On the Move for Money, Left Behind for Love: Negotiating Work and Family in Cross-Border Migration

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

Motivated by economic opportunity and a sense of familial responsibility, this panel deals with migration within and beyond Asia’s borders, such as parents leaving hometowns for work and daughters leaving for marriage. However, the consequences of migration are unpredictable with some marriage migrants landing in sex work while others facing transnational motherhood, fatherhood and split familial relationships. How do these migrants negotiate the difficulties of work and life in different spatial contexts, such as between host and home society and between workplace and household? In this panel we will explore the complexity of economy and intimacy in the globalized world from the life experiences of these migrants and their families. Four papers explore this issue by covering different migration types across various regions, including Southeast Asian and Chinese women migrating to Taiwan for marriage yet ending up in sex work; divorced Chinese women migrating to France for employment yet engaging in transnational motherhood; Taiwanese businessmen migrating to China yet engaging in periodic fatherhood; and Filipino Japanese parents migrating to Japan yet engaging in global forms of caregiving. While separation comes at a high emotional and affective cost, the transnational forms of intimate economies in these case studies will show that the affective and management components of migrant labour can transcend their physical presence. Through our discussion on moving for money, this panel will contribute to existing scholarship of transnational migration, intimacy, affective labour, and intergenerational relationships in the face of the unequal global economy and those left behind for love.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing-Diaspora

Session Organizers

• Hsunhui Tseng, Chinese University of Hong Kong

• Cheryll Alipio, The University of Queensland

Chair

• Hsunhui Tseng, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Individual Presentations

• Disjunctive Harmony: Life and Work of Foreign Spouses Engaging in Sex Work in Taiwan - Hsunhui Tseng, Chinese University of Hong Kong

• Parenthood, Divorce and Migration: The Complex Justification of Divorced Mothers Migrating from Northern China to France - Florence Levy, EHESS France, Neuchatel University Switzerland

• Growing up in a Periodic Fatherhood Household: Children of Taiwanese Business Entrepreneurs - Hsiu-hua Shen, National Tsing Hua University

• Innocence and Investments in Intimate Economies: Fantasy-Building of Overseas Filipino Workers and Children in a Japanese Village - Cheryll Alipio, The University of Queensland

Discussant

• Antonia Chao, Tunghai University