Desiring ‘foreign talent’: Lack and Lacan in anti-immigrant sentiments in Singapore

Abstract

In recent years, the Singapore government’s pro-immigration policy – specifically, its recruitment of so-called ‘foreign talent’ – has caused a palpable rise in anti-immigrant sentiments and discourses among natives of the city-state. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, a perspective so far marginal in migration research, this article offers a provocative reading of Singapore’s desire for foreign talent and the local society’s reception of these subjects. The article focuses on the ways in which frustrated Singaporeans seem to find foreign talent immigrants, especially those from mainland China, to be lacking and undesirable. Lacan’s theories enable the bold interpretations that: 1) foreign talent is not meant to fill a lack but precisely to produce it and 2) foreign talent stands for Singapore’s and Singaporeans’ unobtainable object of desire, which ultimately signifies the gaps and inconsistencies in the symbolic order confronting them. Moving away from existing conceptual frameworks and theoretical approaches, the article illustrates what a psychoanalytic lens of desire can contribute to migration and mobility research.