Events

Please note that participation in this workshop is now closed-door, and by invitation only.
Do forward all enquiries for this event to Sharon at arios@nus.edu.sg

In recent years, emerging scholarship on migration and digital networks have focused on the role of digital technologies in enhancing, hindering and reshaping communication among transnational families, migrant communities and social groups. For example, there has been much interest in the role of social media in the sustenance of emotional bonds, the increasing ubiquity of smart phones and long-distance mothering.

While the growing literature has raised important questions about the relationship between grounded social practices among migrants and the development of digital networks, few has examined how the use of technologies by migrants itself is gendered. This is a significant lacuna particularly in the context of Asia where cultural and socioeconomic practices of migration and digital communities continue to hinge on gendered hierarchy and the regimes of sexuality. Digital networks have created both opportunities and challenges even as they open up innovative forms of gender performance and citizenship among migrants in Asia.

This workshop hence seeks to fill this gap by paying attention to the political economy of gender and its intersections with migrants’ digital networks. It will bring together a range of empirical studies from Asian contexts to contribute towards strengthening theoretical understanding in the study of gender, migration, transnationalism and digital networks. The workshop’s thematic focus will include following broadly-defined areas:

• The digital mobilisation of domestic and care workers
• Digital masculinities and performative citizenships
• The legal control of gendered bodies in a forced migration context
• The global and local circulation of gender and sexuality images and practices
• Female migrants and informal digital economies
• Intimacy in times of migration and digital networks

CONVENORS

Dr Shiori Shakuto 
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

Professor Brenda Yeoh
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore