Yes, we’ve discussed this before. It’s a great description of a desirable *end state*. Successful states need the identity groups that they comprise to have a stake in, be represented and enfranchised, in the national project. 1/

But group-rights claims hinder the *means* to that end. 2/

What affiliative or ascriptive groups exist in a state, however strongly identified they are, how segregated and distinct they are, are not predetermined but things that must be continually shaped by the project of state building and maintenance. 3/

Singapore simultaneously insists on maintaining the identities of three major subgroups (chinese, malay, indian) while it refuses them certain associational rights but controlling the racial distribution of housing. 1/

It both strengthens and weakens subgroup affiliations, strengthening particular identities that it has made legible to itself and recognized, enfranchised, in the manner Wimmer suggests, implicitly perhaps weakening other or more specialized identities that might emerge under other policy. 2/

Its housing policy and language policy (it encourages “native tongues” but insists on English as the lingua franca in commerce and law) shapes the degree and character of identity, the balance of local identity with identity with the broader state. 3/

All of this is legitimate, even laudable, in my view, even though some might dislike the state’s restriction of association in the formation of communities of coresidence. 4/

(Early Singapore had terrible racial conflict. Modern Singapore’s founding moment is an instance of ethnic cleansing, Malaysia choosing to shed a Chinese ethnic enclave.) /fin