International Workshop Series: The Emotions of Migration in Asia
Workshop 2
Young People’s Migration Within and Throughout Asia: Managing Emotions, Identities and Relationships
Date: 19 August 2014 to 20 August 2014
York Centre for Asian Research and the Children’s Studies Program (Department of Humanities)
York University, Toronto Canada
Call for papers: Workshop 2 calls for empirical research papers – historical and contemporary - on children and
young people’s emotional experiences of migration within and throughout Asia. Papers should focus on mixed
feelings of (but not limited to) elation, loneliness, hope, frustration, confusion, relief, fear, freedom and
disappointment in the migration process.
There is a preference for participant-centred research in South and Southeast Asia prioritizing the following themes:
1. Migration for work and marriage in a historical context (especially in plantations and estates)
2. Contemporary experiences of moving for work, marriage and school – managing mixed feelings
3. Left Behind – adjusting to absence and creating and maintaining relationships
Submissions
Paper proposals should include a title, an abstract (including methods and findings) of a maximum of 300 words,
speaker contact and institutional/organizational affiliation by April 4th 2014. Please send all proposals to Dr. Kabita
Chakrabortry: kabitac@yorku.ca
Workshop 2
The second workshop in the series focuses on the migration experiences of children and youth within and throughout
Asia. Historically young people and children migrated to provide labour and companionship in colonial plantations
and estates. In contemporary Asia travelling on one’s own is gaining acceptability across the region, however for
many children and young people migration has always been a normative part of their work, marriage and educational
biographies. Dominant scholarship on children and youth migration tends to polarize discussions as ‘positive’ and
‘negative’, and ‘forced’ and ‘independent’. The workshop moves away from these dichotomies by focusing on the
mixed emotions children and youth experience in the process, and how they manage identities and relationships in a
rapidly changing Asia.
The Series
The International Workshop series The Emotions of Migration is a two part event focusing on the emotional
experiences and negotiations of the migration process in Asia. The series understands the emotions experienced in
the migration process to be a diverse, complex and contradictory range of feelings that are expressed and managed
in different ways. The first part of the series focuses on women’s migration. Please contact Professor Shanthi
Thambiah (Gender Studies University of Malaya) for more information (shanthi@um.edu.my).
Funding
Successful applicants will be notified by late-April and are required to send in a complete draft paper (6000 – 8000
words) by July 8, 2014. Speakers who have not submitted a draft paper by this date may be removed from the
programme. Based on the quality of proposals and availability of funds, partial or full funding will be granted to
successful applicants. Participants are encouraged to seek alternate funds for travel from their home institutions.
Workshop Convenor
Dr. Kabita Chakraborty
Children’s Studies Program, York University
Honorary Fellow, Gender Studies Programme, University of Malaya
kabitac@yorku.ca
Secretariat
Ms. Alicia Filipowich
York Centre for Asian Research
York University, Toronto Canada
ycar@yorku.ca
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