Organizer: Habibul H. Khondker, Zayed University, United Arab Emirates Discussant: James Jesudason, Colorado School of Mines, USA Migration is the most visible feature of globalization. The process debated, defended, discouraged, shows no signs of slowing, revealing the complex and often contradictory dynamics of the historical as well as contemporary phases of globalization. As hundreds of thousands of people move to far-flung destinations, some gain, some lose, others remain deeply ambivalent. They move to one destination, yet in their imagination they belong elsewhere, either to the homeland they left behind or a future destination they are aspiring to move to.
This panel will examine: to what extent migration, an instance of geographical mobility, leads to social mobility for the migrants and to what extent migrant experience is that of an experience of displacement? The key theme of the workshop would be to go beyond the conventional wisdom of viewing migration, either as a win-win or losing proposition, explore the deep undercurrents of trauma, sense of displacement and aspiration for a golden future. Political economy trespasses into cultural studies, prose of existential sufferings blend with romance of expedition, of wunderlast , economic calculus intersects with a sense of (cultural) loss. Classes and gender intersect with community and religion.
The papers in this panel are drawn from scholars, policy-makers, civil society activists from a wide range of disciplines (e.g., anthropology, sociology, gender studies, etc.). Individual papers might focus primarily on one region or one nationality of migrants, in the end the panel would take a comparative perspective merging the diverse papers reflecting a range of themes covering both cultural and institutional discourses.
The migration literature has been dominated by overly economic accounts of the motivations
of migrant workers. These accounts focus primarily on "money" as the principal driver of people's geographic mobility. This paper explores migration decisions in the narrative accounts of a sample of teleservice employees working in the Philippines, India and Canada. It explores the social factors other than simple career advancement and wage enhancement which make migration both an attractive option, as well as the factors which frighten them and deter them from being geographically mobile. It also discusses the nature of rural/urban migrations as well as the international border crossings.
This paper examines the migration of scientists and science in the historical context of colonialism. In addition to the general movement of people and commodities during the colonial period, there was also a substantial migration of professionals who also happened to be natural historians, from Europe to India. These natural historians surveyed and studied the flora of colonial India with the goal of identifying and assessing the natural resources that could be cultivated and extracted. To this end, a network of botanical gardens were set up in parts of the colonized India. This paper examines the social processes that led to the transformation of migrant amateur natural historians into professional "botanists" and the rise of botany as a discipline in the context of British colonial rule in India.
Migration represents some of the contradictions of globalization. International labor migration is debated, defended, discouraged, shows no signs of slowing, revealing the complex and often contradictory dynamics of the historical as well as contemporary phases of globalization. As hundreds of thousands of people move to far-flung destinations, some gain, some lose, others remain deeply ambivalent. They move to one destination, yet in their imagination they belong elsewhere, either to the homeland they left behind or a future destination they are aspiring to move to. Yet, the geography of migration is not random. Labor migration process often mirrors the Wallersteinian World-systems framework in the sense that migrants often originate from the periphery move to semi-periphery in order to reach the final destination of the core of the capitalist world system. In that vein, it is possible to argue that the return migration to countries such as Taiwan and India are examples of migrants returning to their native lands which have changed their position in the world system graduating to semi-periphery from their erstwhile peripheral status. This paper, re-examines the conventional wisdom of viewing migration, either as a win-win or losing proposition, and explores the deep undercurrents of trauma, sense of displacement and aspiration for a golden future. Political economy trespasses into cultural studies, prose of existential sufferings blend with romance of expedition, of wunderlast , economic calculus intersects with a sense of (cultural) loss. Classes and gender intersect with community and religion.
This paper examines the institutionalization of the formal remittance banking sector along remittance corridors between migrants of South Asia in their temporary workplace destinations and their family households at their origin destinations. Global governance institutions have given much support for the diffusion of formal banking and financial services, arguing that informal remittance transfer systems provide problems of national security, uncertainty for migrants and migrant households as well as problems of national accounting for labor-exporting governments. Critical research has examined the informal economy pertaining to remittance economy to find a suspicious hyper-talk of security problems that contrasts with economically established small entrepreneuralism of money transfer entrenched for hundreds of years in Asian communities. This current debate of remittance-transfer formalization takes place far away from organized migrant interests. In this study, we look at the advantages and disadvantages for migrants and their families from their own perspective as has been made accessible by social science research. We focus on the experiences of India and Nepal, to highlight the context of entrenched poverty in which plans for the formalization of remittance banking takes place. Taking an economic-sociological perspective, we examine the importance of trust and understanding of money in poor migrant households and analyze what it takes to establish formal financial services, but also what it takes away from in terms of social organization of South Asian community dynamics.
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