In the Asian context, higher education and migration both conjure images of dis-placement, typically between sites of backwardness and modernity, and lack and opportunity. The actual mobility projects of people—whether these involve spatial, social, and/or existential im/mobilities—are rarely a linear movement from the backward to a static modern. Instead, scholarship alerts us to the elaborate infrastructures, intense affects, and myriad human and technological networks that move people as well as the contradictions that mark movement. Hope intermingles with despair, freedoms arise through the strategic deployment of patriarchal discourses, and movement is often accompanied by stuckedness.
It is important to note that while both higher education and migration have long histories in the region, the recent past has seen rapid urbanisation, the massification of higher education, and unprecedented flows of mobility in many parts of Asia. This workshop will explore contexts in Asia where higher education and migration collapse into each other. It aims to curate a comparative perspective on educational mobility in the region. Panelists will consider the mobility desires, migration infrastructures, and conflictual becomings that situate and animate youth and their families. How do gendered people embedded in allegedly “traditional” family and community ties make and unmake themselves, places, “others”, and the relationships between these? How are educational mobilities emergent in contemporary political economic formations similar to and different from earlier flows and frictions, and what are the implications for the region?
The workshop is organised through the Futures of Mobility network at the Centre for Inter-Asian Research, Ahmedabad University.
Organisers with their area focus:
CHINA: Willy Sier, Utrecht University, Netherlands
INDIA: Leya Mathew, Ahmedabad University
PHILIPPINES: Yasmin Ortiga, Singapore Management University
SINGAPORE: Yang Peidong, National Institute of Education Singapore
Date: June 23-24, 2022 (Thursday and Friday)
Timings: 11:30 am - 2:30 pm IST | 8 am -11 am CEST | 4 pm - 7 pm AEST | 2 pm - 5 pm SGT
| Thursday June 23, 2022 | ||
|---|---|---|
| 11:15 - 11:30 IST | Leya Mathew Tejaswini Niranjana |
Introductions and welcome |
| Affects and Aesthetics of Mobile Femininities | ||
| 11:30 - 11:50 IST 08:00 - 08:20 CEST 16:00 - 16:20 AEST |
Anne Kukuczka Freie Universität; University of Zurich |
Embodied Life Trajectories – Tibetan Women’s Aspirations and Spatial Practices of Self-making Between neidi and the TAR |
| 11:50 - 12:10 IST 08:20 - 08:40 CEST 16:20 - 16:40 AEST |
Renu Singh Ambedkar University, Delhi |
The Practice of Everyday: Hostels as Spaces of Friendship and Care Network (in Allahabad, India) |
| 12:10 - 12:30 IST 08:40 - 09:00 CEST 16:40 - 17:00 AEST |
Fran Martin University of Melbourne |
Comments |
| 12:30 - 12:45 IST | Open Discussion | |
| 12:45 - 13:00 IST | Break [Zoom link open for general discussion, connecting] | |
| Working im/mobility | ||
| 17:30 – 17:50 AEST 09:30 – 09:50 CEST 03:30 – 03:50 ET |
Jane Dyson, Craig Jeffrey University of Melbourne |
Degrees of freedom: Women and Higher Education in the High Himalayas |
| 03:50 – 04:10 ET 09:50 – 10:10 CEST 17:50 – 18:10 AEST |
Michelle Zhang Columbia University Teachers College |
Buying time: How Chinese International Students Sought Opportunities for Happenstance During the COVID-19 Pandemic |
| 10:10 – 10:30 CEST 04:10 – 04:30 ET 18:10 – 18:30 AEST |
Xiang Biao Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology |
Comments |
| 14:00 – 14:15 IST | Open Discussion | |
| 14:15 – 14:30 IST | Break/ General discussion [Zoom link open for general discussion, connecting] |
|
| Friday, June 24, 2022 | ||
| The Political Economy of Higher Education: Education for mobility | ||
| 11:30 – 11:50 IST 08:00 – 08:20 CEST 14:00 – 14:20 SGT |
Leya Mathew Ahmedabad University |
Designing Mobility: Producing the Centre in the Periphery (India) |
| 11:50 – 12:10 IST 08:20 – 08:40 CEST 14:20 – 14:40 SGT |
Yasmin Ortiga Singapore Management University |
Unlikely Faces in Unlikely Places: Student Migration to the Periphery (Philippines) |
| 12:10 – 12:30 IST 08:40 – 09:00 CEST 14:40 – 15:00 SGT |
Yang Peidong National Institute of Education Singapore |
Comments |
| 12:30 – 12:45 IST | Open Discussion | |
| 12:45 – 13:00 IST | Break [Zoom link open for general discussion, connecting] | |
| Navigating the “rural” | ||
| 09:30 – 09:50 CEST 14:30 – 14:50 ICT 15:30 – 15:50 CST |
Willy Sier Utrecht University, Netherlands |
Gendering Educational Mobility: Making Wives and Mothers in China |
| 09:50 – 10:10 CEST 14:50 – 15:10 ICT 15:50 – 16:10 CST |
Jessica Garber Boston University |
Moving to the City: Perceptions of How “Rural” University Migrants Navigate Higher Education in Phnom Penh |
| 10:10 – 10:30 CEST 15:10 – 15:30 ICT 16:10 – 16:30 CST |
Yan Hairong Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences |
Comments |
| 14:00 – 14:15 IST | Open Discussion | |
| 14:15 – 14:30 IST | Break/ General discussion [Zoom link open for general discussion, connecting] |
|