Jointly
organized by
Asia Research Institute and Asian Metacentre for
Population and Sustainable Development Analysis National
University of Singapore, Singapore
Supported
by
The Wellcome Trust,
United Kingdom
Over the past
decades, the globalizing economies of Asia have undergone dramatic
growth. This has been accompanied by a rise in labor migration
within the region—across local and national borders---that is
increasingly commercialized, irregular, and feminized. Understanding
these trends is important for policy making in the region and for
furthering critical theory on gender and globalization. This
workshop aims to explore the mutual interactions of global and local
discourses and practices that shape female migration and labor in
and across Asia, particularly in Southeast Asia and China, as well
as Asian migrant women workers’ experiences, identities and
agencies.
Detailed ethnographic
case studies have documented the myriad ways that gender, as it
intersects with other forms of inequality, conditions women’s
incorporation into global capitalism. Gender roles and ideologies
structure migration decisions and expectations, labor recruitment
and production processes, and the global stratification and
commodification of care, for example. Yet women migrants are also
agents in globalization. Placing them as subjects at the center of
inquiry is integral to challenging normative paradigms that
implicitly posit globalization as agentive and masculine and local
processes as reactive, passive, and feminine.
This workshop presents an
opportunity to link up contemporary research within and across the
region in order to foster innovative theoretical connections. The
organizers seek insightful perspectives grounded in original
empirical research that can effectively capture the dynamism of
these gendered processes unfolding on the ground and in the lives of
social actors they involve. Contributions from anthropology, gender
studies, human and cultural geography, political economy, and
sociology are especially welcome. Selected workshop papers will
considered for publication in a special journal issue(s).
Possible topics for
consideration include:
Migrant women’s labor in global
factories and global cities Subjective understandings and
experiences of migration and work Translocal/transnational
identities and emplacement practices Spatial and social
mobility (and social capital) of women
migrants Resistance/accommodation to global capitalism and
gender ideologies & roles Translocal/transnational
spaces, technology, and communities of
resistance Rethinking globalization theory through a focus
on women’s agency
For further information,
please contact: Dr Arianne Gaetano: ariamg@nus.edu.sg +65-6516-7788 (Tel.) or +65-6779-1428 (Fax) Ms Shamala
Sundaray: arisss@nus.edu.sg +65-6516-7170 (Tel.) or +65-6779-1428
(Fax)
|