Toward An Embodied Dynamics Model to Migration

• In Event: 4367 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 4. International Migration

Abstract

This paper aims to develop an Embodied Dynamics Model that articulates how the constellation of embodied dynamics generated from institutional contexts, relationship circumstances, and biographic situations permeate all aspects of the migration processes. By presenting the circulating migratory course: unsettling, moving, settling, and/or moving again, I show how individual immigrants fit migration into their life course, deal with sequent anticipated and unanticipated relationship changes, and navigate the changing immigration regimes. I argue that migration is better to be understood as an embodied process in and through which individuals synchronize the life transition event of moving across borders with other life activities as biographic course unfolds over time and across space.

Author

• Jing Zhao, University of British Columbia