Events

Jointly organised by the Asia Research Institute and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Gendered migration studies have burgeoned in recent years, often characterised by a pronounced emphasis on the conditions of servitude under which low-income migrant women care workers labor. In recent years, scholars have also traced the aspirations of migrant workers, as these shift over time, as well as the changing organization of care needs and aspirations in both sending and receiving countries. This workshop proposes to develop an explicit dialogue between the critical research on migrant servitude and migrants’ aspirations. How do migrants’ own aspirations intersect with the conditions of servitude under which they labor?  How do their sending country families’ and communities’ imagined futures cohere and conflict with migrants’ own aspirations?  What sorts of temporalities, spatialities, and gender politics are characteristic of the various imagined futures and lived conditions of migrant care labor? This workshop aims to open up a broad based discussion surrounding these themes and to encourage in-depth, multi-disciplinary analytical connections between migrant care labor and futurity studies. It pays particular attention to how future dreams and fears are articulated by migrants, how migration produces and disrupts various forms of gendered aspirations and servitude within families, across nation-states, and across generations, how migrant training programs are shaping the expectations of migrant workers themselves as well as their family and community members. This workshop aims to bring together the longstanding interests in gender, migration, and transnational family formation of several scholars and students with specializations in care provisioning and sending countries.

REGISTRATION

Admission is free, however, registration is required. Kindly register early as seats are available on a first come, first served basis. Please send an RSVP to Kristel Acedera <kacedera@nus.edu.sg> and Alice Chen <alicejin0606@gmail.com> indicating your name and organization. The registration is open until 10 July 2014.