Destination Asia: Aspirations, Trajectories, and Infrastructures in Asian Migration

Infrastructures of mobility and the African diaspora in India

Since the 1960s, there has been a steady flow of Africans moving to India for short-term activities: education, medical treatment and trade. As a result, there is now a visible African diaspora in many localities in India. This diaspora is a layered one, consisting of diverse groups of people with different degrees of attachment to India: Africans settled in India with kinship ties, mobile professionals and students, and itinerant traders. The composition and strength of this diaspora are in a constant flux. This movement is far from serendipitous or accidental. There are well established transregional infrastructures that facilitate these mobilities between Africa and India – from kin-based social networks to entrepreneurial economic linkages, and religious institutions with a global reach. This paper will seek to describe and analyze these infrastructures, paying attention to the roles of African and Indian actors that shape them.

The Speaker

Meera Venkatachalam is a Research Fellow at IIAS, Leiden University. She is trained as an anthropologist and historian. Her research is focused on the transregional circulation of capital, people, and religion in the Global South, between South Asia and Africa in particular. She has published extensively on Indian Ocean connectivities and India in Africa: publications include four books and several journal articles. She has held fellowships and positions at the University of Edinburgh, University of Ghana and University of Mumbai. At IIAS, she has been developing a book project on Africans in Mumbai in the longue durée.

In search of an imagined China: International students’ motivations to study in the Global South

International student mobility (ISM) to China is an underexplored topic, especially the mobility emanating from the Global North. Between 2019 and 2020, we interviewed 25 international students originally from Europe, North and South America, and Oceania, and analysed their decisions to study in China using thematic analysis. The results show that these young people’s international flows were motivated by a strong desire to search for a sense of home, cultural adventure, personal growth, authenticity, and abundant opportunities in China. In this light, we argue that international students’ migration decision-making is intertwined with their imaginaries of and imaginative frames for China, which various agents formulate at the intersection of global, national, and local contexts. In the process, we reveal a geographically imaginary dimension of ISM that has been overlooked in the existing literature.

The Speaker

Ming Luo is an assistant professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University. She earned her PhD in Sociology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on gender and sexuality, urban–rural migration, and bullying and violence. She has published numerous papers in both international and Chinese journals, including the British Journal of Sociology, Geographical Research, and Global Education. In addition to her research, she is involved in academic translation, having translated works such as Masculine Compromise; Nothing Bad Happens to Good Girls; and The Roots of American Individualism.

The complexity of migration infrastructure: Study abroad agencies and Vietnamese student mobility to South Korea

International education migration scholarship has examined how studying abroad is driven by the connectivity of migration-related infrastructures in both home and host countries, as well as how international students continue to rely on study abroad agencies to navigate citizenship trajectories after migration. In South Korea, there however remains limited discussion of migration infrastructures in relation to international education migration, despite the country emerging as one of the largest destinations for international students in the Asia-Pacific region in recent years. Moving beyond actor-centred interpretations that focus on individual choices and motivations, our study draws on the framework of migration infrastructure to capture diverse migration pathways of international students to South Korea. Our analysis draws on interviews with Vietnamese students, examining how study abroad agencies in Vietnam have evolved into key actors within migration infrastructures that facilitate Vietnamese education migration to South Korea. Subtly responding to changing policies in both countries, these agencies build diverse networks across Vietnam and South Korea to sustain continuous mobility flows. Our study contributes an expanded discussion of migration infrastructure, particularly in relation to spatiality, temporality, and the range of actors involved.

The Speakers

Yilsoon Paek is earned her Ph.D. in Geography from Seoul National University, with a doctoral thesis focusing on “Differentiation and Residential Processes in the Rental Housing Market for Foreign Immigrants.” She is currently a Research Fellow at the Centre for Asian Urban Societies at Seoul National University Asia Center. Her research interests span the politics of heritage in contemporary Korea, mobility and urban spaces, as well as demographic changes and social structures.

Weejun Park is a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Centre for Small Business Ecosystem (RCSBE) at Inha University, South Korea. His research interests include border/migration governance, migration policy, and more recently, digital geography and infrastructre. He is currently studying the mobility and the materiality of platform-based delivery riders and their impact on urban areas.

My Hang Thi Bui is a research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) at Leiden University. Her research engages political geography, migration studies, and inter-Asian engagements. She is currently working on intraregional flows of human mobility, transnational investment, and city diplomacy such as sister cities across East and Southeast Asia.