominator’ in their
membership of the nation.46 But this does not always mean that non-citizens are
able to draw on the legitimating force of having rendered two years’ NS to validate
their membership in the nation. On the contrary, the close association between
conscription and a core Singaporean identity has prompted some observers to
advocate restricting it to Singapore citizens. Decrying the ‘cavalier attitude’ of some
non-citizens towards NS, one researcher at the Centre of Excellence for National
Security questioned whether they could be ‘relied on […] in an actual national
security crisis’ to carry out duties entrusted to those with ‘unequivocal allegiance
to Singapore’.47
Nevertheless, for most citizens, the potential for NS to assimilate non-citizens
and hence provide a pathway to social (if not legal) membership remains strong.
A survey conducted by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) in 2013 showed that
around 43 per cent of respondents supported the extension of full or truncated
NS to first-generation PRs, while more than 60 per cent advocated some form of
voluntary service. The opportunity to ‘integrate new immigrants into our society’
was also among the top eight perceived benefits of NS.48 A significant number
of Singaporeans thus not only perceive PRs (as opposed to other classes of non-
citizens, such as employment pass holders) as eligible bearers of the symbolic capital
that NS represents, but also believe that PRs should render NS, either to acquire the

42
Quoted in K. P. Tan (2017: 107).
43
Ooi (2010: 134).
44
Tan and Lew (2017: 9).
45
Nasir and Turner (2014: 57).
46
Da Cunha (1999: 461).
47
Chin (2013).
48
Institute of Policy Studies (2014).
 (trans)national service | 75

symbolic capital commensurate with their legal status, or to render due service in
exchange for perceived status benefits.
What these figures do not tell us, however, is whether non-citizens share these
perspectives: on citizenship in Singapore, its relationship with conscription, or their
participation in this national institution. Indeed, beyond what we may surmise
from their legal and economic decisions, data on the views of non-citizens are hard
to come by. Responding to a Parliamentary question in 2014, Defence Minister Ng
divulged that 2,600 male second-generation PRs had renounced their status before
serving NS in the prior five years. During the same period, 7,200 had enlisted
and fulfilled their NS obligations.49 A superficial reading might suggest that more
than a third of eligible PRs voted with their feet, choosing to forfeit residency in
Singapore instead of rendering NS. This study aims to reflect, and reflect on, the
perceptions and motivations of non-citizen conscripts in a more thoughtful and
comprehensive manner.

Methodology
Interview Process
The data for this study are derived from fifteen in-depth, semi-structured
interviews conducted in early 2018. All the interviews were held in confidence,
and recorded with consent. In several cases, information from the interviews was
corroborated by informal conversations, as well as online and offline ethnographic
observations. Due to restrictions on recording devices in military camps, notes from
these encounters were taken on paper, then transferred to an electronic database.
As I was fulfilling my NS obligations while doing this research, I was under the
same restrictions as my interlocutors. I did not hold the rank of a commander
while carrying out the interviews, and was not in a position of authority over my
interviewees.
Having worked alongside my colleagues for half a year by the time I began my
interviews, I was able to derive an initial list of non-citizen interviewees through
direct interaction with them. The others who took part in this study were identified
through snowball sampling, which had the advantage of building on the trust
established with the first group, and proved crucial in gleaning honest reflections
on their lives and life-plans. This process yielded a sample of interlocutors whose
familial, social and national backgrounds differed widely. While some had arrived
in early childhood and grew up in Singapore, others had not previously spent any
significant time in the country, and formed all their networks and impressions
about Singapore during NS. They held citizenships from China, India, Malaysia,
Taiwan and the Philippines, all of which are frequently represented among non-
citizens conscripts in the SAF.
My interlocutors had garnered a range of experiences in the SAF. Some were
designated as Supply Assistants, in charge of a range of logistical and (largely)
menial tasks, while others were selected as commanders, and were trained as
Officers or Specialists. In addition to these differences of rank and vocation, they

49
Sin (2014).
76 | theophilus kwek

had also encountered a range of cultures and expectations in their individual

unit environments. For example, one interviewee began his service in a large and
heavily regimented infantry unit, before being transferred to the headquarters
of an artillery unit, which he described as less hierarchical in structure. Though
it would not have been possible, given resource constraints, to speak to a fully
representative sample of non-citizens in the SAF, the experiences reflected here are
still considerably diverse. Since taking part in this research, all the interviewees have
completed their full-time NS and made the transition to civilian life. Nevertheless,
I have changed their names and further obscured all personal information such
that neither they, nor their operational units, may be easily identified.
After conducting these interviews, I parsed the transcripts—along with
my conversation notes—for the participants’ perspectives on conscription and
citizenship in Singapore. By analysing their responses to open-ended questions
about their experiences and expectations, I identified three distinct ‘frames’: a
relational frame (where conscription was seen as a mode of identification and
cross-border comparison), a transactional frame (where conscription represented a
cost to be squared off against status-linked entitlements), and an aspirational frame
(where conscription was reconfigured as a bridge to transnational ambitions).
These will be examined in the next section, but the use of framing analysis deserves
further elaboration.

Framing Analysis
First conceptualized by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson in 1972, ‘frames’ are
metacommunicative constructs which can not only define a set of messages, but
‘[give] the reader instructions or aids in his attempt to understand the messages
within the frame’.50 In communications theory, they supply ‘a central organizing
idea or a storyline that provides meaning’, and help to place a set of messages within
the same schema of interpretation.51 As Tannen argues, such metamessages can be
observed even at the level of ‘real discourse produced in face-to-face interaction’,
illuminated through the exchange of context cues and conversational inference.52 As
such, framing analysis has become one of the essential modes of discourse analysis,
and is applied widely both to oral and textual sources, including newsprint.53
Framing analysis proved an apt tool for this study because my interlocutors
did not always directly articulate how they perceived the relationship between
conscription and citizenship, at least not in clear conceptual terms. Indeed, the
structural link between these two abstract ideas was rarely first on their minds;
instead, they were more ready to discuss day-to-day concerns, such as frustrating
restrictions on their freedoms, and anecdotes of their commanders and bunk-
mates. But it was precisely from the terms of these discussions that the three
‘frames’ emerged: how they referred to NS and its attendant pressures, especially

50
Bateson (2006: 323).
51
Gamson and Modigliani (1987: 143).
52
Tannen (1993: 3–4).
53
Pan and Kosicki (1993).
 (trans)national service | 77

in relation to their own status in Singapore, shed light on how they understood the
connection between the two.

Framing Conscription
The three frames that emerged from my interviews were not mutually exclusive.
Often, the same interviewee would deploy two or more of them in conversation
to justify various (sometimes contradictory) positions. In the following sections,
however, each frame is discussed in isolation, to provide a more distinct sense of
how it operates.

Relational Frame
When asked why they, as non-citizens, were doing NS in Singapore, many
interviewees did not cite their legal obligation to do so, but replied that they
identified with Singapore, or the values Singapore represented, in some way.
Though this did not directly answer the question of why they were fulfilling this
particular obligation of conscription, it is telling that they immediately saw NS as
a way of relating to Singapore (or the idea of Singapore). In other words, these
interviewees framed NS in ‘relational’ terms: conceptualizing NS as a means of
expressing their (sometimes fraught) relationship with Singapore and ‘being
Singaporean’.
Unsurprisingly, some found it difficult to describe this relationship in a
straightforward way. For instance, Junhan (a Chinese citizen who had lived in
Singapore for more than a decade) was adamant that he neither ‘belonged to’,
nor saw himself as ‘connected to’, both Singapore and China; in the same breath,
however, he conceded that Singapore had ‘offered him an opportunity to forge
many friendships’, and proudly stated that ‘all my friends are Singaporean’.
Likewise, James (a citizen of the Philippines, whose family moved to Singapore
shortly after his birth) said he felt Singaporean ‘in terms of the culture I have,
which is really Singaporean’, but clarified that this sense of belonging was ‘not to
the point of full acceptance’. When pressed further, he explained that he still felt
rejected by some (fellow) Singaporeans: ‘once they know you were once a Pinoy,
you’ll never be accepted fully’.
These tensions between acceptance and identification notwithstanding, most
interviewees were able to point to specific elements of Singapore society, or the
‘Singaporean’ experience, that they identified with. Liwei, a Malaysian—who
unhesitatingly declared that he ‘loved Singapore’—said that he particularly
appreciated the ‘clean and tidy environment’ (the sign of a government that ‘liked
its population to be healthy’), as well as the fact that Singapore’s development was
‘very fast, very advanced’. Adrian, a citizen of Taiwan who was several years older
than his colleagues, was more reflective, musing on how growing up and being
‘accustomed to the cultures here’ had led him to feel ‘rooted’ in Singapore. Still
other interviewees said they related to Singapore’s ‘competitiveness’, ‘vibrancy’,
and ‘can-do attitude’, seeing themselves as suited for, or in agreement with, these
positive qualities.
78 | theophilus kwek

Such statements of identification were especially strong when interviewees

chose (of their own accord) to compare Singapore with their countries of
citizenship. Unprompted, they cited qualities like ‘comfort’, ‘peace’ and ‘stability’
which they were able to find here, but not where they had previously lived. Runjie
said he appreciated the ‘high standard of living’ in Singapore, as opposed to his
hometown Fujian, which was a ‘third-tier city’ and ‘not even a developed city’
when his family left sixteen years ago. Rohan, an Indian citizen whose father had
worked in Singapore for more than three decades, was even more effusive:

It’s amazing what this government is trying to achieve. When I see the
government in India, it’s so backward, corrupt, horrible. Each state is its
own country. You don’t feel the unity you do here such as during National
Day… [Here] your housing, health, your food, all this stuff is taken care
of. When citizens’ basic needs are met, they can think about what kind of
progress they want to make.

Statements like these may be interpreted as a sign of Singapore’s official

narrative of prosperity being disseminated successfully to recent migrants, or
retroactive justification on the part of conscripted non-citizens who, as children,
had little say in their family’s relocation. Still, it is noteworthy that these statements
emerged from a line of questioning about why they were doing NS in Singapore—
evidently, many understood the question as one about the depth or quality of their
relationship with Singapore, and framed their responses accordingly.
Interestingly, this relationship was not always improved by NS itself. Like
many of their Singaporean peers, the non-citizens I interviewed had their share of
gripes about the institution, from Edison’s complaint that the SAF was ‘not exactly
very efficient’, to Adrian’s angry recollections of the ‘unchecked power’ that he
witnessed in his unit.54 According to Zihao, a Chinese citizen who had first visited
Singapore at age ten, experiences during NS had sullied his initial impression
of Singapore as an ‘affluent, convenient place’. While some of these reports may
well have drawn on isolated examples or exaggerated memories, it is significant
that they came from some of the same individuals who, in our conversations, had
unreservedly framed conscription in terms of their relationship with Singapore.
This suggests that it was not the experience of conscription that formed the basis
of this relational frame, but the fact of their obligation that non-citizens associated
with being ‘Singaporean’. In fact, though various other qualities of Singapore may
have contributed to their sense of identification and obligation, their NS experience
was more likely to sour their relationship with Singapore and, as we shall see, to be
interpreted as a cost or ‘burden’.

Transactional Frame
While a relational frame captured some of the interviewees’ complex views of
their place in Singapore society without departing too far from the conventional
associations between conscription and political membership, a more hard-nosed

54
Han (2017).
 (trans)national service | 79

perspective was required to reckon with the heavy temporal and emotional costs
of NS. This shift in framing was exemplified by Edison, who—when pushed
to describe how his unhappiness about NS squared up with his sense that this
‘contribution [was] the most important thing’ in securing his status—concluded
that ‘it’s not a complete waste but it’s still a waste’. The idea of ‘waste’ was in fact
brought up numerous times by other interviewees, such as Liwei (who explained
that if he didn’t finish NS, his permanent residency would be ‘wasted’) and
Zihao (who exclaimed, ‘I wouldn’t waste two years of my life, of course there are
privileges!’). Such an instinctive accounting of the costs and benefits of conscription
was sufficiently consistent to be considered a discursive frame in its own right.
In contrast with the relational frame, which foregrounded the individual’s
relationship with nation or society, the transactional frame weighed the obligation
of conscription primarily against the individual’s short- and long-term interests.
How, exactly, did the interviewees perceive conscription’s costs and benefits?
Two main kinds of costs were frequently mentioned: restrictions on their personal
agency, and the opportunity costs of two years’ military service. The first category
not only included the strict (and often unexplained) regimentation, but also the
arbitrary nature of living arrangements and work assignments. Zihao, for one,
bemoaned both the unreasonably rigid schedules (‘it just doesn’t make sense!’)
and having to bunk in with people he didn’t choose, while Edison—a Malaysian
citizen whose brothers had both also completed NS in Singapore—compared NS
to being ‘a slave to your nation’ by virtue of having to be at his commanders’ beck
and call. The second category of opportunity costs were usually measured against
interviewees’ existing plans and aspirations. Some, like Mingde (also a Malaysian),
had already secured places at university, and were acutely conscious that the next
stage of their lives was being put on hold. Others spoke in more general terms about
the two-year gap. As Junhan put it, ‘the delay means a lot because age matters …
when you’re younger you have more energy to do the stuff you want.’
Almost all the interviewees spoke, at least in implicit terms, about squaring
these personal costs against the projected benefits of finishing NS and, although
citizenship was not a guaranteed outcome of completing their NS, being able to
obtain a Singapore passport figured highly among these anticipated returns. Zihao
described his dream of holding a Singapore passport—named the world’s most
powerful passport shortly before this study55—as ‘cashing in’ on the two years he
had spent, while Runjie (a Chinese national) bemoaned the fact that he currently
had to apply for a visa even to visit relatives in Hong Kong and Taiwan. However,
ease of travel was not the only factor. In Rohan’s view, Singapore was ‘now a
big deal’, and holding a ‘cool red passport’ would raise his personal standing:
‘to be honest, when people see a Singapore passport and an Indian passport, the
impressions change’.
The monetary perks of citizenship were also a significant draw. ‘Everything
is cheaper if you’re a citizen’, enthused Michael, before explaining how he had
already calculated the savings from obtaining citizenship that he hoped to receive
for four years’ university education and buying property in the future. In addition,

55
Seow (2017).
80 | theophilus kwek

he believed, the benefits would accrue to his parents and siblings (who were still
citizens of the Philippines): ‘if there are more citizens in my family, it’s easier
for the remaining ones’. Edison, too, described how he had known what he was
missing out on as a non-citizen since his secondary school days: ‘We don’t have
Edusave, Medisave, etc. … your quality of life is a lot cheaper as a citizen’. Indeed,
several other interviewees similarly cited participation in government savings and
subsidy schemes as a key benefit of citizenship, if only to cope with the ‘[expletive]
high cost of living’ here.
Even those who were more circumspect about their chances of obtaining
citizenship weighed the burden of conscription against the privileges of retaining
permanent residency. Shijie, for example, complained that the Singapore
government was ‘super unfair towards PRs’, as the stringent restrictions on
owning property and hefty school fees were ‘disproportionate to the sacrifices
we have to make’. Nevertheless, he personally felt that these reduced benefits
were still worth completing NS for, because permanent residents were eligible for
some tuition grants at university level (which were not afforded to student pass
holders). Despite some misunderstandings about the shifting distinctions between
citizenship and permanent residency, most of the interviewees were, like Shijie,
well-versed in the benefits they could receive on either status, and assessed the
costs of conscription accordingly.
By framing their motivations for NS as a cost-benefit analysis, my interviewees
may have lent support to critiques that conscripting non-citizens has detracted
from ‘NS’ incontrovertible raison d’être of defence’, and shifted the institution’s
focus instead to ‘its implicit transactional function’56 as a price tag for the benefits
of citizenship. But it may be more salient to consider how the neoliberal rationality
that underwrites this transactional frame has been produced by the structure
of conscription; in other words, how the costs and benefits built into NS have
prompted non-citizens to think of themselves as interest-driven agents whose
individual aspirations and allegiances are foremost in this transnational bargain.

Aspirational Frame
The third discursive frame examined here extends the cost-benefit approach of the
second from the immediate, local present into a transnational, hoped-for future.
While a transactional frame foregrounds the present trade-offs associated with
conscription, an aspirational frame puts NS into perspective by shifting the focus
to non-citizens’ transnational life-plans, frequently with onward migration and
imagined self-actualization as the final goal of their decision-making.
It was Rohan who expressed this shift in perspective most clearly. Earlier in the
conversation, he had confidently articulated why two years’ NS was a worthwhile
investment for the personal and professional growth that prospective Singapore
citizenship would afford. Not only did he see himself as ‘software compatible with
the [Singapore] system’, he also believed that he would be ‘upgrading [himself]’
by acquiring this new status. When asked about his future plans, however, Rohan

56
Chin (2013).
 (trans)national service | 81

revealed that the long-term value of the Singapore citizenship included ‘boosting
[his] chances to relocate elsewhere’: as an aspiring designer, after all, he was ‘most
influenced by the design industry in the UK’, and had heard that it would be much
easier to pursue a ‘creative line of business’ there. All in all, ‘relocating [would be]
pretty good on a Singaporean passport’, and once the opportunity presented itself,
he would be ‘good to go’.
For Rohan, there was little cognitive dissonance between framing conscription
in transactional terms when squaring its costs against the immediate benefits of
acquiring citizenship in Singapore, and in aspirational terms when re-casting it as
a bridge to fulfilling his trans-national life plans. In the long term, completing his
NS and giving himself a shot at Singapore citizenship was one necessary step in a
long path that extended from his upbringing in India to being a successful designer
in London, New York, or elsewhere. Rather than doing NS so that he could root
himself in Singapore with formal citizenship, retaining his permanent residency
and subsequently applying for citizenship was part of a strategy to facilitate
onward migration and fulfil his dreams. After all, ‘you have to adapt, you have to
see what you can do’.
Rohan was not alone in voicing these sentiments. Zihao felt that while
Singapore was an ideal home for now (with ‘superior law enforcement, healthcare,
and living environment’), retaining his permanent residency would ‘increase
his choices in life’, by making it easier to pursue his dreams of studying fashion
in New York or starting a business in China or Hong Kong. Moreover, it would
‘pave the way for his children’ by allowing them to hold ‘multiple statuses’, like
him. For Adrian, who hoped to become a luthier of boutique guitars, applying
for citizenship and completing his studies in Singapore would make it easier for
him subsequently to relocate to Canada, Sweden or Australia—within the next ten
years—to hone his skills and enter the industry. While Singapore could provide a
secure citizenship status, it lacked either the ‘market or infrastructure’ for him to
further his ambitions.
Even those who had not formulated specific goals felt compelled to pursue
onward migration, either citing particular complaints about Singapore or, more
generally, the sense that better opportunities awaited them elsewhere. Some of this
was received wisdom from family members: Michael, for instance, agreed with
his father that it was strategic to ‘use Singapore as a stepping-stone for greater
stuff’. While life in Singapore was a great improvement from before, it was ‘too
expensive’ and ‘not a good place to stay in the long term’. Others, like James, had
already formed their own, strong impressions about life in Singapore: ‘it’s not a
good idea to stay here unless you’re filthy rich. Otherwise you’re either struggling
or you’re poor. [And] the whole country is, like, in its own bubble, with the low-
key propaganda of the government. [So] I want to get my citizenship, then f*** off
and pursue my studies.’
Ultimately, regardless of how these non-citizens felt about Singapore, or how
developed their life-plans were, as aspirational frame allowed them to conceive
their conscription obligations as a path towards increased life-chances, mapped
against a plethora of transnational opportunities, rather than as a temporal and
psychological bond tying them to Singapore. In other words, instead of the
82 | theophilus kwek

traditional understanding of conscription as an emblem of long-term allegiance,

or as a policy tool to promote assimilation among migrants, military service had
been effectively re-framed as a costly (but still worthwhile) bridge to onward
migration, part of the package of mobility rights provided by citizenship or
permanent residency. And for some non-citizens at least, the state’s moves to set
more stringent application criteria had only strengthened this association: ‘I just
want to expand my options,’ said Liwei, ‘and since it’s becoming more difficult to
apply, I just want to preserve what I already have.’

Re-framing Citizenship
The three frames presented above, and the tensions between them, provide fertile
ground to reflect on how a citizenship regime, encountered through conscription,
is being re-framed by those who bear the brunt of its demands and exclusions.
Non-citizens, however, are not the only agents in this process; the ascription of
new meanings and values to citizenship requires the participation of the state and
its citizens as well. In the Singapore case, the state has a role in constructing two
parallel value-systems of conscription, while citizens reinforce the difference by re-
inscribing the border between themselves and non-citizens in various ways.
First, while non-citizens actively rationalize their conscription obligations in
transactional or aspirational terms, their considerations are structured by state
policies which set the terms of exchange: two years’ NS in return for retaining
permanent residency or a chance at citizenship, with carefully calibrated privileges
pertaining to each status. These policies, in turn, are part of a bifurcated institution
encountered differently by citizens and non-citizens. For the citizen majority,
there is practically no choice involved, as the right to conscientious objection is
not recognized,57 and conscription is presented in conventional terms as a core
national duty. For non-citizens, a more elaborate choice matrix exists. This allows
the state to sustain the public rhetoric of sacrifice and allegiance surrounding
conscription generally,58 while introducing the levers of cost-benefit analysis for the
non-citizen minority, whose access to work, residency, and family life is contingent
on their service.
Following Étienne Balibar’s work on biopolitical citizenship, Bianca Baggiarini
observes that ‘states cannot become nation-states unless they appropriate the
sacred’, in the form of control over citizens’ births and deaths, especially through
the narrative of conscription as sacrifice.59 But the privatization of warfare in the
late twentieth century, she argues, has eroded this model of state legitimacy, as
neoliberal states ‘turn to non-state actors to fulfil their military needs’ and no
longer depend on the ‘synthesis between sacrifice and citizenship’ represented
by the soldier-citizen. This may be generally true for states which have phased
out conscription in favour of professional armies. Singapore, however, represents
an alternative where the state has incorporated both sacrifice- and exchange-
based narratives in the same system, under a bifurcated framework of differential

57
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2017).
58
See D’Silva and Goh (2015).
59
Baggiarini (2014).
 (trans)national service | 83

access to privileges for citizens and permanent residents. In this way, the state
retains its biopolitical legitimacy for the citizen majority, while presenting a more
transactional choice matrix of conscription to eligible non-citizens, in line with the
neoliberal dynamics that already give rise to its tiered immigration framework.
As such, the state’s bifurcated value system of conscription provides the
backdrop against which non-citizens adopt transactional and aspirational framings
for conscription. To my interviewees, the state’s language of loyalty and sacrifice
was not meant for them, but their citizen colleagues. ‘It’s kind of like an agreement
between [this country] and PRs’, said James. ‘I’m sure they know that you wouldn’t
really get people who love Singapore if it was their own country. So, it’s more of
a contract.’ Such reflections suggest that non-citizen conscripts are incentivized to
consider their NS in terms of exchange rather than sacrifice. Framed as a ‘contract’
of service in return for rights, conscription is naturally weighed against the non-
citizen’s prospects. Insofar as political membership exists as a configuration of
rights and responsibilities, the Singapore state has reconfigured ‘citizenship’ and
‘permanent residency’ as assets by which non-citizens may make investments for
long-term goals and aspirations.
At first glance, the material language of cost and benefit may seem too divorced
from the conventional norms of allegiance and loyalty to form a parallel value-
system for the obligation of conscription. Not so, however, in Singapore’s case.
Justifications of conscription as a policy of manpower procurement for the SAF,
vis-à-vis the maintenance of a regular standing army, tend to fall back on cost
considerations, placing a premium on what is most efficient for the state.60 In one
study, a senior naval officer demonstrated that a conscript army cost less than a
third of what a professional force would cost over a given period of two years, and
argued that ‘dollar for dollar, it is difficult to argue against the cost-effectiveness
of NS’.61 Taking a historical perspective, former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong
also argued that raising a professional army shortly after independence ‘would
have bankrupted the treasury’, and NS was the only solution that ‘the country
could [then] afford’.62 Such justifications, where they apply, are in line with a
wider norm of neoliberal governance where, as political scientist Kenneth Paul Tan
observes, ‘Singapore’s considerable economic success is justification enough for its
authoritarian means.’63
What is the role of Singapore’s citizens, then, in the reconfiguration of
citizenship? Reactions to the state’s parallel value-systems of conscription are
complex. Some citizen commentators have publicly criticized the policy of
extending conscription to non-citizens, whether because it detracts from the
raison d’être of NS,64 or because it poses unacceptable risks to national security. As
opposition politician Gerald Giam claimed in one blog post, Singapore’s conscripts
are ‘entrusted with very sensitive state secrets’, and there is no reason why the
country should ‘divulge state secrets and place entire units of men under the

60
Chan (2019: 37–40).
61
Chew (2012).
62
Goh (2002).
63
K. P. Tan (2017: 42).
64
See Chin (2013).
84 | theophilus kwek

command of foreigners’. Drawing on popular perceptions of racial bias in some

quarters of the SAF, he further asked: ‘Does this mean the Singapore government
trusts foreigners more than it trusts its own Malay citizens?’65 Such criticisms
reveal the biases held by some citizens against the allegiances, motivations, and
personal integrity of non-citizen conscripts. They also reveal, to some extent, these
citizens’ understanding of their own service: as a symbol of the ‘trust’ the state
places in them.
Of course, it would be naïve to presume that all male citizens see themselves
as the sacrificial soldier-citizens promulgated by state rhetoric; after all, to borrow
Tan’s words, we might ask ‘whether a government that behaves in visibly pragmatic
terms [can] expect its citizens to respond positively to the language of loyalty
and patriotism instead of self-interest’.66 However, when it comes to comparing
their own reasons for service with the perceived motivations of non-citizens, it
is clear that some citizens refuse to make the same justifications—of allegiance,
sacrifice and national duty—available to non-citizen conscripts. In other words,
though the findings in the previous section suggest that a significant number of
non-citizens frame NS at least partly in relational terms, citizens may not be willing
to consider that non-citizens, too, can identify with Singapore sufficiently to
ground participation in NS, albeit in weaker terms than those associated with full
citizenship. Or, even if non-citizens articulate their identification with Singapore,
and act on this by undertaking NS, some Singaporeans remain sadly unwilling to
accord them the same trust as they would fellow citizens, and prefer to assume that
they treat NS as ‘a settlement fee for state-sponsored benefits’.67
Paradoxically, many Singaporeans also demand that non-citizens hoping to
obtain citizenship first complete NS (or have their male children complete it),
precisely as a sign of the loyalty and commitment that ostensibly characterizes
citizen participation. In their 2015 study on the markers of social integration, policy
researchers Leong Chan-Hoong and Yang Wai Wai found that more than 70 per cent of
Singaporeans (both male and female) saw completing NS as an important milestone
towards naturalization, and nearly as many felt that non-citizens’ sons should do
so. They argued from the data that a majority of Singaporeans saw conscription ‘as
the embodiment of loyalty, identity, and social equity’, and as such perceived non-
citizen participation as a ‘critical marker’ for a successful transition.68 On closer
reading, it is not immediately clear whether this expectation held by Leong and
Yang’s citizen respondents was based on a sense that non-citizens should equally
subscribe to the ideals of allegiance associated with conscription, or whether they
were simply unwilling to let non-citizens ‘leapfrog’ over the obligation of NS to
receive state benefits.69 While these interpretations are not mutually exclusive, the
latter reading—bolstered by Terence Chong’s observations in the same volume70—
suggests that at some level, citizens do capitulate to (and reinforce) the state’s

65
Giam (2009); see also Rahim (2010: 91–3).
66
K. P. Tan (2017: 108).
67
Chin (2013).
68
Leong and Yang (2015: 55–8).
69
Koh et al. (2015: 12).
70
Chong (2015: 220).
 (trans)national service | 85

bifurcated approach to the values underpinning NS. Arguably, citizens are no less
conscious of the cost-benefit implications of conscription for non-citizens than non-
citizens themselves are, and may well reflect in their assumptions and prejudices
the twin value-systems discernible in the state’s conscription policies.

Conclusion
When news broke in November 2018 that full-time National Serviceman Liu Kai
(a Singapore permanent resident, and citizen of the People’s Republic of China)
had been killed in a training accident, the response in some quarters of the public
homed in swiftly on his non-citizen status. One exchange on the popular internet
forum Hardware Zone (‘HWZ’) read as follows:

Should we feel sad or neutral for tiong [a colloquial term for ‘Chinese
citizen’] to die serving NS? I have mixed emotions. Not sure whether to
feel empathy or what leh.

We should feel nothing. It’s the PRs […] who should be angry [because]
their citizens served our country[’s] NS system, instead of fighting for
their own homeland.

He could have evaded NS, and none of this would have happened.

These consecutive comments, by three different users, were similar in tone and
sentiment to a number of others suggesting either that Liu’s death counted for
less of a sacrifice than the loss of a citizen’s life, or that he had made the wrong
decision in choosing to serve. There were just as many commentators, however,
who hit back at such remarks with statements of solidarity; such as ‘A life is a
life, regardless of nationality’, or, ‘Since he served NS, I consider him [a] true blue
Singaporean.’71 Readers on the Straits Times’s Facebook page, similarly, were quick
to offer condolences and count Liu as one of ‘our boys’.72
Insofar as the death of a National Serviceman represents the ultimate sacrifice
of the citizen-soldier, an archetype that is itself defined by the narratives of loyalty
and sacrifice, these conflicted responses to Liu’s tragedy suggest an on-going
renegotiation among citizens of the once-straightforward relationship between
citizenship and conscription. Relying on the personal accounts of non-citizen
conscripts, this paper has argued that a parallel process is taking place among
non-Singaporeans, with conscription being re-framed in relational, transactional
and aspirational terms. Both dynamics, however, must be understood in light of
state policies that outline a bifurcated value-system for conscription: premised on
allegiance for the citizen, but tied to conditional privileges for the non-citizen. In
their interactions with each other, mediated through the institution of conscription,
each of these actors (citizens, non-citizens and the state) has an active role in the
redefinition of citizenship in Singapore.

71
Hardware Zone (2018).
72
Facebook (2018).
86 | theophilus kwek

We should be careful not to draw hasty conclusions from a partial

understanding of on-going processes. Nevertheless, a sense of the contrasting
perspectives on citizenship that citizens and non-citizens have come to hold,
and of the contradictory expectations that each group bears towards the other,
should guide policymakers in evaluating a conscription policy that is at least
partly intended to foster assimilation. Creating more pathways to citizenship, for
instance, or creating legal guarantees for the rights of permanent residents, would
strengthen the sense of identification that many non-citizens already feel towards
Singapore before taking part in NS, and challenge the assumptions of citizens who
perceive permanent residents to be doing so only on transactional terms. In terms
of official rhetoric, policymakers might also shift towards a language of allegiance
and obligation that embraces non-nationals, while not fostering the unrealistic
expectation that non-citizens will remain rooted in Singapore in the long term.
This study also has implications for the study of migration in the Singaporean
context. While some migrants develop a keen sense of identification with
Singapore, which is sufficient to ground the substantial sacrifice of NS, it seems
that many others are incentivised by the country’s citizenship policies to adopt
more goal-oriented approaches to conscription: treating themselves as assets in a
transnational market, and the privileges of Singapore citizenship as investments for
the long term. It also appears that, rather than always acting as a barrier to onward
migration, participation in NS can be seen by migrants to facilitate their pursuit
of transnational aspirations. Further research could shed light on the contributory
ideas and experiences that shape these frames, and also investigate if there have
been generational shifts in the attitudes of non-citizens towards conscription that
track the evolution of NS policy.
More broadly, this study adds to a growing body of research on the impacts of
global migration and neoliberal immigration policies on the local configurations
of citizenship and power. These otherwise abstract ideas have immensely
real implications for the lives of migrants whose trajectories—by choice and
circumstance—increasingly map over a wide, transnational terrain. Yet it is
difficult to understand or even access their experiences of such issues when their
perspectives remain marginal in public and policy conversations. In academia,
and elsewhere, the work of documenting and foregrounding their voices has only
just begun.

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