Current Debates in Migration

Coordinator: Shirlena Huang, Associate Professor, Geography

Project Description and Scope

What follows is a proposal for a formalized cross-disciplinary reading group primarily for graduate students involved in migration studies. The theme for the group will be current debates in migration studies as dictated by graduates’ present thesis projects. The aim of the group will be to augment graduate student’s readings, theoretical discussions and learning in regards to their work. The reading group will be organized in association with the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Migration Cluster’s Graduate Group, which currently has occasional informal meetings.

Mirroring the interests of the current 17 members of the FASS Migration Cluster Graduate Group. The reading group will cover the following topical areas:

  • State, borders, and citizenship
  • Migration and economies of care
  • Labour relations
  • Migration and forced migration
  • Family, intimacy, and sexuality
  • Religions: politics and rituals
  • Social movements

The group will meet once every three or four weeks. The objective of the proposed reading group is to enhance the intellectual exchange among our participants. Every three to four weeks, one of our graduate student cluster members will present his/her current research interest in collaboration with a relevant reading (as listed from themes above). Participants will benefit from mutual feed-back and constructive input generated from discussions following their presentation. All members of the cluster will furthermore gain a deeper understanding of each others’ research interests and foci. Although the reading group will operate with a core of 5-6 members, it will be open to all who are interested in migration studies and research. Reading materials will be circulated prior to each meeting. NUS faculty will be invited to attend groups which are relevant to their work.
Each reading group session will be attended by at least one of the Steering Committee members – either A/P Shirlena Huang, Dr Pattana Kitiarsa or Dr Mika Toyota. In sum, each will take turns supervising 3-4 of the ten scheduled meetings.

The meetings each supervises will be matched to respective areas of expertise and as well as schedules: A/P Huang will supervise sessions on family and/or religion; Dr Kitiarsa those on labour relations; and Dr Toyota those on economies of care.

In addition, as and when the opportunity arises, Visiting Fellows, PDFs and Visiting Professors at NUS whose work speaks to migration and the graduate themes will be invited to the sessions. So far, Dr. Melody Chia-Wen Lu, a Research Fellow at Asia Research Institute whose work addresses family, intimacy and sexuality; and Dr. Sarah Starkweather, a Post-doc in the Department of Geography whose work speaks to states, borders and citizenship, have already agreed to attend.
Finally, the following professors will be invited to discuss their research and writings:
Professor Nicole Constable, a core faculty member in Asian Studies and Women's Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, who specializes in migration studies and who has had years of experience working with graduate students has already tentatively agreed to come to present and run a workshop in the reading group if funding is approved. We will plan to read her work in preparation and discuss accordingly when she arrives.
Professor Martin Manalasan, a core faculty member in Asian American Studies Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His broad research interests include the following: sociocultural anthropology, sexuality and gender, immigration and globalization among Filipinos and Filipino-Americans.

Initial Reading List

State, borders and citizenship:
  • Agamben, Giorgio. (2004) State of exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Pratt, Geraldine. (2005) ‘Abandoned women and spaces of the exception’. Antipode 32(4), 387-409.

Migration and economies of care:
  • Yeates, Nicola (2009) Globalizing care economies and migrant workers explorations in global care chains. Palgrave Macmillan.

Labour and globalization:
  • Biao, Xiang (2006) Global "Body Shopping": An Indian Labor System in the Information Technology Industry Princeton University Press.

Family, intimacy, and sexuality:
  • Constable, Nicole (2004) Cross-Border Marriages: Gender and Mobility in Transnational Asia. University of Pennsylvania Press.
  • Constable, Nicole (2003) Romance on a Global Stage: Penpals, Virtual Ethnography, and Mail order Marriages. University of California Press.
  • Manalansan, Martin (2006) ‘Queer intersections: Sexuality and gender in migration studies,” International Migration Review 40(1), 224-49.

Μigration and forced migration:
  • Agustin, Laura (2007) Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry Zed Books (London).

Social movements:
  • Wright, Melissa W. (2008) Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism. New York and London: Routledge.
    Religions: politics and rituals
  • Falah, Ghazi and Nagel, Caroline (2005) Geographies of Muslim Women: Gender, Religion, and Space The Guilford Press; 1st edition.

Meeting Schedule and Events

Timeframe:

  • January 2010 to December 2010 (to span academic years 2009/10, semester 2 and 2010/11, semester 1). Funding for the reading group will be used over 2 financial years (FY 2009 and FY 2010)
  • Frequency of meetings: once in 3 weeks or 4 to 5 meetings each semester

Venue:

  • Research Clusters Meeting Room A The Shaw Foundation Building Block AS7 Level 6, FASS, NUS (Kent Ridge Campus) Room

Invited Speaker:

Professor Nicole Constable is a core faculty member in Asian Studies and Women's Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research and teaching interests include gender and migration, transnationalism and globalization, and virtual ethnography.

Potential invited speaker:

Professor Martin Manalansan is a faculty member in Asian American Studies Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Chapaign. His broad research interests include the following: sociocultural anthropology, sexuality and gender, immigration and globalization among Filipinos and Filipino-Americans.

List of Participants

  • A/P. Shirlena Huang (Geography)
  • Dr Pattana Kitiarsa (SEA Studies Programme)
  • Dr Mika Toyota (Sociology)
  • Ms. Monica Smith (PhD Candidate, Geography)
  • Ms. Fiona-Katharina Seiger (PhD Candidate, Sociology)
  • Ms. Xue Li Qing (PhD Candidate, Chinese Studies)