Events

This half-day symposium is held in conjunction with the scoping workshop on Brokerage, Migration Routes, and Human Mobilities, organized by the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and the Institute for Research on Contemporary Southeast Asia, with funding support from the AMORCE Grant by National Centre for Scientific Research.

CHAIRPERSON

Assoc Prof Loïs Bastide, University of French Polynesia

PROGRAMME

ABSTRACT

Over the past two decades, the study of migration has seen growing interest in the “middle spaces of migration”, that is, the intermediary spaces of migration. Instead of focusing on destination or origin countries, researchers have become interested in the figures, practices, and material and immaterial resources that help structure, maintain and transform migratory routes, and consequently facilitate and channel human mobility. In this symposium, speakers address the study of the intermediary spaces of migration through engaging different empirical contexts using conceptual frameworks ranging from “migration industry”, “mobility infrastructures”, and “brokerage practices”.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Frédéric Roustan is Associate Professor in Contemporary Asian History at the University of Lyon 2, France, attached to the Institut d’Asie Orientale research center. After his doctoral studies at Osaka University, he did several post-doctoral positions in Japan, including at the University of Tokyo and Hitotsubashi. After 10 years of studying and working in Japan, he returned to France where he taught Japanese at Aix-Marseille University before joining the history department of the University of Lyon. He currently works on the historical relations between Japan and Vietnam, particularly issues relating to the migration of Japanese to French Indochina.

Laurence Roulleau-Berger is Research Director Emeritus at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (French National Centre for Scientific Research), Triangle, Ecole Normale Supérieure of Lyon, Triangle, PhD and PhD Supervisor in Sociology. She is also French Director of the International Advanced Laboratory CNRS/ENS Lyon-Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Post-Western Sociology: From East Asia to Europe. She has led numerous research programs in Europe and in China in urban sociology, economic sociology, and sociology of migration over thirty years. Since 2006, she is involved in an epistemological way on the fabric of post-Western sociology. She has published thirty books, numerous articles and chapters, among the most recent: Post-Western Revolution in Sociology: From China to Europe (2016); Work and Migration: Chinese Youth in Shanghai and Paris, with Yan Jun (2017); The Fabric of Sociological Knowledge, co-edited with Xie Lizhong (2017) (in Chinese); Post-Western Sociology: From China to Europe, co-edited with Li Peilin (2018); Young Chinese Migrants, Compressed Individual and Global Condition (2021); and Sociology of Migration and Post- Western Theory, co-edited with Liu Yuzhao (2022); Handbook of Post-Western Sociology: From East Asia to Europe, co-edited with Li Peilin, Kim Seung-Kuk, Shujiro Yazawa (2023), Brill Publishers.

Katharine Jones is Professor of Migration and Social Justice in the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University, UK where she leads a team of researchers. She is currently Co-Director of the £13m UKRI GCRF Migration for Development & Equality (MIDEQ) Research Hub, leading on the hub’s research on migration intermediaries. Katharine has been conducting and project managing research on migration for over two decades, including for the UN, government departments, local authorities, the European Commission, foundations, civil society, and business. She is an expert in ethical international recruitment of migrant workforces, having developed multiple policy documents for the UN and for the National Health Service England. She is highly active in support of migrants’ rights where she lives in Glasgow, Scotland, and is a long-standing trustee of the Scottish Refugee Council and leading migrants’ rights law centre, JustRight Scotland.

Koen Leurs is Associate Professor in Gender, Media and Migration Studies at the Graduate Gender Program, Department of Media and Culture, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Leurs research interests include migration, borders and youth culture; digital, creative and participatory methodologies and research ethics. Currently, Leurs is the principal investigator of the Team Science project ‘Co-designing a fair digital asylum system’, funded by the Digital Society and COMMIT, a public-private ICT research community (2022-2023). He chairs the Utrecht University wide Digital Migration Special Interest Group, part of the Governing the digital society focus area. He previously co-edited Handbook of Media and Migration (Sage, 2020) and the special issues (Im)Mobile Entanglements (International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2023) and Inclusive Media Education for Diverse Societies (Media & Communication, 2022). He has published Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0. Diaspora, Gender & Youth Cultural Intersections (Amsterdam University Press, 2015). His latest book is Digital Migration (Sage, 2023), and the edited volume Doing Digital Migration Studies: Theories and Practices of the Everyday will come out soon (Amsterdam University Press, 2024).

Choo Chin Low is Senior Lecturer in the History Section, School of Distance Education, Universiti Sains Malaysia. She holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include migration, citizenship, and diaspora studies. Her recent publications appeared in Journal of International Migration and Integration, Regions & Cohesion, Europe-Asia Studies, Citizenship Studies, Diaspora Studies, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, Journal of Historical Sociology, and Third World Quarterly. She was a visiting fellow at Academia Sinica and National Taiwan University (2016). She currently serves as a country expert for the Global Citizenship Observatory (European University Institute, Italy) and the Global Dynamics of Social Policy (University of Bremen, Germany).

Andy Scott Chang is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Singapore Management University and incoming Assistant Professor of Sociology at Florida State University. He is an international migration scholar with a regional focus on East and Southeast Asia. He researches the political economy of labor migration, its consequences on rural livelihoods, and the identity formation of migrants and their family members. His award-winning work has been published in Social Forces, Social Problems, and Pacific Affairs.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this hybrid talk has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the event.