Time protagonists: student migrants,practices of time and cultural construction of the Singapore-educated person

This paper analyses the cultural production of the ‘educated person’ through student migrants' engagement with ideas and practices of time. In particular, it pays attention to how these young people negotiate identities and develop unique strategies to achieve personal goals of education. Drawing on the works of Pierre Bourdieu and Michael Flaherty, I conceptualise time as both a discursive structure and cultural resource to forward two interrelated arguments. First, I argue that time is an important discourse in the ways that ideas about education and becoming educated are imagined, performed and negotiated. Second, I suggest more attention needs to be placed on time as a central facet of cultural (re)production. This study focuses on one particular student flow from Southeast Asia to Singapore as a case to illuminate the role of time in cultural production, based on research with thirty students conducted between 2010 and 2011 primarily through biographical interviews.