South Atlantic Quarterly – Special Issue

AGAINST THE DAY: MIGRATION STRUGGLES IN EAST AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

Our very own CHCI-GHI 2019-2021 members were able to share their research in the special issue of the journal South Atlantic Quarterly published by the Duke University Press. Co-edited professor Joyce. C.H. Liu, CHCI-GHI 2010-2021 PI and Co-PI Professor Brett Neilson, the issue published in the Against the Day section of the journal derive loosely from the activities of a network of activists, scholars, and practitioners organized under the CHCI-GHI 2019-2021  Migration, Logistics, and Unequal Citizens in Contemporary Global Context. 

In their introductory text, Migration Struggles, Colonial Legacies, and Pandemic Shifts, Professor Liu and Professor Neilson talk about how the migration subjectivities at stake in the articles collected for the special issue register modes of nationalism, colonialism, geopolitics, sovereignty, and capitalism that reverberate across the Asian region.

The issue also contains articles by other CHCI-GHI 2019-2021 members including CHCI-GHI speaker Pun Ngai, who along with Kevin Lin engages with the struggles of internal migrant workers in China’s transport and logistics sector to detail how their actions have implications for the wider emergence.

CHCI-GHI participant Jonathan Parhusip’s article details what happens when migrants flee these arrangements, exploring underground support networks, illegal brokerage, employment opportunities, and the communal forms of solidarity that emerge when labor migrants acquire the status of deportable subjects.

CHCI-GHI Speaker Arnab Roy Chowdhury raises the question of migration status by detailing the struggles of the Rohingya against the production of statelessness and illegality that has surrounded their forced movements from Myanmar to Bangladesh.

Rusaslina Idrus’s, Co-PI CHCI-GHI, contribution highlights the question of refugee status as she probes the resources of power and hope generated by the 2020 Malaysian Refugee Festival. Her article discusses the illegalization and precarity that emerge when a nation-state refuses to recognize the right to seek asylum, and, in turn, registers how migrant self-organization creates a sense of safety and solidarity in the face of the increased xenophobia fanned by the COVID-19 pandemic.

**The special issue is a precursor for CHCI-GHI follow-up publication projects.