In this panel, we are interested in how the interplay between human mobility and development plays out in particular places. We suggest the ethnographic method to offer unique insight into this multi-scalar relationship between human mobility and development processes.
Long Abstract:
Mobility is increasingly caught up in processes of development, however conceived, at different scales. Access to justice for people on the move, whether they be international or internal migrants, is shaped not only by contemporary capitalist development but increasingly also by overlapping policy regimes that pursue various development objectives at national, regional, or even global levels. In this panel, we are interested in the multidirectional interplay between human mobility and development, understood as constituting both an 'immanent process' and an 'intentional practice' (Cowen and Shenton 1995). It is here that the ethnographic approach offers a unique opportunity, with its attention to the intersection between the global and the local, the macro and the micro, and - in its more refined form - its refusal of neat scalar distinctions.
This panel will entail a series of brief paper interventions, each of which will detail how these processes of migration and development unfold in a particular situated locale. A discussant will then briefly reflect upon how each of these spatially situated analyses gives expression to the general interplay between migration and development outlined above. Panellists will have an opportunity to respond to this reflection, with the aim of further drawing out the connections between the particular and the general. Questions will then be gathered from those in attendance in order to explore further the convergences and divergences between their respective sites of interest.
The decaying state of agriculture and climate change means increased internal migration. Based on in-depth interviews with Dalit migrant laborers from Bihar, India, we find that migration trajectories and navigation of the urban labour market are centrally informed by caste networks in India.
Paper long abstract:
Nearly a billion residents of the world's cities live in slums -neighborhoods that lack adequate water, sanitation, and housing (UN, 2014).The implications of these trends for urban poverty and social mobility need to be understood as they have a direct bearing on the development measures. While migration decisions are complex, the decaying state of agriculture and climate change is certainly a factor that aggravates vulnerability in rural and urban areas. This combined with political and institutional constraints on people's mobility is made possible by a sedentary conception of citizenship and welfare that does not take into account the mobile character of the population. This narrative would be similar throughout the Global South. However, caste plays a pivotal in determining development outcomes in South Asia. The Agricultural Census of 2015-16 reported that Dalits own only about 9% of the total agricultural land. Recognizing the heightened exposure to emerging climate risks and having no land to fall back on, we find that in any event of distress, the only option for them is to move to a big city en masse and squat in the swamps, which forms the present-day slums of India. Based on in-depth interviews with Dalit migrant laborers from Bihar, we seek to understand the reasons of migrations from Bihar and the varied outcomes of migrations for dalits, OBCs and Upper castes.This preponderance of semi-disenfranchised Dalit population in urban informal settlements is a testimony of systemic violence and institutionalised vulnerability of labour.
Recent reforms of migration and residency policy in Vietnam claims to meet the needs of a modern mobile workforce and overcome years of social exclusion of migrant workers. Current research suggests that the Residence Law of 2020 will need to be accompanied by further reforms in other areas.
Paper long abstract:
Since the 1980s, Vietnam has experienced a sustained wave of migration from rural to urban areas. Opportunities for higher incomes and career advancement, as well as educational opportunities have drawn large numbers of people away from agriculture and the rural economy towards the cities. Many migrants find work in the informal sector, where they often experience wages and working conditions that are inferior to permanent urban residents.
Official policy towards migration has gradually shifted from outright opposition towards a more flexible approach, but migrants still face numerous official barriers in their attempts to live and work in the city. For many years, the migrant experience has been defined by the system of household registration, or ho khau, which tied citizens to a specific location, typically the place of their birth. Pressure from migrants, coupled with considerable tolerance by the authorities in the face of strong demand for labour in the urban areas, has seen evolution of the system over time, most recently the adoption of the Residence Law of 2020
This paper examines the reform of residency policy and the likelihood that it can meet the needs of a fast-changing and increasingly sophisticated society and economy. Initial findings suggest that while the new system offers significant benefits to migrants, including streamlined registration processes an end to paper-based certificates, without further reforms in other sectors it will not be sufficient to overcome the significant marginalization experienced by many migrants.
This digital ethnography of migrant communities in the UK and South Korea challenges the assumption that migrants are purely recipients of public digital inclusion efforts, and sheds light on the hidden digital inclusion work performed by migrants themselves.
Paper long abstract:
With the rise of digital government as a key development initiative for countries around the world, previous to and since the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have been increasingly concerned with the inclusion of those that have been deemed digitally marginalised, such as migrant users (Castaño-Muñoz et al., 2018; Alam et al., 2015). Many government-funded digital inclusion initiatives, like those run by the UK's Good Things Foundation, deliver millions of pounds to local and state-run digital inclusion efforts. However, as an ethnographer examining digital government from the perspective of migrant users, I was struck by how migrants, falling through gaps within public service provisions, perform much of the work of digital inclusion themselves. Data from 16 months of fieldwork in the UK and South Korea reveals a vivid account of the lived experiences of migrants as they navigate digitised public service delivery and challenges the assumption that they are purely recipients of digital inclusion efforts. This research shows how migrant users navigate digital services in spite of the barriers they face in accessing public services and highlights how much of the digital inclusion work and brokering within migrant communities is performed by migrants themselves, particularly through intergenerational relationships between older and younger members of the community. This leads to reflections on how to best support migrants in their digital inclusion and encourages the recognition of the digital inclusion work performed by migrants.
The research-based visualization displays the tactics developed by Turkish immigrants to adapt to their place of residence, that is London, through methods of ethnographic research and walking and reflects on the subjectivity of migrants in getting accustomed to their place of residence and work.
Paper long abstract:
This project takes Kingsland High Street, London as its area of interest and uses the eleven interviews conducted on site with Turkish migrant shop owners and workers, with references to notions of home, gender roles and politics. In aiming to incorporate the subjectivity of the position of a Turkish migrant, rather than attempting to systematize the process of the project into an objective basis, the expression of the project took the form of an almost four meter long collage-drawing 'map' of relations. The project aims to investigate and discover the unregistered political and cultural memories of these migrants through their individual recollection and the aesthetics of the shops on the street by drifting on the site, talking to people, taking photos of details and combining these into a narrative as a collage.
The site was explored through walking, observing, and engaging instead of observing in a fixed point. Through walking on Kingsland High Street, the experience and representation of the area is not totalized in a single point of view but is rather acknowledged as part of the city and as a negotiation ground for residents with different behavioral patterns. In fact, Kingsland High Street was a convenient site for demonstrating the relationship between the seen and the vision and the project experiments on the possibility of expressing the vision of another. This subjectivization of the content disperses the viewpoint of the space and requires another mode of 'seeing'.
Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality. Log in
Paolo Novak (SOAS)
Karen Schouw Iversen (Queen Mary University of London)
Short Abstract:
In this panel, we are interested in how the interplay between human mobility and development plays out in particular places. We suggest the ethnographic method to offer unique insight into this multi-scalar relationship between human mobility and development processes.
Long Abstract:
Mobility is increasingly caught up in processes of development, however conceived, at different scales. Access to justice for people on the move, whether they be international or internal migrants, is shaped not only by contemporary capitalist development but increasingly also by overlapping policy regimes that pursue various development objectives at national, regional, or even global levels. In this panel, we are interested in the multidirectional interplay between human mobility and development, understood as constituting both an 'immanent process' and an 'intentional practice' (Cowen and Shenton 1995). It is here that the ethnographic approach offers a unique opportunity, with its attention to the intersection between the global and the local, the macro and the micro, and - in its more refined form - its refusal of neat scalar distinctions.
This panel will entail a series of brief paper interventions, each of which will detail how these processes of migration and development unfold in a particular situated locale. A discussant will then briefly reflect upon how each of these spatially situated analyses gives expression to the general interplay between migration and development outlined above. Panellists will have an opportunity to respond to this reflection, with the aim of further drawing out the connections between the particular and the general. Questions will then be gathered from those in attendance in order to explore further the convergences and divergences between their respective sites of interest.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 6 July, 2022, -