Events

Despite the bulk of work that has established ‘race’ as socially constructed, ‘race’ remains significant in the everyday lives of migrants, whether it is imposed upon them or has become a form of boundary-marking amongst them. While studies on new racism against immigrants is growing and challenging the white-Others binary, many are still focused on white people racializing others. Such studies over-racialize select groups of non-whites including Asians while ignoring racialization and racism by Asians and among Asians. Consequently, there has been a dearth of literature on issues of racialization and racism in non-white settings.

This workshop is interested to move studies of race and migration away from (skin) colour as well as the ‘West’. It suggests that a more nuanced understanding of the global, context-specific processes of racialization and new racisms can be gained by treating the dominant ‘Western’ experiences of racialization and racism as reference points rather than paradigms. To extend existing theories about race, ethnicity, new racism and migration, this workshop will examine the racialization of migrants beyond skin colour and/or in regions other than Europe and North America, including an examination of Asian racialization/racisms and co-ethnic racialization/racism. The papers will consider intersectional dynamics such as gender, class, nationality and sexuality and/or postcolonial dynamics. Questions that will be addressed include but are not limited to the following:

• How can our understandings of race and migration be sharpened through an analytical focus on racialization and racisms beyond the white-others binary?
• How can empirical cases of racialization and racisms in non-white-majority settings extend understandings of race and migration?
• How can the ‘invisibility’ of new racism such as between co-ethnics be analysed?
• How are migrants’ mobility implicated as difference in racialization/racism discourses?
• What new concepts and methods are needed to deepen understandings of race and migration?
• Why are some migrants racialized more than others?
• How do migrants resist racialization/racism? Do they racialize other migrants?
• How do racialization/racism discourses relate to the postcolonial condition, modernity and/or globalization?

WORKSHOP CONVENORS

Dr Sylvia ANG
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

Assoc Prof Elaine Lynn-Ee HO
Asia Research Institute, and Department of Geography, National University of Singapore

Prof Brenda S.A. YEOH
Asia Research Institute, and Department of Geography, National University of Singapore