Global Flows of Foreign Talent: Identity Anxieties in Singapore's Ethnoscape‪.‬

Introduction Despite openly embracing globalization, the vagaries of global capitalism have heightened new economic challenges for Singapore. Shortly after the post-Asian financial crisis in 2000, the erstwhile economic recovery and stability was again hit by the ripple effects of a global economic slowdown. This was exacerbated by the events of the September 11 terrorist attack on America, and the subsequent war declared on Afghanistan and the networks of terrorism. Admittedly, these destabilizing global events have created new levels of anxiety in the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural realms in and across all levels of societies and nation-states. Singapore is by no means exempted. The evidence is there. Its gross domestic product (GDP) registered a negative 2 per cent in 2001 while its unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2002 soared to an unprecedented 4.5 per cent, and was forecast to reach 6 per cent if the economy did not rebound. (1) In April 2002, the league table for the world's most competitive economy revealed that Singapore's economy had slipped from its once unbeatable record for being the second most competitive economy in the world for five consecutive years to the fifth position (Straits Times, 30 April 2002).