The International Workshop series The Emotions of Migration was 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.
Papers from the first workshop were published as a special issue in the journal Gender, Place and Culture. The papers from the second workshop were published in Children’s Geographies.
Young People’s Migration Within and Throughout Asia: Managing Emotions, Identities and Relationships
The second workshop in the series took place on 19–20 August 2014 at York University.
The workshop focused 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 moved 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 workshop is hosted by the York Centre for Asian Research (YCAR) and the Children’s Studies Program (Department of Humanities), York University. Financial support is provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. the York Centre for Asian Research, the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, and the Department of Humanities, York University.
The Call for Papers is available in Word format here. The Call is now closed.
The Series
This workshop is the second of two events. The first part of the series focuses on women’s migration. Please contact Shanthi Thambiah (Gender Studies, University of Malaya) for more information on Workshop 1 and Kabita Chakraborty (Children’s Studies Program, York University) on Workshop 2.