Events

This workshop is the final part of a three-year long collaborative project on migrant brokers run by Johan Lindquist of Stockholm University, Xiang Biao of Oxford University, and Brenda Yeoh of the National University of Singapore, and generously funded by the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT). The Forum for Asian Studies at Stockholm University and the Asia Research Institute have also offered financial support for the workshop. 

This workshop takes the concept of migration infrastructure as a starting point for conceptualizing new regimes of transnational migration across Asia and the Middle East. These regimes are characterized by growing demands for documentation (i.e. the production of passports and no objection certificates) and stringent immigration controls, as the role of state actors in the migration process has become more extensive. At the same time, the development of flexible labor markets characterized by sub-contracting and the privatization of migration management means that intersections between state and market actors are increasingly complex on local, national, and transnational scales. In this context, a wide range of institutionalized services and facilities—such as medical checkups, surveillance systems, temporary housing, migrant training, transportation, terminals, as well as the production of documents—form the basis for contemporary flows of migration.

Transnational migration is increasingly managed through infrastructural development as opposed to the control of bodily movement per se. We therefore offer migration infrastructure as a conceptual alternative to migration industry (Castles and Miller 1998). While the latter highlights the importance of actors and institutions involved in the business of migration—in contrast to state attempts to regulate migration flows and the experiences of migrants themselves—migration infrastructure suggests an approach that engages with the services and facilities that make migration possible in the context of an increasingly complex relationship between state and market.

Infrastructure is ecological and relational and must be understood in the context of organized practices across time and space (Star 1999). Although generally understood as mundane and taken-for-granted, infrastructure can also take the form of spectacle, particularly in the context of introduction, upgrade, and breakdown, as, for instance, with the rise of online biometric technologies. But infrastructure is also commonly patchwork, as in the ad hoc transformation of residential into temporary migant housing. Approaching infrastructure in ethnographic terms continues our ongoing concern with opening the black box of migration (Lindquist, Xiang, and Yeoh 2012), namely the middle space between departure and arrival. In this workshop we invite participants to engage with some aspect of migration infrastructure in ethnographic terms. The embedded nature of infrastructure means that it is difficult to mark a beginning or an end.As a heuristic, however, an ethnography of infrastructure allows us to approach the organization and structure of migration in novel ways and unpack widely used terms such as “flow” and “channel”. In line with this, we hope to receive papers that deal with a wide range of perspectives on migration infrastructure. These might deal, for instance, with processes of migrant documentation, the organization of migrant transportation, or the temporary housing or confinement of migrants.

REGISTRATION

Admission is Free. Do register early as seats are available on a first come, first served basis. We would gratefully request that you RSVP to Sharon at arios@nus.edu.sgindicating your name and organisation/affiliation.

CONTACT DETAILS

Workshop Convenors

Assoc Prof Johan LINDQUIST
Stockholm University, Sweden

Dr XIANG Biao
Oxford University, UK

Prof Brenda YEOH
National University of Singapore

Secretariat

Miss Sharon ONG
Asia Research Institute, NUS
E| arios@nus.edu.sg