The Politics, Subjectivities and Connectivities of Transnational Migration in East Asia

Abstract

Migration into, out of, and within East Asia (comprising Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia) will undoubtedly increase as we continue into the twenty-first century. We need sustained research to provide fresh insights into transnational migrants' changing subjective positions and power as they move in/out of East Asia, constructing complex social locations as they live their lives transnationally. The papers in this special issue focus on three issues that are of pertinence to the transnational migrations and the resulting migrant transnationalisms of those who move for work, education, marriage and retirement, and as refugees, in the context of East Asia: the power structures (including the institutional regulatory frameworks of sending and receiving societies) within which migrants must operate; migrants' multiple and shifting social positions as they move; and the transnational connections and networks they maintain over the course of their migration journeys.