Lectures
Keynote address by A/P Elaine Ho - Part 1
Researching Multi-Directional Migration: Citizens in Motion and Contemporaneity
International immigrants, return migrants and the re-migration of diasporic descendants constitute but part of the multi-directional migration flows that are converging and diverging in nation-states today. Multi-directional migration patterns create citizenship struggles in nation-states that experience such migration trends concurrently. This presentation takes Chinese emigration as the starting point to consider how multi-directional migration has shaped and continue to shape nation building, not only in China but also the countries where Chinese migrants have settled. By interweaving accounts from China, Canada and Singapore, the presentation draws attention to how both old and new migration trends add newfound challenges to maintaining social cohesiveness. The presentation’s focus on contemporaneity departs from conventional approaches that study migration sites in isolation or as snapshots in time. It situates the migration and citizenship politics of national societies in a trans-territorial context to signal how concurrent global events taking place in different parts of the world can forge citizenship constellations that interconnect migration sites. The multidirectional aspects of migration routes—emigration, immigration, and remigration—can and should be analysed alongside one another.
Keynote address by A/P Elaine Ho - Part 2
Researching Multi-Directional Migration: Citizens in Motion and Contemporaneity
International immigrants, return migrants and the re-migration of diasporic descendants constitute but part of the multi-directional migration flows that are converging and diverging in nation-states today. Multi-directional migration patterns create citizenship struggles in nation-states that experience such migration trends concurrently. This presentation takes Chinese emigration as the starting point to consider how multi-directional migration has shaped and continue to shape nation building, not only in China but also the countries where Chinese migrants have settled. By interweaving accounts from China, Canada and Singapore, the presentation draws attention to how both old and new migration trends add newfound challenges to maintaining social cohesiveness. The presentation’s focus on contemporaneity departs from conventional approaches that study migration sites in isolation or as snapshots in time. It situates the migration and citizenship politics of national societies in a trans-territorial context to signal how concurrent global events taking place in different parts of the world can forge citizenship constellations that interconnect migration sites. The multidirectional aspects of migration routes—emigration, immigration, and remigration—can and should be analysed alongside one another.
Presented by Keyakismos (the artistic pair of Eitaro Ogawa and Tamae Iwasaki) and Lilian Chee is Associate Professor and History Theory Criticism Research Cluster Leader at the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore (NUS).
Home is at the center of human experience. We spend our lives designing, maintaining, enjoying, escaping, and defending what we consider home, a word which can refer to the intimate space of an HDB flat and also to the larger scale of the nation. But home is more than a location. It is an idea and a process, linking seemingly unrelated social, economic, political, and cultural spheres.
We can learn a lot about Singapore by taking the topic of ‘home’ seriously, by exploring the meanings embedded within the word. The study of home raises important questions about our residences, our neighborhoods, and our identities. What is home? How do we make a house a home? Who belongs and who doesn’t? And who decides?
This event gathers artists and academics who ask such questions in their creative and scholarly projects. During this panel, they will discuss why constructs and imaginings of ‘home’ are so important in today’s world, and will share their recent work related to the place, idea, or process of home. Collectively, their work opens the door to the ‘home’ in Singapore, revealing the secret life of this complex word we often take for granted in our everyday lives.