Migration and Mobilities

The Migration and Mobilities cluster was formerly known as the Asian Migration Cluster which became part of the Asia Research Institute around 2003. In 2025, the name of the cluster was formally expanded to encapsulate the wider range of migration and mobilities research that has come to characterise its work. The Migration and Mobilities cluster maintains research interest in a broad range of human migrations, mobilities and interconnectivities within and beyond Asia. The cluster has four priority research themes:

1. The first focuses on the material processes and discourses of globalisation and transnationalism as they intersect in Asian cities. This includes exploring new knowledge frameworks through which to understand the complex and diverse linkages between global change and transnational migration in cities of diversity.
2. The second research theme investigates the relationship between human aspiration, migration and development in Southeast Asia, with a focus on the development impact of migration in sending communities as well as the costs and risks of migration for the poor.
3. A third research theme highlights the organisation and constitution of transnational (im)mobility as a means of (re)conceptualising different mobile practices, temporalities and rationalities that characterise both human and non-human movement and flow. This theme gives weight to the role of migration brokerage and migration infrastructure in organising and facilitating mobility, as well as the diverse mobility systems that structure the movement of people alongside material objects and ideas, thereby shaping social practices on the ground. 
4. Our fourth theme examines the nexus between transnational migration, health and wellbeing, giving special consideration to how these mutually constitutive processes are experienced by migrants and non-migrants relationally in domains such as ageing, care work and food (in)security.