The global debate on migration has experienced a major push toward the “management of migra¬tion” in the form of international cooperation in dealing with migration issues of all countries implicated, related to a number of global initiatives. The main objective of this global agenda is to promote cooperation among states in dealing with various dimensions …

WPS 69 The Management of Migration – An Issue of Controlling or Protecting? Normative and Institutional Developments and their Relevance to Asia Read More »

This paper situates the practice of international recruitment of Indian nurses in the model of a ‘business process outsourcing’ of comprehensive training-cum-recruitment-cum-placement for non-traditional destinations like the UK, and USA through an agency system that has gained popularity in India. The small sample survey of trainee nurses and informal interviews of other stakeholders revealed that …

WPS 68 International Recruitment of Nurses in India: Implications of Stakeholder Perspectives on Overseas Labour Markets, Migration, and Return Read More »

Hybridisation of language, dress, customs, food and material culture is indispensable as a means to understand the formation of identities in the ports of Central Southeast Asia (the Peninsula and adjacent parts of Sumatra, Java and modern central Thailand) before modern nationalist categories took hold. In the period between the last Srivijaya tribute mission to …

WPS 67 Hybrid Identities in the Fifteenth-Century Straits of Malacca Read More »

While the concept of the ‘tourist gaze’ has been influential in tourism research, the ‘counter-gaze’ of the host communities and their imagination of the tourists’ places of origin have not been adequately addressed. Based on fieldwork conducted in the Langtang National Park of Nepal, and drawing on Simmel’s theory of sociation, this paper attempts a …

WPS 66 Of Reverie and Emplacement: Spatial Imaginings and Tourism Encounters in Nepal Himalaya Read More »

In this paper we explore what happens to a tightly bounded translocal village when the second generation rebels. The news story above encapsulates a number of threads we would like to discuss in this paper. The article was published in one of Tamil Nadu’s leading newspapers, the Dina Thandi, which has a readership of some …

WPS 65 Transnational Affect and the Rebellious Second Generation: Managing Shame and Pride in a Moment of Cultural Rupture Read More »

This paper proposes a new historical interpretation of pre-modern relations between Burma and Siam by analyzing these relations within the historical context of the formation of Burmese states: the first Toungoo, the restored Toungoo and the early Konbaung empires, respectively. The main argument is that the conflictive conditions leading to the military confrontation between Burma …

WPS 64 The Changing Nature of Conflict between Burma and Siam as Seen from the Growth and Development of Burmese States from the 16th to the 19th Centuries Read More »

The second arrival of Christianity in China went hand in hand with the Mongol conquest of Eurasia. Although the Mongols themselves were not Christian missionaries, they did create a special political, social and religious atmosphere, which happened to be favourable to the spread of religions like Buddhism, Islam and Christianity in China in the Mongol …

WPS 63 Mongol Responses to Christianity in China: A Yuan Dynasty Phenomenon Read More »

Disease regimes were one of the factors keeping Southeast Asian populations low, particularly in moist lowland areas, until the nineteenth century. Concentrations of population sufficient to maintain an endemic pattern of diseases such as smallpox and measles emerged relatively late, beginning with agricultural systems associated with Pagan, Angkor, and northern Vietnam around the 8th-11th centuries. …

WPS 62 The Battle of the Microbes: Smallpox, Malaria and Cholera in Southeast Asia Read More »

A revised version of this paper has now been published in an academic journal. The citation is as follows: Jones, Gavin W., 2007, “Delayed marriage and very low fertility in Pacific Asia”, Population and Development Review, 33(3): 453-478.