Migration as a Pathway to New Possibilities: Negotiating Migrant Rights and Identities at the Margins in East and Southeast Asia

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

Drawing from empirical studies in South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia and Vietnam, this panel adopts a diverse range of cross-disciplinary and theoretical perspectives to examine how migrants open up new pathways of hope for a better future through the strategies they adopt. Migrants have often been identified as a vulnerable and exploited group who face abuses of human rights including but not limited to labor exploitation, gender violence, and racial discrimination. On the other hand, migrants are infusing new hope in the future by negotiating rights and identities that transcend existing boundaries and thereby present new possibilities. Tran's paper compares how Cham Muslims and Khmer engage in divergent strategies that shape their survival and economic standing in Malaysia and Vietnam. The paper by Tilland looks to how urban to rural migrants in South Korea are imagining new possibilities by rejecting urban life and redefining the rural space as an alternative existence. Finally, Kim’s paper looks to how marriage migrants and their supporters in Korea and Taiwan seek to secure better futures by demanding their rights as women and thus seek to challenge not only racial and ethnic but also gender hierarchies. Taken together, these papers demonstrate the myriad ways by which migration itself can represent a beacon of hope.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing-Diaspora

Session Organizer

• Daisy Kim, University of Southern California

Chair

• Naomi Hosoda, Kagawa University

Individual Presentations

• Hope Across Borders: Migrant Rights of the Cham Muslims and the Khmer in Vietnam and Malaysia - Angie Ngoc Tran, California State University Monterey Bay

• Receiving the Rural: Motivations and Ideals of Internal Back-to-the-Land (Kwinong kwich’on) Migrants in Chŏllabukdo and Gangwŏndo, South Korea - Bonnie Tilland, Yonsei University

• Advocating Rights for Migrant Women in South Korea and Taiwan - Daisy Kim, University of Southern California

Discussant

• Naomi Hosoda, Kagawa University