Events

This workshop is jointly organized by the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). The “Migration Rhythms in Trajectories of Upward Social Mobility in Asia” project at PRIO has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 948403).

Upward social mobility in Asia today, whether aspirational or actual, predominantly refers to becoming middle class, with dramatic leaps increasingly being made into middle-classness. The expanding Asian middle class is empirically observable in its various manifestations: housing developments, shopping malls, and the proliferation of coffee joints, to mention just a few. While the lower bounds of the middle classes in Asia continue to confront varying degrees of precarity, for increasing proportions of populations across Asia, partaking in middle-class lifestyles is becoming aspirational if not occasionally within reach.

Taking this as our point of departure for this workshop, we seek to draw links between these observable realities of social mobility, with the equally salient trend of migration in Asia and beyond. Migration patterns in the region are highly variegated, connecting the internal with the international, the short-term with the long-term. The drivers and outcomes of migration today may be equally varied, prompting us to examine the multifold interactions between migration and social mobility afresh from an Asia-centric perspective. This is needed not only because of the rapid rise of migration as a vital social force for change in Asia, but also to take into account the prevalence of restrictive migration regimes among Asian countries, which can curtail migrant mobility in some instances while undermining the assumption that migration can be a means to achieving upward social mobility in other cases.

Focusing on the Asian context, the workshop seeks to explore the interactions between multiple forms of migrations and the processes of social mobility, whether upward, downward, or sideways. Themes of interest linking social and spatial mobility include but are not limited to the following:

• The role of migration in the emergence of the new middle classes in Asia, for example, how upward mobility affects migration aspirations while also generating increasing demand for personal/domestic services provided by migrants
• Migration-citizenship regimes, opportunity structures and obstacles to social mobility
• Transnational family dynamics, financial remittances, and social remittances in shaping social mobility; gender relations and intergenerational social mobility are of particular interest
• Education, occupation, entrepreneurship, and property ownership as key factors in shaping the migration-social mobility nexus
• Life-course and temporal approaches to social-spatial mobility
• Linking internal and international migration in studying social mobility
• Migration, aspirations and social mobility in the city

CALL FOR PAPERS HAS ENDED

Authors of selected proposals will be notified by the end of November 2024. Presenters will have to submit a draft of their papers (about 4,000-6,000 words) by 7 March 2025. These drafts will be circulated to fellow presenters and discussants in advance.

WORKSHOP CONVENORS

Prof Brenda S.A. YEOH
Asia Research Institute & Department of Geography, National University of Singapore

Dr Wei YANG
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

Prof Marta Bivand ERDAL
Peace Research Institute Oslo

Dr Karen LIAO
Peace Research Institute Oslo