Description

How are securitization processes affecting migrant workers and the cities to which they migrate? How are migration politics associated with the production and disruption of various forms of urban and gendered inequalities in transnational ‘Asia’? What are the socio-spatial effects of securitization efforts aimed at migrants? Research on the growth of the global precarious working class tends to assume an unmarked male norm, and to posit the growing class of low-income, underemployed men in particular as a threat to national- and state-defined societal security. This workshop is aimed at both challenging the foundations of such existing research and beginning to illuminate the contours of a more complex, socially differentiated sense of what constitutes ‘in/security’ in relation to migration processes. This workshop examines the range of types of in/security associated with labor migration, and particularly the ways in which these are operating—materially and discursively—in transnational ‘Asian’ urbanization processes. This workshop opens up a broadly based discussion of these themes.

KEYNOTE IS CANCELLED DUE TO FLIGHT DELAY OF THE SPEAKER. TWO PANELS WILL STILL BE ON, STARTING AT THE DESIGNATED TIME BELOW:

Introduction and Welcome 1:00-1:10pm

Ito Peng, Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto

Keynote 1:10-2:25pm CANCELLED
Does National Security Ensure Human Security? The Case of Migrant Domestic Workers

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas
Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies, University of Southern California

In this talk, Rhacel Salazar Parreñas asks the question – does national security ensure human security? She addresses this question by looking at the legal incorporation of migrant domestic workers. She argues that establishing “national security” has not been good for the human security of migrant women. This is seen in three ways: 1) national security funnels migrant women to domestic work, leading to their labor market and spatial segregation in the domestic sphere; 2) it hampers their free migration — national security in the guise of protecting citizens for traffickers, that is criminals, leads to the greater hardship, in other words “diminished human security” of migrant women; 3) national security has come at the cost of excluding migrants from full membership and the denial of their social security benefits, thus it comes at the expense of not recognizing migrant labor contributions to the national economy.She will conclude with an examination of how we should prioritize the human security of migrant women by recasting the dominant principles determining national security.

PANEL I 2:30-3:45pm STILL ON
Securitization & Migration: (Re)Producing Exclusions
Chair:
Tracey Skelton
Associate Professor, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore

Panelists:
Alison Mountz
Canada Research Chair in Global Migration, The Balsillie School of International Affairs; Associate Professor of Geography, Wilfrid Laurier University
Emily Gilbert
Director of the Canadian Studies Program; Associate Professor of Geography, University of Toronto
Jennifer Hyndman
Director of Centre for Refugee Studies; Professor of Departments of Social Science and Geography, York University
Philip Kelly
Director of York Centre for Asian Research; Professor of Geography, York University

PANEL II 4:00-5:15pm STILL ON
Securitization & Migration: Organizing Possible Futures
Chair:
Rachel Silvey
(Associate Profession, Department of Geography, University of Toronto)

Panelists:
Deborah Cowen
Associate Professor of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto
Judy Han
Assistant Professor of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto
Jennifer Chun
Assistant Professor of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto

This event is co-organised by Professor Tracey Skelton (Associate Professor, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore) and Professor Rachel Silvey (Associate Profession, Department of Geography, University of Toronto)