Events

This workshop is organized by the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS), with funding support from the University of Auckland.

Decolonising Migration Studies? explores the relationship between colonialism and migration studies and addresses the future of the field in a time of intellectual decolonization. It responds to growing calls in migration studies to decolonize the intellectual and methodological foundations of this field of research. Echoing interventions in other parts of the social sciences, these calls highlight the colonial foundations of migration knowledge, its indebtedness to disciplines that emerged within European enlightenment traditions and the ongoing dominance of the field by Western scholars, contexts, literature and concepts. Such interventions raise crucial questions about the generation of knowledge about migration in a globalizing world that continues to be shaped by imperial and colonial legacies.

Key questions that the workshop seeks to address include:

• How has the primary focus on migration to Europe and North America shaped the conceptual vocabulary and methodological approaches available to study migration?
• What role does migration studies play in promoting, legitimizing or challenging racialized, gendered and classed forms of migration control?
• How do the institutions of migration studies—universities, associations, networks, conferences and journals—sustain or counter Eurocentricity in migration research?
• Are there alternative possibilities for constituting migration studies beyond colonialism?

PARTICIPATION

Please note that participation in this closed-door workshop is by invitation only.

WORKSHOP CONVENORS

Prof Francis L. COLLINS
Waipapa Taumata Rau – University of Auckland

Dr Sin Yee KOH
Universiti Brunei Darussalam

Prof Brenda S.A. YEOH FBA
National University of Singapore