CFP | Contested Asian Parenting in Intra-Asia Migration

Sharon Ong Announcement
Location
Singapore
Subject Fields
Southeast Asian History / Studies, Immigration & Migration History / Studies, Humanities

WORKSHOP DATE : 16-17 NOVEMBER 2021
VENUE: ONLINE VIA ZOOM

CFP DEADLINE: 01 AUGUST 2021

Immigrant and migrant parenting from and within Asia is a surprisingly understudied topic. This is despite intraregional migration (the median age of migrants in Asia is 35) being the dominant form of migration here. This workshop brings together scholars of Asian migration to consider what migrant parenting in Asia means for parents, families, and communities across old, new and/or multiple homes. We call for empirically grounded work which considers migrant parental care ranging from (but not limited to) classed, gendered and ethnicized parenting practices such as intensive parenting, remittance-sending and care-giving at a distance, food work, native language maintenance, culture work, and substitute care by relatives or fictive kin. By focusing on the emplaced, embodied, and gendered aspects of parenting, the workshop provides a finely grained lens to investigate intersectional agencies and subjectivities among migrant parents as well as the conjuncture between family and citizenship practices in superdiverse, multi-ethnic, Asian settings.

To address the overarching question of how migrant parenting is done in intra-Asia migration, workshop participants are invited to consider the following aspects of migrant parenting:

(1)        the different migration policies which hinder and/or facilitate migrant parenting to be accomplished in multidimensional, unexpected, and creative ways. For example, how migrant parenting may be achieved despite uncaring migration regimes particularly for labour migrants implicated in global care chains.

(2)        the kinds of migration (circular/circuit migration, stepwise migration) within Asia which engender variant forms of parental care enmeshed with ideological ‘Asian Values’ (e.g. stigmatized versus idealized parenting styles, the racialization of migrant parenting and hierarchies of destinations sites for parents)

(3)        advancing conceptualizations of affective citizenship practices conducted via the work of migrant parenting in Asia (e.g. emotions, generational transnationalisms, aspirations for ‘worlding’ children through migration, ICT use among migrant parents)

(4)     eliciting connections and comparisons on continental migrant parenting across Asia to wider theoretical applicability beyond Asian cases.

SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS

Paper proposals should include a title, an abstract (300 words maximum) and a brief personal biography of 150 words for submission. Please use the paper proposal form and send it in doc/docx format to Dr Chand Somaiah at aribcs@nus.edu.sg by 1 August 2021.

Please also include a statement confirming that your paper has not been published previously, it is not committed elsewhere, and that you are willing to revise your paper for potential inclusion in a special issue submission (in collaboration with the workshop organizers and other participants).

Successful applicants will be notified by end of August. Panel presenters will be required to submit drafts of papers (4,000-7,000) words by 16 October 2021. These drafts will be circulated to fellow panelists and organizers in advance. Drafts need not be fully polished. Indeed, we expect that presenters will be open to feedback from fellow participants.
 

WORKSHOP CONVENORS

Dr Chand Somaiah
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

Dr Exequiel Cabanda
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, National University of Singapore

Contact Information

Sharon Ong 
Workshop Secretariat 

Contact Email
arios@nus.edu.sg