This study conceives of Singapore's publicly-funded higher education institutions (HEIs) - comprising autonomous universities and polytechnics - as (quasi-)corporate organizations, with concerns of strategic self-representation to appeal to stakeholders in an increasingly competitive environment. Such a conception is in line with this inquiry's focus on how these organizations semiotically enact their corporate identities in the form of their corporate brands, The investigation involves, firstly, examining how the brands are enacted in and through a variety of multimodal brand artifacts, particularly through expressions of verbal and visual modality, instantiations of metaphor, and use of images. In addition, the study considers how these brand enactmepts provide an avenue in and through which the organizations can potentially influence and exercise control over addressees to engender favourable dispositions towards their corporate brands as well as shape addressees' individual subjectivities. Finally, the inquiry probes the process of the brands' constitution, examining the variables - social, economic, political, and so on - that influence such a process, seeking to discern how the contextual dynamics surrounding these brands are inflected and negotiated in the brand enactments. As a comparative basis, selected references to the British HE context will be made where appropriate. The textual analysis reveals attempts at moderation of organizational authority through particular patterns of modality, as well as an emphasis on brand animation and anthropomorphization through metaphorical instantiation, to foster cognitive appeal and identification on the part of the audience. The analysis of images also reveals how two different sets of paradigms and their attendant subjectivities are pictured and purveyed: one leans towards a less current Fordist configuration associated with order, structure and conformism, while the other is oriented towards the values of freedom, empowerment and flexibility privileged In a post-Fordist socioeconomic and organizational context. Nonetheless, that an emphasis on the capitalist values of individual and organizational empowerment, dynamism and competitiveness, among others, is evident in many of the brand enactments, both verbally and visually, indicates how discourses of (neoliberal) capitalism have been inflected In the process of corporate brand constitution.

This study traces the internationalization of Singapore universities from a historical and developmental perspective. The main Research Question is: “Why and how have Singapore universities internationalized since the beginning of nationhood in the early 1960’s to the globalized economy of today?” It seeks an in-depth understanding of (a) the meanings of internationalization, (b) the rationales for it; and (c) the approaches to it - from the Singapore government’s and universities’ perspectives. The study is located within the interpretative paradigm with a qualitative research approach using documentary analysis as the sole data collection method. The focus is on the three publicly-funded universities, namely NUS, NTU and SMU in Singapore. Being publicly-funded, the rationales for internationalising and the strategies used are more likely to be influenced by governmental policies and direction. Relevant sources examined include published government and university documents available from university libraries, web-sites and government archival records. Among the key findings are - that the internationalization of Singapore universities is inevitable given 21st century globalization and knowledge-based economies; and the government’s tight instrumental interdependence between education and economic development. The term ‘internationalization’ of universities is interpreted as ‘going global’ by the government; and ‘to be a global university’ by the three case universities. Singapore‘s universities are used as key ‘instruments’ to foster and attract talent, both local and foreign – to overcome a scarcity of skilled labour. Hence, the ‘internationalization’ of Singapore universities aims to – produce ‘world ready’ graduates, enhance ‘global competitiveness’, and talent augmentation (attracting foreign talent). Some of the Internationalization strategies adopted by the government and universities are unique. Two analytical models of internationalization of universities are developed from the study as its theoretical contribution.

This thesis addresses the “foreign talent” situation in Singapore with an ethnographic account of the lived experiences of immigrant PRC students on scholarships, or “PRC scholars.” For some two decades, the Singapore government has annually recruited middle school students from China in their hundreds, selecting them through tests and interviews, granting them full scholarships at either pre-undergraduate or undergraduate level, and, very often, “bonding” them to work subsequently in Singapore for a number of years. Wooed and appropriated in such a way as prized potential human capital, PRC scholars exemplify the Singapore state’s desire for “foreign talent.” In the first decade of the twenty-first century, as the influx of all manners of “foreign talent” into the small city-state gathered pace, local sentiments and discourses of resentment arose. The local-vs-“foreign talent” problem became a serious strain on a city and people proud of their cosmopolitanism. This thesis analyzes the “foreign talent” situation through the ethnographic “macro-trope” of desire. It argues that “foreign talent” is a site of convergence and divergence, collusion and collision, accommodation and contestation, fulfillment and failure of various individual, sociocultural, and political desires and longings. Through the lens of desire, and its psychoanalytic undertones and insights, this thesis looks ethnographically into the PRC scholars’ “foreign talent” journeys in nuanced ways. Based on ethnographic fieldworks carried out in a Chinese middle school and a Singaporean university, the thesis shows how Chinese students are constituted as specific subjects of desire, and how they subsequently develop certain perceptions, attitudes, and stereotypes about the local “other” as well as about themselves after arriving in Singapore as “foreign talent.” Infused with multifarious desires, the PRC scholars’ experiences are often characterized by angst and dissatisfaction; yet it is also argued that generative subjective transformations take place precisely amidst these dynamics and pragmatics of desiring. Ultimately, this thesis seeks to make possible an ethical re-imagination of the “foreign talent” situation in Singapore from the perspective of desire; to provide an account of the so far little-studied Chinese migrant students in the context of Singapore; and to speak more broadly to the cultural and subjective dimensions of human experiences in the context of educational mobility, identity politics, and globalization.

In spite of widespread critiques about the neoliberalisation of higher education and its production of citizenship in relation to the market, transformation of students into profit-maximising individuals, and the vitalisation of a self-enterprising subjectivity, many of these claims remain under-examined with respect to cultural production. The objective of this research is to explore the neoliberal production of middle-class citizenship through the lens of educated non-elite local youth in Singapore. By combining geographical, sociological and anthropological insights about education and youth, I develop a theoretically informed ethnographic case study to examine how this segment of young people reproduce themselves as middle-class citizens. The research is based on eleven months of fieldwork at a local private institute of higher education, where I hanged around, talked to, and observed Singaporean young people between ages 18 and 25 studying for their first degree. The ethnographic materials are written up into four substantive papers, demonstrating the ways in which educated non-elite Singaporean youth in private higher education engage with state disseminated ideas around neoliberal accumulation and human capital formation. I argue that these students draw on class-based sensibilities and feelings to produce vibrant forms of normativities, subjectivities, and politics that pose a challenge to dominant assumptions of a "hollowed out" citizenship under neoliberalism. The research makes two overall interventions in geographic and social scientific writings about neoliberal restructuring of higher education and its implications for youth citizenship. First, it cautions against a straightforward claim that neoliberal technologies of control have extended market values into citizenship subjectivity and, with it, the erosion of progressive political projects. Second, it provides a much-needed analysis of middle-class citizenship formation among young people caught at the losing end of a diversifying educational landscape.