Oaths, Registrations and Naturalisations: The Singapore Citizenship Ordinance, 1957

The 1957 decision to establish local citizenship in Singapore was made after more than a year of negotiations between David Marshall and Lim Yew Hock’s Labour Front and the British government. These negotiations, which led to the Singapore Citizenship Ordinance in 1957, focused on the procedures for oaths of allegiance, eligibility for naturalisation and registration, effects on the franchise, dual citizenship and its critics, Chinese consular plans and the relationship with the British Nationality Act (BNA) of 1948. The two parties to these negotiations also held differing views on the extent and coverage of local Singaporean citizenship. In the United Kingdom, the Home Office, objected to the formation of local citizenship outside of the framework provided by the BNA. Ultimately however, British officials were willing to defer to the preferences that the Singaporean government had in relation to establishing local citizenship, even if specific clauses in the 1957 ordinance represented compromises between the two negotiating parties. Arguably citizenship represented moves towards decolonisation, instantiating wider debates about the transfer of political powers, competencies, sovereignty and, in a broader sense, the making of new nations and their identities in a post-colonial South East Asia.

Greg Rawlings is Associate Professor in Social Anthropology at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. From 2019-2023 he was Head of the Social Anthropology Programme. His main areas of research and teaching cover globalisation, transnationalism and citizenship and the relationship between anthropology and history.