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[CFP] Recalibrating ‘Skill’ in Changing Immigration Regimes: Skilled Migrants and the Nature of Work in Asia
DEADLINE: 13 SEPTEMBER 2024
This workshop is organized by the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore and the Qualification and Skill in the Migration Process of Foreign Workers in Asia (QuaMaFA) project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany (BMBF).
The meaning of ‘skilled’ or ‘white-collar’ work, that is, work that requires a certain set of expertise and educational credentials, has changed in the last decade. In tandem, so has the meaning attached to ‘skilled migration’, namely, knowledge-intensive work carried out by professionals outside of their home countries. After a peak in global human mobility in the 2010s due to a proliferation of budget airlines and a surge in bilateral and multilateral agreements that cover and ease international labour mobility (Sheller and Urry 2006), the late 2010s brought about unprecedented changes. Digitalization is the most prominent to name, facilitating international business and the communication of globally dispersed teams. Other developments include first the rise, and then the fall, of coding professions, which used to represent a highly-demanded skill that triggered large migration flows from countries where IT skills were trained but which have most recently shifted to become skills at risk of being replaced by artificial intelligence.
Overall, structural shifts rooted in changing migration policies, the ‘tech wreck’ laying off IT personnel around the world, and global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic have contributed to reconfiguring skilled labour mobility. While some skilled workers were suddenly able to work remotely from home (or even anywhere they prefer), others had to remain in areas of rising geopolitical tensions or risk of infection, denied the freedom to move or work from safe spaces (Zhang and Wang 2023). These countervailing developments, added to labour shortages and demographic change resulting from rapid ageing, brought to light which skills are ‘essential’ and in short supply, which can be outsourced to other countries, and which to machines (Horii and Sakurai 2020). These shifts in work styles and labour market demands have raised the question who can be accorded the label ‘skilled workers’ and who can (soon) be denied of it.
In this light, this workshop examines the changing working environment skilled migrants encounter in contemporary Asia. The continent is the largest producer of varied ‘skilled’ professions such as IT and nursing, with intraregional migration flows almost doubling between 1990 and 2020 (IOM 2024). At the same time, Asia is also known for less liberal migration regimes than those in Western countries (Boucher and Gest 2018). Given labour shortages at almost all skill levels in most industrialized Asian economies, the region provides an important context to observe new meanings of ‘skill’, changing attitudes towards skilled immigrants, and resulting reconfigurations of immigration policy. While foregrounding the sphere of work, we acknowledge that even within skilled migrants’ spatial and life trajectories, ‘work’ is not only a means to secure a visa and to earn financial income, but also a way to pursue upward socio-economic mobility, to build a life (and sometimes family) in the host society, and to attain life satisfaction (Yeoh and Huang 2011). However, the extant scholarship has yet to give full attention to the interplay between the redefinition of skill, the changing nature of work skilled migrants encounter, and their perception of and responses to the way this affects their social positioning, life aspirations, and family dynamics. Subjective interpretations of a ‘successful’ migration may neither depend on a career in an occupation or industry that is labelled skilled; nor do migrants necessarily perceive their social positioning in line with that stipulated by visa categories and state policy (Boese et al. 2022).
As such, this workshop examines the intersections between the new structural conditions that shape work and life in contemporary Asia and skilled migrants’ subjectivities. On a conceptual level, it seeks to clarify how changing ways of work and ensuing redefinitions of skills affect skilled migrants’ self-positioning and family strategy in a landscape of both tightening and emerging immigration regimes in Asia. Potential workshop participants are encouraged to submit original research papers that address the following areas of interest, which include but are not limited to:
SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS
Paper proposals should include a title, an abstract (300 words maximum), and a brief personal biography of 150 words for submission by 13 September 2024. Abstracts should include as appropriate a discussion of the paper’s main aim(s), conceptual framework/theoretical contribution, research methods and data, and key findings. Please also include a statement confirming that your paper has not been published or committed elsewhere, and that you are willing to revise your paper for potential inclusion in a journal special issue.
Please submit your proposal using the provided template to Ms Minghua Tay at aritm@nus.edu.sg. Successful applicants will be notified by the end of September 2024. Panel presenters will be required to submit drafts of papers (4,000-6,000 words) by 18 December 2024. These drafts will be circulated to fellow panelists and discussants in advance. Drafts need not be fully polished. Indeed, we expect that presenters will be open to feedback from fellow participants.
WORKSHOP CONVENORS
Dr Helena HOF
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, and University of Zurich
Dr Aimi MURANAKA
University of Duisburg-Essen
Dr Ruth ACHENBACH
Goethe University Frankfurt
Dr Yang WANG
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
Prof Brenda S. A. YEOH
Asia Research Institute & Department of Geography, National University of Singapore
