Richard Charles Lee Insights through Asia Challenge is written in white on a dark purple background

 

Richard Charles Lee Insights through Asia Challenge

Overview

ITAC 2021

ITAC 2020

ITAC 2019

ITAC 2018

Events

*2022 call for student applications*

Deadline: February 18, 2022

2022 Richard Charles Lee Insights through Asia Challenge

The Asian Institute’s Richard Charles Lee Insights through Asia Challenge (ITAC) is an award-winning program that supports outstanding student experiential research.

This year, we are thrilled to launch a new version of our ITAC program, which invites students to work on a research project led by an Asian Institute faculty member.

Working together in small, focused teams, awarded students will be FUNDED to conduct research on a professor-led project over the summer semester, gaining direct research experience on a major scholarly project with an expert in the field. *A list of faculty-led projects follows below.

In addition to a unique research experience, awardees form a dynamic peer group. Students will receive academic and professional development training specific to their faculty-led project. They will also be supported in developing all the tools necessary for a successful ITAC experience—from submitting an initial application to presenting research outcomes and beyond.

ITAC will culminate with a public showcase of research outcomes in September 2022.

  • The program is open to undergraduate and graduate students across all three University of Toronto campuses. Students currently enrolled at the Asian Institute will be prioritized.
  • The program will allow for in-person (if the public health situation allows) and remote activities
  • Awarded students will receive approximately $1,000-$2,000 CAD
  • Expected time commitment will be no more than 50 hours

2022 Timeline

Call for Applications Posted Late January, 2022
Info Session & Statement of Interest Workshop – Register here! 12-1 PM, February 10, 2022
Applications Due February 18, 2022
Awardees Announced week of March 14, 2022
Meet & Greet April, 2022
Research Methods and Ethics Workshop April, 2022
Research Period April-August, 2022
Monthly Cohort Meetings May-August, 2022
Written Report Deadline Late August, 2022
Public Presentation September, 2022

how to apply

Please complete this online application form and email your CV/resume as a single PDF to Shannon Garden-Smith ai.coordinator@utoronto.ca by 11:59PM EST, February 18, 2022. When emailing your CV/resume please use the email subject line ” Your Name – ITAC Application 2022″ and name your file “Last Name_First Name – ITAC Application 2022”

Because Microsoft Forms does not allow you to save your progress, we’ve created this downloadable PDF listing the application questions. This will help you to draft your application before submitting. Questions 1-8 ask for basic information and questions 9-14 ask for your key statements of interest.

questions?

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to

Shannon Garden-Smith
Research Coordinator, Asian Institute
Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy
Rm. 103N-North House, 1 Devonshire Place
Toronto, ON M5S 3K7
Email: ai.coordinator@utoronto.ca

BONUS! Drop by our online information session and workshop about submitting your application on Thursday, February 12, 12-1pm. Register here for the zoom link!

2022 Faculty Projects

Cities of Sand: Tracing Contingency in Concrete

Professor Tong Lam

Project Description 

Astoundingly, sand—a material we associate with notions of infinitude and time—is beginning to “run out.” As the primary ingredient in concrete and glass, sand circumscribes our lives, forming the very ground from which we operate. By volume, sand is now the second most consumed material in the world after water, and it speaks to the temporal, material contradictions at the core of our contemporary world. As Professor of International Politics Laleh Khalili writes, in Asia, massive urbanization projects have led to the illegal mining and smuggling of sand from the Global South, such that beaches in Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Morocco are disappearing overnight to be refashioned into sidewalks and skyscrapers on distant shores. In Tkaronto/Toronto, another city of sand, the dynamics of extraction and production overlay with the forms Khalili has traced internationally, but the distinctions also reveal specific local histories and ongoing practices of coloniality.

Through this project, we will focus on the material-temporal-social relationships inscribed in and perpetuated by the sand-based built environment of Toronto. Beginning with scholar and artist Natalie Loveless’ premise that the way we tell time shapes our possibilities for living together, and extending it through anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow’s assertion that the freedom to reimagine how we live together is critical to changing our future, we will consider how sand holds contradiction and contingency, offering potential frameworks for changing the future by unsettling (seemingly) concrete histories.

With an interdisciplinary approach spanning history, architecture, urban studies, geography, and art, we will investigate the use of sand in sites adjacent to U of T campus through a literature review, archival research, interviews with subject-matter experts, and site visits. We will build from Jon Johnson’s scholarship on urban land-based Indigenous knowledge in Toronto, especially the obfuscated history of the Sandhill burial site of the Wendat and Mississauga Peoples at Bloor and Yonge Streets. Returning to Khalili’s research as well as Geographer Kathryn Yusoff’s work on racial geo-logics, we will compare and contrast the dynamics of extraction and consumption across select Asian sites and Toronto. Students with an interest in built form, materiality, critical-geologies, and artistic practice, and those with a desire to work in archives (and especially in the gaps left in the wake of the “Archive”) will enjoy this project most.

Professor Tong Lam’s Biography

Tong Lam is Associate Professor in the Department of Historical Studies and the Graduate Department of History. He has previously directed the Global Taiwan Program at the Asian Institute. His research is on the modern and contemporary history of China, with emphases on empire and nation, knowledge-production, infrastructure, and urban space. His first book, A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-State, 1900-1949 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), analyzes the profound consequences of the emergence of the technologies of the “social fact” and social survey research in modern China. His current book-length study examines the politics and poetics of China’s special zones in the socialist and postsocialist eras. Meanwhile, as a visual artist, he has been using lens-based works to reveal hidden evidence of state- and capital-precipitated violence—fast and slow—in a variety of contexts. His most recent project focuses especially on the material evidence of Cold War mobilizations globally and their environmental and social consequences.

Indian Revolutionary Rash Behari Bose, Manuscript Assistant

Dr. Joseph McQuade

Project Description:

Dr. McQuade is seeking Research Assistants to help with tasks related to the completion of his book manuscript, a biography of the early twentieth century Indian revolutionary Rash Behari Bose. The Research Assistant will contribute to Dr. McQuade’s forthcoming book project by assisting with the compiling of the book’s index and helping to locate historical photographs and maps for inclusion in the manuscript. The RA will work with Dr. McQuade to identify potential images for inclusion in his book and will be tasked with researching the relevant policies to ensure reproduction of the images conforms to local and international copyright laws. Some knowledge of 20th century South Asian history or experience with digital archives would be an asset, but is not necessary.

Joseph McQuade’s Biography

Joseph McQuade is the Richard Charles Lee Postdoctoral Fellow in the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and a former SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies. He is also Editor-in-Chief at the NATO Association of Canada and Associate Editor of the Munk School’s blog, Transformations: Downstream Effects of the BRI. Dr. McQuade is a research affiliate at the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History, the Queen’s University Global History Initiative, and with the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society. He is currently a Managing Editor of the Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies.

Dr. McQuade completed his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar, with a dissertation that examined the origins of terrorism in colonial India from an international perspective. This research forms the basis of his first book, A Genealogy of Terrorism: Colonial Law and the Origins of an Idea, recently published by Cambridge University Press. His current project examines counter-insurgency in pre-colonial and early colonial India and Burma, from the mid-eighteenth century to circa 1900. His broader research and teaching interests include critical genealogies of terrorism and insurgency, colonialism in Asia, and transnational connections in the Indian Ocean world.

Hyperlocal Histories: Libraries and Community Media Centers in Immigrant Communities

Professor Aditi Mehta

Project Description

Hyperlocal institutions that produce and disseminate local knowledge such as public branch libraries and neighbourhood media centers are diagnostic windows into society reflecting the social, economic, and political contexts of time and place. The histories of these community organizations are stories about the development of a neighbourhood, the preservation of culture and identity, as well as the growth of coalitions and divisions. What are the various roles that these hyperlocal information-sharing institutions play in community development throughout time, specifically in areas with immigrant and diasporic populations? And presently, how have these organizations served their constituents during the Covid-19 pandemic? This project will build upon, as well as compare and contrast existing research from two case studies in Boston’s Chinatown and Toronto’s Regent Park, respectively.

Chinatown Branch of the Boston Public Library

From 2008-2010, through archival research and interviews with city officials, library administrators, community members, and other stakeholders, I documented the 100-year history of a movement for a branch library in Boston’s Chinatown. In 1896, the Boston Public Library (BPL) opened a reading room on Tyler Street in between the immigrant neighbourhoods of Chinatown and the South End. In 1956, the City of Boston demolished the Tyler Street Branch Library and since 2000, community groups in Chinatown had been advocating for their own branch of the BPL. At first, the addition or removal of the library in Chinatown was largely an extension of city policy, and eventually the presence of a library in the neighbourhood became an extension of grassroots community movements. While reflecting on this chronology, I theorized that Boston’s Chinatown Library has six purposes: 1) Assimilation Processing Center; 2) Gathering Place; 3) Economic Training Ground; 4) Ethnic Identity Assertion; 5) Turf Defense; and 6) Political Clout Building.

In 2018, the City finally re-opened the Chinatown Branch of the Boston Public Library. I would like to update my research with the last decade’s current events as well as complement this case study with similar branch library movements in other North American Chinatowns or Asian diasporic communities. Furthermore, I plan to document the changing roles of these neighbourhood institutions during the pandemic.

Regent Park’s Focus Media Arts Centre

Since 2018, I have partnered with the non-profit organization Focus Media Arts (FOCUS) in Toronto’s Regent Park, to better understand the lived experience of gentrification for the area’s South Asian and North African Muslim residents. Specifically, I am investigating how young religious and racial minorities reimagine and repurpose city infrastructures to support their communities despite conditions of disinterest and neglect by policymakers. The FOCUS Media Arts Centre is a community media organization that serves the diverse neighbourhood of Regent Park in East Toronto. The organization teaches residents how to produce their own media from print journalism to television and film to radio, and also teaches critical media literacy skills. FOCUS has historically fought against “neighbour-hoodism” which is defined as prejudice against certain neighbourhoods that are perceived to be low income and occupied by a concentration of racial/ethnic minorities.

“Neighbour-hoodism” has re-emerged as an important issue in the wake of Covid-19 where communities of color and populations are often criminalized for having higher rates of the disease. Such interpretations ignore the perspectives and lived experiences of minority populations. This inaccurate data intensifies the adverse effects of an outbreak, hinders the ability of policymakers to effectively address the crisis, and diminishes the capacity of community members to stay healthy.

I will document the history of this important hyperlocal institution and theorize its purposes throughout time in the community. I plan to develop a multi-dimensional understanding of pandemics within the neighbourhood’s dynamic history of immigration and housing development. Ultimately, the organization can utilize this history to develop pertinent programming for the current crisis.

Aditi Mehta’s Biography

Aditi Mehta, PhD (MIT) is an assistant professor, teaching stream, in the Urban Studies Program at Innis College. Aditi earned her masters in city planning and her PhD at MIT. Her research interests include technology and civic engagement, participatory planning, community development, and issues surrounding racial and ethnic diversity. Aditi’s work bridges academics with community involvement and facilitates the exchange of ideas between the two.

Circuits of Labour: Southeast Asian Care Worker Migrations

Professor Rachel Silvey

Project Description

This project seeks 3-4 highly motivated graduate or undergraduate students with interest in research on gender and migrant labour from Indonesia. The project develops a relational comparison of migrant workers’ experiences from West Java, Indonesia among those who have traveled for work to a range of destinations in East Asia, the Persian Gulf, and North America. The empirical foci of this research are: i) the migrant rights groups (interstate organizations

[ISOs] and non-governmental organizations [NGOs]) working for migrants’ labour rights. The research focuses on these organizations (both international[1] and within Indonesia[2]

) to provide analysis of specific institutions (e.g., religious and secular migrant rights organizations) and practices (i.e., audiences targeted, Internet communications, discourses invoked, and partnerships developed with other religious and secular groups) to understand how the politics of religion are inflecting contemporary efforts to improve migrants’ rights.  In this way, the research develops understanding of place-specific mediations of transnational migration politics. In addition, in that it centers on the socially produced meanings of gender, religion, and rights among migrant workers, the research develops insight into the historic and geographic specificities of these processes. Students who have language facility in Bahasa Indonesia and Arabic are especially encouraged to apply.

[1]

Human Rights Watch (HRW), the United Nations International Labor Organization, the Coalition for Migrants Rights (CMR), Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA), the Asian Migrant Centre (AMC), Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL), UNIFEM and ILO.

[2] The Center for Indonesian Migrant Women [CIMW]

, Migrant Care, and KOPBUMI (Consortium of Indonesian Migrant Workers Advocacy/ Konsorsium Pembela Buruh Migran Indonesia).

Rachel Silvey’s Biography

Rachel Silvey is Richard Charles Lee Director of the Asian Institute and Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning. She is a Faculty Affiliate in CDTS, WGSI, and the Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies Program. She received her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a dual B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz in Environmental Studies and Southeast Asian Studies.

Professor Silvey is best known for her research on women’s labour and migration in Indonesia. She has published widely in the fields of migration studies, cultural and political geography, gender studies, and critical development. Her major funded research projects have focused on migration, gender, social networks, and economic development in Indonesia; immigration and employment among Southeast Asian-Americans; migration and marginalization in Bangladesh and Indonesia; and religion, rights and Indonesian migrant women workers in Saudi Arabia.

Building Alternative Archives of China’s Maoist Past

Professor Yiching Wu

Project Description

Primary sources about the tumultuous Maoist past are limited and scattered, as numerous sources have remained locked in state archives and inaccessible to both researchers and the general public. They are deemed “sensitive” under the Chinese regime, which fears that historical inquiry may disrupt the official narrative of unity and progress and undermine its legitimacy.

I seek 2-3 interested and dedicated students to work closely with me on a project that aims to  develop innovative and collaborative ways to preserve, curate, and share valuable historical sources. It builds on our large—and continuously expanding— collection of sources including archival documents, pamphlets, correspondences and diaries, Red Guard publications, and etc. Student assistants will participate in works including, but not limited to, (1) organizing and cataloguing documents, (2) constructing digital database, (3) developing and maintaining data websites, (4)  identifying and acquiring new source materials,  and (5) building connections and working with other researchers and collectors. Preferred backgrounds and skills include: (1) interests in historical research and scholarship, (2) strong bilingual proficiency in Chinese and English (ability to read traditional Chinese scripts a plus), (3) strong computer skills (experience with web and database applications such as PHP and SQL a strong plus), and (4) interests in information-related fields (archival management, digital curation, etc.) a strong plus.

Yiching Wu’s Biography

Yiching Wu received his PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago. Before joining the faculty of the University of Toronto, he was Junior Fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows and Assistant Professor of Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on the history, society, and politics of Mao’s China (1949-1976), and in particular the history and memory of the Cultural Revolution era (1966-1976). His main scholarly interests include historical anthropology, popular social and political movement, modern Chinese history, Chinese socialism and transition to post-socialism, and the politics of historical knowledge. He is the author of The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis (Harvard University Press, 2014), which won the President’s Book Award from the Social Science History Association (USA) and was also shortlisted for the Wallace K. Ferguson Book Prize (for “the outstanding scholarly book in a field of history other than Canadian history”) from the Canadian Historical Association. He is currently working on a book that investigates the tortuous path that led up to the Cultural Revolution and its opening crises tentatively titled The Coming of Mao’s Last Revolution. He is also actively involved in work to gather and preserve Cultural Revolution and Mao-era primary sources and to develop a digital-based cooperative for preserving and sharing historical documents.

2021 ITAC RECIPIENTS

Youth Identity in the Milk Tea Alliance

  • Tracy Cheung (Contemporary Asian Studies and Human Geography)
  • Rashmi Raj (Contemporary Asian Studies and Sociology)

The Milk Tea Alliance is an online hashtag that originated on Twitter to signal solidarity between multiple Asian countries/administrative regions such as Thailand, Myanmar, Hong Kong and more. Primarily powered by youth, this alliance stands for democracy and human rights although it originally began as a meme war. In an increasingly globalized world, social relations and how youth identify themselves are constantly transforming under rapidly changing conditions, which includes emerging online communities. This project examines youth identity in Hong Kong and Thailand in relation to the Milk Tea Alliance to uncover whether this alliance has the potential to impact how youth identify themselves in relation to nationality and on a global scale. Our research asks, if Asian youth are willing to take part in the online, transnational Milk Tea Alliance community, does their participation shift their sense of identity, so that they feel identified with transnational alliances that exceed national identity? We gathered data through online surveys circulated between Thai and Hong Konger social media users. The results indicated a relationship between Asian youth strongly favouring the alliance and participating in the hashtag and their identification as a global citizen more than a citizen of their nation state. Possible explanations for this trend include their increased immersion in a global community that circulates transnational information with high regard for universal human rights, therefore increasing feelings of solidarity with fellow Asian youth.

Rogue Representations: Diasporic Digital Archives of South Asian Musical Media

  • Hassan Asif (PhD Student, Faculty of Information)

In this essay I explore how social construction of memory is operationalized in South Asian diasporic digital archives of musical media while interacting with the transformative potentials of digital memory-making tools. I ask how social media and related digital platforms develop conditions for digital memory-making for South Asian diasporic communities and question if there are epistemic blind spots in the way we locate power and related negotiations in such diasporic archives of musical media. I do this by presenting two case studies of South Asian digital musical media archives, Discostan and Hamnawa being maintained and curated by individuals in North America. Through semi-structured interviews of archivists from both digital archives, I understand their archival practice, their motivations, and their logics for organizing, negotiating, and approaching South Asian media from the past while constructing alternative presents and futures. These digital archivists consider their archival practice as a labour of love while aiming to rectify projected musical categories imposed by Western archival platforms onto non-Western musical systems that often chart their own trajectories in digital media.

Image: Discostan’s feed on Instagram (Source: Instagram.com/Discostan)

Image: Discostan’s feed on Instagram (Source: Instagram.com/Discostan)

Camaraderie and Clientelism: A Qualitative Content Analysis of China-Cambodia Relations

  • Jonathan Banfield (Contemporary Asian Studies, Peace, Conflict and Justice, and Political Science)

The expansion of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) raises critical questions about the nature of client-state relationships within Southeast Asia. Drawing on the case of Cambodia, this paper seeks to draw out the key factors animating official pro-China sentiments through a comprehensive literature review and qualitative content analysis of major Cambodian news outlets. Articles from 2014 to 2021 discussing Khmer-Sino interactions were collected from the Khmer Times, Agence Kampuchea Press, and Phnom Penh Post. These articles were systematically coded for seven themes: Chinese sovereignty, development, deviation, friendship, military relations, neutral foreign policy and sentimental support. Analysis of Khmer Times’ content indicated a number of trends, including: an increase in the number of coded mentions of neutral foreign policy in response to increased coverage on development, and a return to emphasis on friendship and decreased coverage on development following the COVID-19 pandemic. Analysis of the other news outlets revealed a general uptick in the number of mentions of friendship over time, with particular spiking attributable to the pandemic. Drawing on Cambodia’s case, this article contributes to understandings of Southeast Asian patron-client relations through analysing official sentiments and assessing how and why they are projected thematically in different ways.

The Sustainability of Culture-Led Regeneration: 2 Cases from Shanghai’s Urban Waterfronts

  • Amy Chen (Contemporary Asian Studies, Diaspora and Transnational Studies, and Political Science)

Since China’s market reforms in the late 1970s, Shanghai has played a leading role in the country’s economic restructuring. The transition from a manufacturing-based economy to one that prioritizes creativity and innovation is supported through a series of urban renewal projects. This research compares two urban regeneration project cases on Shanghai’s waterfronts–M50 and Shanghai West Bund–and explores the effectiveness of culture-led urban regeneration in addressing the sustainable redevelopment of urban spaces. Data is gathered from primary and secondary literature and analyzed using GIS (geographic information system) technology. It is then interpreted through Bianchini and Parkinson’s (1993) proposed debate on culture-led urban regeneration, including the cultural funding dilemma, economic dilemma, and spatial dilemma. The analysis demonstrates the varieties within culture-led strategies of urban regeneration and how different instances of culture-led regeneration have considered sustainability an anchoring factor in their design. This research concludes that Shanghai’s culture-led urban regeneration of industrial heritage is faced with the challenges of (a) incorporating the creative resources generated by current institutions into shaping the projects’ future development and (b) offsetting the effects of gentrification, brought on due to the urban renewal process, by providing benefits to a fuller definition of the community.

Image: Shanghai West Bund Biennial Pavilions. Source: Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects

Image: Shanghai West Bund Biennial Pavilions. Source: Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects

China as an Ideological Threat Against America? A Dissemination of Anti-China Sentiment on Far-Right Forum Patriots.win

  • Cheryl Cheung (Political Science and American Studies)

This project delves into to the far-right online forum patriots.win to investigate whether a predominant source of anti-Asian hate within the American alt-right community is based on a fear of the Chinese government’s power. Using a case study approach to detect the sentiments underlying posts with keywords relating to China, the findings revealed anti-China sentiment on the forum was largely directed to China as a singular entity overseas, rather than at Asian-Americans. Though the posts reveal a suspicion of government corruption, many of the government-related accusations were also about the state gaining the ‘upperhand’ over America. In sum, there is looming fear of China’s increasing power at the cost of Americans’. Given the dearth of academic research on patriots.win, I encourage greater analysis by journalists and scholars to examine the impact of discriminatory speech on far-right forums like this one as a bid for greater public awareness and more robust policy by lawmakers.

(Re)envisioning Routes: Examining Environmental and Cultural Sustainability in Nepal’s Tourism Industry

  • Ashwini Selvakumaran (Peace, Conflict & Justice Studies, English, Diaspora & Transnational Studies)
  • Neha Dhaliwal (Peace, Conflict, & Justice Studies, Human Geography, Diaspora & Transnational Studies)
  • Aishwarya Patel (Comprehensive Music Studies, Political Science, Certificates in Health Applications in Music & Music Technology)
  • Sachin Oza (Ethics, Society, & Law, Contemporary Asian Studies, Near & Middle Eastern Civilisations)

This project analyzes the extent to which tourism practices negatively impact cultural and environmental sustainability in Nepal, and how the government, in tandem with other stakeholders, can alter its approach to preserve the country’s unique socio-environmental landscape. In particular, our team’s focus was on Kathmandu and Upper Mustang. Through an extensive literature review, we analyzed existing literature related to the socio-economic damage brought about by COVID-19 to Nepal and the intersections between current tourism practices, the cultural sustainability of these practices, and environmental degradation. This provided us with an appropriate backdrop when understanding Nepal’s socio-cultural and environmental landscape. We connected with stakeholders and organizations including environmentally conscious NGOs, local people whose livelihood surrounds tourism, and tourism workers. We conducted a range of interviews, collecting quantitative data that mobilized the perspective of citizens and workers who are at the forefront of these issues, supplementing our preexisting understanding of the country’s tourism landscape today. In a forthcoming policy report, we conclude that conservation strategies must be holistic. Sustainable development measures beyond ecotourism are needed to maintain Nepal’s environmental landscape. A wide variety of stakeholders will need to (continue to) work together to support Nepal’s culture and traditions and resist the commodification of traditional artefacts by tourists.

Image: Upper Mustang

Image: Upper Mustang

Female-Led Labour Unions as Empowerment: Bangladeshi Garment Factories

  • Ibnat Islam (Political Science and Peace, Conflict & Justice)

This research explores the feminized garment industry in Bangladesh by analyzing the capacity of labour unions to act as a space of sociopolitical empowerment for female workers during COVID-19. Through a literature review, documentary and film analyses, and interviews, the research investigates what Bangladeshi female garment factory workers’ labour means in the broader context of the global supply chain, and how pandemic-era mobilizations can impact the workers’ ability to empower themselves. The research finds that, set against the backdrop of a globalizing world and a patriarchal society, the class and gender positionalities of female garment factory workers impact their ability to successfully organize into unions. The pandemic has exacerbated the dire working conditions of garment factories and reinforced deep-rooted gender roles through the unequal division of labour both at home and in the workplace. Further, the ability of female workers to unionize has become increasingly more difficult during the pandemic. This is due to the implementation of social distancing measures and the inability of the workers to prioritize their own working conditions, as the capitalist and patriarchal conditions of their environments force them to spend more time servicing their family members and households throughout the pandemic lockdowns.

Image: Screenshots from Rubaiyat Hossain’s film, Made in Bangladesh

Image: Screenshots from Rubaiyat Hossain’s film, Made in Bangladesh

Exile Activism: Hong Kong’s Pro-Democracy Activism in the United Kingdom

  • Wan Li (Contemporary Asian Studies and Human Geography)
  • Chan-Min Roh (Contemporary Asian Studies, South Asian Studies, and Asian Canadian Studies)

Through the case study of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activism in the UK, this research explores the question: How does exile change activism? The origins and process of exile can be traced directly to key political events, notably the escalation of local protests in Hong Kong from 2019 to 2020, the subsequent imposition of the National Security Law, and the enforcement of the BNO policy by the British government. These events impelled the current mass exodus of Hong Kongers to the UK. Drawing on insights from exile politics, social movement theories, and contentious politics, the research focusses on how mechanisms of mobilization change prior to and after exile. Crucially, exile acts as a catalyzing factor that allows for a comparison of two case studies (pre-exile and post-exile). By conducting an extensive literature review on relevant theoretical frameworks, we set out to assess the applicability of the contentious politics framework in the study of exile activism. Through conducting interviews with Hong Kong pro-democracy groups in the United Kingdom and analyzing the primary social media sites of their political mobilization, we are able to identify key mechanisms of mobilization at play as a result of political exile.

Understanding Female Rural-Urban Migration in China

  • Saara Meghji (Political Science, Contemporary Asian Studies, and History)

This research project seeks to understand the factors motivating female rural-urban migration in China and the impacts of these processes. In particular, the project examines the scale and specific manifestations of migration including its gendered dimensions. The research considers why women often face increased barriers to migration (due, for example, to traditional gender roles in families and local communities), as well as why overcoming patriarchal and structural barriers in the form of the hukou system is often key for those who do migrate. Further, the project explores how some women are able to mobilize the notion of marriage as an “end goal” in their lives to effectively migrate with husbands, adopt better hukou, and thus access increased economic prosperity. Beyond this, the project concludes that when women migrate, they often face reduced economic opportunities and are more likely to occupy precarious employment in the informal sector. However, the increasing visibility of female migration has contributed to broader changes about women’s roles in China with the potential to continue shaping preference for male children and marriage dynamics.

Image: Shanghai interchange (Source: Denys Nevozhai , Unsplash)

Image: Shanghai interchange (Source: Denys Nevozhai, Unsplash)

Beginning to Rethink Dharma like a Feminist

  • Gauri Persad (Diaspora & Transnational Studies, English and Equity Studies)

“Beginning to Rethink Dharma like a Feminist” is a podcast designed to invite a critical feminist view of Dharma in the Bhagavad Gita (BVG). The Bhagavad Gita’s reading of Dharma usually provides uncomfortable expectations for women and lower-caste communities. In this project, I explore the standard and hegemonic, hetero-patriarchal, castest readings of Dharma that engulf our society. I attempt to develop the concept of Dharma as compatible with left-leaning, feminist social theory to create a working definition that captures Dharma in the Bhagavad Gita in a way that makes room for everyone, particularly women and minorities. I produced the project as a podcast to make it accessible to the working class, homemakers, and people who need Dharma to be rethought the most. Ultimately, this project concludes that it is possible to reframe Dharma in feminist terms to acknowledge that patriarchy and castism have tarnished potential.

Imagining God in the Lockdown

  • Ariel Siagan (PhD Student, Theology)

My project aims to understand how God is imagined by religious leaders and service providers in the Philippines during the time of COVID-19 lockdowns. Using three different mechanisms to explore the topic, I first studied the documents issued by the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP) during the period of the second lockdown, February to May 2021. Second, I analyzed the liturgies and speeches delivered on the Peace Summit organized by the Philippine Ecumenical Peace Platform (PEPP) via Zoom. Finally, I organized a semi-structured focus group discussion with participants who are direct service providers of social and religious services to the people. Out of eight participants, half are ministers of a local congregation and the other half are ecumenical workers. My data-set suggests that at this critical time, the idea of God is mostly imagined as a concrete experience rather than an abstract idea, more immanent than transcendent. God is imagined as suffering along with the people rather than God at a remove, on the throne.

2020 ITAC RECIPIENTS

Record Unavailable: Unsettling Approaches to South Asian Archives in the Age of COVID-19

  • Henria Aton (PhD student, Faculty of Information and Centre for South Asian Studies)

The COVID-19 pandemic has swiftly and deeply changed the way scholars of South Asia can approach their research, particularly through limitations of access to archival sources. This ITAC project explores the current response of scholars of South Asia to the pandemic and its effects on the ways we carry out research, arguing that new interdisciplinary conversations must occur between scholars of South Asia and their colleagues in archival studies. Such collaborations, I argue, will bolster our understanding of archives, how they are constructed, and what materials and histories remain at the limits of our definitions of “archives” and the funding that enables digitization projects in the global south. Through intensive research across disciplines and platforms, and drawing from my own research with unconventional archives in South Asia, this project responds to the current moment and seeks to centre open collaboration between two fields that have rarely overlapped but that can provide critical new insights on archives and the digital world in South Asia. The outcomes of this research are twofold: first, I produced a “literature review” (an evolving document that will be frequently updated) that provides an overview, designed for graduate students, of how scholars of South Asia have responded to our current research crisis. Second, I am writing a longer, scholarly article that uses this research to demonstrate that scholarship drawing from both archival studies and South Asia studies can provide new, innovative avenues for research on archives in the region during COVID.

Searching for Belonging: Sense of belonging as a protective factor against Depression, PTSD, and Distress amongst Uyghur refugees

  • Hala Bucheeri (Psychology and Neuroscience)
  • Shahd Fulath Khan (Psychology and Neuroscience)

More Uyghurs are fleeing their homes in Xinjiang due to oppression by the Chinese government, resulting in large numbers of refugees and diaspora communities around the world. While Uyghurs may face several challenges in their host countries, having a sense of belonging to their new home can be a protective factor against mental illness and distress. In this study, we hypothesized that a higher sense of belonging would be associated with lower incidences of distress. We used a mixed-method study consisting of interviews and questionnaires to investigate the research question. The questionnaire consisted of demographic questions, as well as the General Belongingness Scale (GBS), the Centre of Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), PTSD Symptoms Scale (PSS), and Kessler’s Psychological Distress Scale (K10). Interviews were semi-structured and questions were centered around belongingness and wellbeing. We found that higher belongingness was associated with low scores on the depression, PTSD, and distress scales, demonstrating a moderate negative relationship. We also found that Uyghurs are facing a variety of challenges that deplete sense of belonging, such as absence of political support, lack of cultural programs, uncertainty about the status of loved ones, language barriers, and frequent cyber attacks by the Chinese government while they are abroad. These findings offer several suggestions for policymakers and social workers to implement in order to promote wellbeing among Uyghur communities in their host countries. Future studies should investigate identity issues and their relationship with belonging, especially among Uyghur youth.

 

“​Threads of a Past Life”: Kimono in the Lives of Japanese-Canadian Women

  • Bailey Irene Midori Hoy (History Specialist)
  • Wing Yan Sarina Wong (Peace, Conflict & Justice)

This research explores kitsuke (kimono and the art of wearing kimono) as a source of cultural knowledge, identity, and power amongst Japanese-Canadian/Nikkei women today. Focusing on women with ties in the Greater Toronto Area, we attempt to defetishize the idea that kimono and the people who wear them are “traditional” and “never-changing.” In examining the collective narratives that shape the history of many Nikkei women, we found that the highly visual and symbolic nature of the garment made the kimono a sort of “universal heirloom,” in which memories and culture are stored amongst our participants as an item that could be used to “perform” their cultural identities.

We conducted semi-structured interviews over the phone and Zoom video conferencing software with Japanese-Canadian women above the age of 18. Books, newspapers, digital museum archives and their curators, etc. helped consolidate the history of kimono and contextualize the interviews.

Belonging in Bollywood’s Contemporary Nation Making Culture

  • Yazmeen Kanji (Equity Studies, Peace Conflict & Justice Studies, and Cinema Studies)
  • Mayadevi Murthy (Religion Studies and Equity Studies)

Our research project examines the Indian Hindi film industry (Bollywood)’s shift towards the Hindu nationalist right by interviewing industry “newcomers” in order to explore the interplay between content production and the broader political landscape in which the industry exists today. We found these newcomers would either a) pursue the creation of content that would be lucrative regardless of how they contributed to perpetuating narrow perceptions of belonging within the nation-state, or b) consciously attempt to expose the viewing public to more progressive outlooks. In latter cases, progressive participants acknowledged a need to strategize around the threats of state censorship, violent public mobilization, and disinterested investors. These threats and other dimensions in today’s industry environment produce a cycle in which the audience primarily internalizes Hindu nationalist content. This reifies an ever-narrowing definition of “Indian” identity and, in turn increases demands and funding for such cinema. This ultimately drives the further proliferation and influence of films that propagate Hindu nationalist conceptions of “belonging.”

Untangling the Causative Web behind Farmer Suicides in India

  • Deep Leekha (International Relations, Contemporary Asian Studies, and History)

Between 1995 and 2015 more than 300,000 farmers committed suicide in India. The consensus among most agrarian scholars and government officials is that the ​prima facie​ reason for this ongoing epidemic is farmer indebtedness. However, as scholars like Nagaraj have argued monocausal explanations of suicide like the one being proffered in the Indian instance “reduce suicide to blaming the victim while ignoring larger socio-economic conditions.” Indeed, there is a web of socio-economic conditions and environmental circumstances which engender indebtedness. I produced my research as an article which seeks to dissect the monocausal explanation and better understand the web of factors which contribute to indebtedness, and consequently, to suicides. My research shows that indebtedness needs to be understood not purely as an economic condition but also a social one. Accounts of suicides and indebtedness throughout India shed light on a ‘causative web’. This web explains how cultural phenomena such as losing face in society and dowry payments along with arability changes due to the vicissitudes of global warming put added pressure on individual farmers. This work also draws upon the frameworks of critical theorists like Althusser, Gramsci, and Beck, among others, to examine and underscore the socio-political forces at work which essentially sever extant ties between farming communities, thereby further individualizing and isolating farmers. It concludes by arguing for a reimagining of rural spaces and once again integrating farmers into agrarian communities and, consequently, into support systems.

Caught Between and Left Behind: Analyzing Chinese Taxi Driver’s Moral Idioms in the time of Platform Capitalism

  • Yang Liu (PhD student, Anthropology)

This project explores the echoes of old moral economic discourses in taxi drivers’ struggles against the rise of the platform economy. By analyzing the posts and comments from a WeChat account dedicated to taxi drivers and taxi related news, I studied traditional taxi drivers’ reliance on moral economic sensibilities. I show how these taxi drivers maintain a sense of belonging in an increasingly precarious working condition. When traditional taxi drivers’ sense of belonging is replaced with and swept away by new developments in technology and the economy, they fall back to the discourse of moral values and virtues, seeking a sense of belonging in an already lost world. As such, this project not only demonstrates the frustration traditional taxi drivers are experiencing but also highlights their strategic and moral responses to the threat of disruptive technologies.

PUNK! In the Nation, Redux: Complicating Punk Identities of Political Resistance and Community Resilience in the “Frictions” of the Indonesian Nation-State

  • Rushay Naik (MSc Candidate in Health Services Research; BSc, Hons. Human Biology-Global Health and Peace, Conflict & Justice)
  • Mariah Stewart (B.A., Hons. Political Science, Contemporary Asian Studies and Mathematics)

Media interpretations have been the source of most perspectives on Indonesian punk music as a subcultural force of uniform resistance in Indonesia. Though some scholars and commentators have challenged these boundaries, perceptions of Indonesian punk scenes often adopt fixed, hybrid identities that oversimplify the relationships between punk and global and local historical events. We argue that the role of punk in Indonesia as a cultural phenomenon is “frictional,” existing as a complex and interactive force within the contexts of unbounded, diffuse aspects of political, economic, and social factors. These instances of “friction” take on forms of community and belonging, as well as resistance at multiple levels of social and governance structures. We find that, through the prism of reaching punk narratives “where they are” with the use of virtual research interviews and media analysis, we are able to situate their constituent philosophies of DIYism –“what they do”– and materiality –“what they have”– in broader socioeconomic forces, political violence, and cultural transitions in Indonesian history. Thus, this paper abandons more traditional dialectics of understanding Indonesian punk, such as the ‘global/local’ or ‘commercial/underground,’ and instead bridges these different narratives to understand “friction” within Indonesian punk more holistically. We utilize anthropologist Anna Tsing’s definition of “friction” in concert with the above research methodology to frame Indonesian punk for ‘what it is,’ a process based in awkward and creative interconnectivity.

The Search for Belonging: Digital Protest of North Korean “Defector-Creators”

  • Hyunji (Hillary) Song (International Relations, Contemporary Asian Studies, and History)

The exponential increase in the User-Generated Content (UGC) creation within the North Korean defector YouTubers, termed defector-creators, is a clear indicator of the development of soft power by these individuals who have newly acquired the freedom of expression. This project aims to investigate the impact of the production of digital content on the North Korean defectors’ ability to manufacture a sense of belonging and civic engagement in the South Korean society. Through a case study of five videos produced by the defector-creators, this project analyzed the content of the videos and their implications. My research draws the conclusion that the creation of digital content enables the defector-creators to manufacture a sense of community through a dynamic contestation and discussion of the South Korean society, through providing a platform for them to claim self-determination, autonomy, and ownership over their productions. Furthermore, my research examines the impact of the production of UGC on the levels of civic engagement of the North Korean defectors and concludes that the defector-creators experience a psychological empowerment and a rehabilitation of their political agency by transitioning from a muted group to an active voice of protest against discrimination and human rights violations. These developments call for new theoretical frameworks that can account for the processes of soft power construction of the marginalized refugee groups who emerge from precarity.

Smart, Green, or in Between: Smart City and Eco-Town Programs in Singapore and Toronto

  • Elizabeth Shaw (Contemporary Asian Studies, Peace, Conflict & Justice Studies, and Political Science)
  • Michelle Zhang (Peace, Conflict, and Justice Studies, Urban Studies, and Geography)

In recent years, innovation based movements like smart cities and eco towns have become trademarks of the way forward in urban planning. This paper uses Sidewalk Toronto’s now-abandoned Quayside project and Singapore’s Treelodge@Punggol to examine the role of innovation in our urban futures. Through a series of in-depth interviews with academics, scholars, and practitioners from both cities, we examine how local-global, private-public, and digital attitudes shape the reception and practical outcomes of these futuristic development projects. Singapore findings include: state-led rhetoric surrounding the ideologies of national progress and success; techno solutionism as a means to achieve these goals; and sustainability as a performative but unconstructive act. In Toronto, we find deeply rooted public distrust and suspicion toward corporate high-tech and outsiders that found an outlet in Sidewalk Labs’ smart city, but far less hostility directed towards the broader aspiration of a digitally innovative city.

Urban village under China’s rapid urbanization: the challenge of rural migrant workers in Guangzhou and Shenzhen

  • Yang (Tiffany) Zhou (Contemporary Asian Studies and Political Science)

Urbanization is driving economic development and creating problems of environmental sustainability in China. The space of a city is not only shared by the government, real estate developers, urban residents, but also residents in urban villages, who constitute a remarkable social feature of the city landscape. When villagers in urban villages continue to transform into urban residents, they change from working on labor-cultivated farms to another spatial production unit: rural migrant workers in a self-built urban village in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, thus changing existing urban spatial relations. This paper attempts to compare the living conditions and state policy towards rural migrant workers in Guangzhou and Shenzhen in terms of redevelopment plans, land-use rights, and government subsidies. Rural migrants were major tenants of Chengzhongcun. They were economically and politically powerless, but these tenants inhabit geographically shifting disordered spaces. In general, my project aims to contextualize rural migrant workers’ living conditions and the changes they have been undergoing since the 1980s, focusing on how their living conditions in Guangzhou and Shenzhen have changed in the year, 2020—the year in which Shenzhen marked the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the special Economic Zone. For this project, I conducted interviews with urban villagers, real estate agency managers, and organizations with migration-related projects in Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

2019 ITAC RECIPIENTS

Sites of (Un)belonging: Spaces/Faces of Honjok Youth in Seoul, South Korea

  • Yujuan (Emmy) Fu (Ethics, Society & Law; Literature & Critical Theory)
  • Jennifer Han (Peace, Conflict & Justice and Political Science)

The purpose of our three-weeks of fieldwork in Seoul was to uncover the nuanced identity narratives of honjok (혼족, roughly translated as “alone-tribe”) youth, focusing on their mobilities in public space and the sociocultural forces driving Seoul’s rising solo-consumer economy. After undertaking an extensive literature review in Toronto, we conducted interviews in Seoul with 19 subjects, classified into one of three categories: honjok youth, academics of youth-related studies, and organizers of youth-oriented community spaces. Through these interviews we learned of wide variances in honjok lifestyle, which point to the tightening embrace of a neoliberal ethos among youth in Seoul. Unexpectedly, our research also led us to discover a growing number of communal spaces created to specifically combat the isolation of youth in Seoul. Our final photo-essay aims to facilitate the exploration of the honjok phenomenon beyond its prototypical news-media romanticization (as in treatments by Vogue, Vice, and CNN). We analyze the changes brought about by honjok mobilities and the value-shifts accompanying a solo-consumer economy. Finally, we believe our research lends itself to fruitful cross-cultural analyses with the hikikomori population in Japan from sociopolitical, psychological, and economic stances.

Yujuan (Emmy) Fu and Jennifer Han conducting interviews in South Korea

Shades of Brown Girl: The Many Colours of Transnational South Asian Femininity

  • Amrita Kumar-Ratta (MGA, PhD Student, Department of Geography and Planning)

This project involved the development and execution of nine creative storytelling workshops that engaged approximately 90 South Asian women in the Greater Toronto Area, the Metro Vancouver Area, and Chandigarh and Bangalore, India around themes of race, gender, and identity through performance and narrative storytelling. The workshops explored the theme of colour in depth, seeking to unpack the symbols and stories that various shades of brown can elicit vis-à-vis South Asian femininity. Some initial conclusions can be drawn from this pilot project; for instance, many participants expressed that they often do not feel seen, heard, or represented (e.g., in the media, in public spaces, among colleagues, family and/or friends) and they find it immensely valuable to be part of a collaborative and creative space, often describing it as “safe” and “therapeutic.” Additionally, as many conversations and personal stories revealed throughout the process, South Asian femininity is indeed complex and intersectional and cannot be reduced to simplistic narratives that exoticize women on the one hand and strip them of their agency on the other. Finally, the creative research methods employed throughout the project were seen—by both the participants and the researcher/artist/facilitator—as deeply transformative elements of qualitative research with important implications for future ethnographic and/or participatory studies that seek to center the stories of marginalized women across geographies. Throughout these workshops, I recorded some preliminary photography and videography and collected a number of personal stories. I evaluated each workshop using consistent criteria and regularly documented through field notes. Currently I am curating a photo-journal in collaboration with a number of workshop participants.

Amrita Kumar-Ratta conducting a workshop with participants

Moving in and moving out: understanding the effects of social exclusion on the mental health of rural-urban migrants in Shenzhen

  • Katie Kwang (Psychology; Economics)
  • Benita Leong (History; Political Science, UTM)
  • Hui Wen Zheng (Contemporary Asian Studies; Peace, Conflict, and Justice)

Since the 1970s, a widespread and rapid process of rural-urban migration has helped drive growth in China, raising concerns about the mental health of migrants who face a litany of social, economic and broadly, structural, challenges. Existing literature on the topic overwhelmingly relies on qualitative psychometric tools, leaving questions as to what the specific risk factors are and how they interact with each other to affect an individual’s mental state. Using the framework of social exclusion, this project explores how psychosocial factors including housing, gender, labour issues, migration policy, development and competition, and social expectations affect mental health. We collected data through interviews with service providers and subject experts, migrants, and through ethnographic fieldwork in Shenzhen’s rural-urban villages and worksites. Ultimately, we found that the experience of social exclusion is profoundly mediated by factors such as living conditions, industry, gender, class, and age—leading to a diversity of outcomes. We posit that the widening gap between expectation and reality for migrants is a unique contributing factor to mental health concerns.

Explore Katie, Benita, and Hui Wen’s multi-media, interactive photo essay here. The essay follows the narrative format of a ‘typical workday,’ featuring aggregated data the team collected during 6 different visits to industrial areas and urban villages in Shenzhen at different points in the day. 

cityscape of Shenzhen, China

Rural Land Marketization, the Displacement of the Urban Poor and the Neoliberalizing Developmental State in Beijing

  • Zixian Liu, PhD Candidate, Department of History

In 2017, a series of state-initiated demolition and evacuation campaigns in Beijing, targeting “urban villages” (legally categorized rural land within cities) and migrant workers, elicited a widespread public outcry. Known as the “Beijing Purge Campaign,” these actions aimed at “purging low-end populations.” While most criticisms focus on the violence of the campaigns, my research argues that the Purge was driven by a new wave of marketization of rural land within cities as part of the exacerbation of the neoliberalization of urban planning in China. Based on “developmental state” theory, I trace how the marketization of rural land comes hand in hand with the qualitative turn in the discourse of development in China, and the neoliberalizing of the Chinese developmental state. My research suggests it is important to examine how the global rise of neoliberalism works in the specific Chinese context. In the Chinese case, a strong development state is the driving force creating a freer market and eliminating undesirable obstacles, even if these barriers constitute some of the most important and symbolic heritage of the revolution—the collective and egalitarian ownership of rural land.

evacuated "urban village" in Beijing, China

Asian Modest Fashion in the Museum Space

  • Habiba Maher
  • Aliza Rahman

Our project explores the representation of the Modest Fashion industry, specifically examining the Contemporary Muslim Fashions’ exhibition presented in its first European venue at the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany. Through this research, we consider how the museum space reveals the ways in which hijab is imbued with new meanings in Southeast Asia, evolved from its religious roots representing piety and modesty. Through the lens of the exhibition, the meaning of hijab was shown to now include an emphasis on choice, identity, and diversity among Muslim women choosing to wear hijab. We observed these new meanings of hijab in the ways tour guides spoke about the exhibition; the designers’ work included in the exhibit, and the museological didactics describing individual pieces. More so, the exhibit revealed how the hijab has become increasingly commodified in Southeast Asia, acting as a gateway for national development in countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. The exhibition examined the increased support for the textiles industry in these countries as the Modest Fashion industry has grown quickly. We use Voloder’s (2015) work on Muslim consumerism to unpack how mass consumption of modest fashion and the hijab in Southeast Asia has become a means to communicate identity, as suggested by the exhibition. Lastly, we found that this exhibition on Southeast Asian Muslim Modest Fashion occurring in Frankfurt—a city experiencing rising Islamophobic sentiments—challenged the common misconception that Muslim women are oppressed by the hijab. However, not everyone accepted or understood this message, and instances occurred in which the exhibit was threatened with violence.

"Contemporary Muslim Fashions' Exhibition" in Frankfurt, Germany

 

Unwanted Children

  • Minh Anh (Mia) Nguyen (Contemporary Asian Studies; Political Science)

This project explores Israel’s immigration regime and its socio-legal relationship with migrant workers, mainly through the lens of Filipino caregivers. When migrant caregivers get pregnant or give birth in Israel, their work visas are revoked, and their children do not receive residency status unless at least one of the parents is of Jewish-descent. The state’s ethno-nationalist identity continues to justify its exclusive migration policy framework, one that restricts the right to give birth and the right to belong to non-Jewish migrant workers in Israel. As Filipina caregivers bear children in the host land of Israel, they are confronted by two choices. They either have to leave Israel with their newborns or send their children back to their homeland to maintain legal work status. The project further approaches the theme of “mobilities” from a legal mobilisation perspective, examining strategies that activists have used to mobilise for Filipina caregivers’ rights. This aspect of the research questions the extent to which activists succeed and/or fall short in challenging the ethno-nationalist conception of citizenship to obtain reproductive rights for Filipino caregivers. Findings show that Israel’s current citizenship and residency regulations continue to prevent Filipino caregivers and other non-Jewish migrant workers from establishing permanent settlements in the country. However, the state’s increasing demand for migrant caregivers and their inconsistent implementation of residency laws create consequent repercussions for both migrant caregivers and their Israeli-born children. Where would Israel repatriate these children to, when Israel is the state in which they were born?photo from field research in Israel

The Invisible Hand of South-South Globalization: A Study of Chinese Migrants in Tehran

  • Man (Angela) Xu (Sociology Department)

Media and academic debate on China’s emergence as a source of investment, aid, and migration in the Global South often foregrounds the geopolitical strategies of the PRC and the role and experiences of state-owned enterprises. This research contests this discourse through an investigation of the experiences of Chinese transnational migrants in Iran. My analysis shows the heterogeneity, disparity, and conflict within the Chinese community in Iran and the different relationships between Chinese overseas authorities and Chinese migrants in Iran. Furthermore, I show that the experiences of Chinese migrants reflects the intersections of privilege and precarity. On the one hand, Chinese migrants benefit from transnational connections; on the other hand, their minority and foreign status leads to certain precarity. Moreover, the extent to which migrants experience precarity varies depending on their relationship with the Chinese authority. Overall, I argue that the circulated migration between China and Iran represents new forms of marginal mobility within the Global South—the emergence of migration flows to “unlikely” places. These new forms of mobilities call for new theoretical frameworks that can account for the unique causes and processes of migration within the southern hemisphere.

The Referendum

  • Adam Zivokinovic (“Zivo”) (Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy)
  • Ji Chen (Tony) Yin (Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy)

The Referendum is a documentary about Taiwan’s 2018 referendum on marriage equality. Triggered by a constitutional court ruling that ordered the government to amend its marriage laws, the referendum saw voters reject marriage equality. This documentary explores how the referendum happened, who was involved, and what they believed. The documentary contextualizes the issue within a larger conversation on the global acceptance of LGBTQ+ rights. It consists of interviews cut with archival footage, news clips, TV clips, and b-roll footage shot in Taipei, and takes a sensitive and nuanced view of both sides of the debate.

Through our research, we found that the anti marriage equality groups have a much more nuanced approach to LGBTQ+ issues than we previously imagined. While their beliefs can be partially attributed to hostility to LGBTQ+ folks, their stance is complicated by underlying disagreements on the nature of government. We also observed that the spread of information through mass media and social media played a pivotal role in swaying the result of the referendum. Furthermore, we found that Taiwanese religious organizations played a vital role in the referendum, essentially forming the backbone of anti-LGBTQ+ groups.

Title image from "The Referendum"

2018 ITAC RECIPIENTS

SEARCHING FOR SPACE: FEMALE (IM)MOBILITY IN URBAN PAKISTAN

  • Mashal Khan (Equity Studies, Sociology, Visual Studies)
  • Khalood Kibria (Political Science, Sociology, Human Geography)

Our research project initially intended to investigate the challenges, inequalities, and specifically gendered discrimination and violence that Pakistani women face in relation to their restricted mobility within public space in Pakistani cities—space that is often dominated by men. Our project evolved to also include non-binary and trans folks in Pakistani cities as our research would have remained incomplete without these crucial voices. Our goal was to highlight the diverse yet interconnected experiences of people whose mobility is restricted by similar social and structural barriers. We found that many of our predictions were accurate. Female, trans, and non-binary mobility is indeed restricted in Pakistani cities. However, mobility is also a very complex and layered topic which is constantly being shaped by internal dynamics in Pakistani cities, namely historical context, class, caste, religion, education level, age, the role of the state, and marital status, to name just a few. We were privileged to interview and spend time with numerous individuals, collectives, and organizations who talked to us very honestly about the barriers they face. They also exposed us to the numerous ways in which these barriers are being chipped away as people seek to reclaim their space and ultimately transform the social and spatial fabric of Pakistani cities.

 

 

 

 

 

THE COLONIAL PRESENT: (IN)SECURITIZATION OF NEW DELHI

  • Atif Khan (University of Toronto Graduate Student, Department of Geography and Planning with collaboration in South Asian Studies and Development Policy and Power; University of Toronto Alum: Contemporary Asian Studies)
  • Kana Shishikura (University of Toronto Alum: Peace, Conflict, Justice Studies and Contemporary Asian Studies)

This project seeks to visualize securitization moving beyond the framework of textual analysis in order to unpack the dialogue of securitization of public spaces. Our project revealed the importance of our positionality as researchers embedded within the very logics of security as well as the need to understand the urban landscape as a living archive that cannot account for the state driven narratives present in the national archives within a specific building. Through our fieldwork in London and Paris, the difficulty of capturing the living urban landscape became evident. Our initial focus on academic sites such as Oxford University, Cambridge University and the University of London (SOAS, LSE) could not account or attest to the present conditions of securitizations of a metropolis. We conclude that securitization is a living and present condition that must be historicized along transnational and critical border studies.

THE COMBINED RESPONSE TO THE PHYSICAL HEALTH NEEDS OF ROHINGYA REFUGEES IN MALAYSIA

  • Braden Kenny (Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto; University of Toronto Alum: Global Health and Equity Studies)
  • Terra Morel (Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta; University of Toronto Alum: Global Health and Immunology)

Due to the persecution and economic deprivation of the Rohingya peoples in Mynamar, thousands have been forced to flee to nearby countries including Malaysia—a country that lacks the physical and financial infrastructure to support their physical health needs. In this study, we interviewed various actors including non-governmental organizations and clinical researchers to understand the current response to the physical health needs and recommendations to address these gaps in service delivery. Our findings illuminated the need for international bodies to take a more active role in assisting the Malaysian government with the intake of Rohingya refugees as well as introducing a centralized body to facilitate discussion and collaboration between non-governmental organizations and clinical researchers.

WOMEN ON THE MOVE: INTERSECTIONS OF STATELESSNESS, DEHUMANIZATION, AND SEXUAL AND GENDER BASED VIOLENCE

  • Kassandra Neranjan (International Relations, Peace, Conflict and Justice Studies)
  • Sakshi Shetty (Health & Disease, Immunology)

The 1.5 million Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar remain a nationally unrecognized ethnic group who have been systematically discriminated against, forcing many to flee and many more to be internally displaced within Myanmar. Women in this context are very susceptible to severe violence and trauma due to intersections of their statelessness and a process of dehumanisation in Burmese society. Thousands of survivors of sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh as refugees. This project aims to analyze how gender is mainstreamed in humanitarian aid in the Rohingya context. We conducted semi-structured interviews with key actors in the field to analyze the process of rehumanisation through implemented structures that are catering to the needs of Rohingya women. Ultimately we will produce policy recommendations to help create programs of sustainable empowerment for refugee women. We drew several conclusions including the need to advocate for policy that is inclusive of adolescent girls, addressing legal obligations per international norms, increased security through hygiene and sanitation architecture, and more.

View and download the policy report here.

LOOKING INTO THE INTERGENERATIONAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LGBTQ YOUTH AND THEIR FAMILIES IN POST-ONE-CHILD-POLICY CHINA

  • Yujia (Jade) Shi (Political Science; Collaborative Program in East and Southeast Asian Studies)

This project looks into the intergenerational relationship between LGBTQ youth and their parents in the context of intentional relocation of young LGBTQ as migrant workers in Beijing. I examine two subjects in the research. First, I explore the theme “mobilities” through the case study of two young gay men who are from small towns in China, both of whom have relocated to Beijing. Second, I examine the intergenerational relationship between parents and their same-sex-attracted children through the experience of these two young gay men in their relationships with their family. The outcome of the research is a short documentary, a thesis, and a report. On a large scale, I have observed how the contemporary discourses on (homo) sexuality in China are influenced by both studies of sexuality and activism in Euro-North America as well as multi-faceted changes within China. On a small scale, I observe how the relocation of the young couple is both influenced by unequal urbanization and development in China and their drives for freedom and better financial conditions. In particular, the case study will provide empirical research material on the tension and intimacy between the child and their parents in post-one-child-policy families.

Access Yujia (Jade) Shi’s documentary here. *Please note this content is password protected to preserve the privacy of interviewees. To request access please reach out to ai.coordinator@utoronto.ca.

ROAD TO COLOMBO: DOCUMENTARY FILM ON CLIMATE MIGRATION IN SRI LANKA

  • Ben Sprenger (Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering)
  • Jillian Sprenger (Faculty of Arts and Science, Global Health)

The purpose of this project was to gain insight into the experiences of climate migrants (including the challenges they face pre- and post-migration), in order to better understand how migration may or may not be an effective mechanism for coping with a rapidly changing climate. Following an extensive literature review, we conducted field research through interviews in Sri Lanka with subject matter experts (researchers, NGO leaders, and environmental activists) and with individuals who have migrated or who have had a family member migrate due to climatic events. The interviews, particularly those with the climate migrants and their families, revealed a complex reality with significant challenges associated with migration and with building climate resilience at the community level. Our research may have implications for determining how to prioritize investment to best support populations vulnerable to climate change. Our research findings are disseminated through the documentary film embedded below.

RETHINKING INTIMACIES BETWEEN FILIPINA MIGRANT DOMESTIC WORKERS

  • Wei Si Nicole Yiu (PhD Student in Gender Studies, University of California Los Angeles; former University of Toronto collaborative PhD student in Geography and Gender Studies)

My project is a paper analyzing queer sociality in the space of migrant women’s organizing in Hong Kong. During my three-month fieldwork in Hong Kong, I had the pleasure of meeting Cynthia who is a key migrant activist in Hong Kong for migrant domestic workers’ rights. Through Cynthia, I was able to establish contact with multiple migrant workers’ organizations. I participated in over fifteen gatherings and conducted interviews with five migrant Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong. All five interviews were over an hour long and provided me with great insights about migrant women’s intimate relationships with other migrant women. Using information I have learned during my fieldwork and interviews with migrant women, I aim to engage with Black feminist literature on self-care to theorize the ways in which migrant women are caring for each other as queering ‘proper’ intimacies.

 


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