Panel

Call for the 6th EUROSEAS conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, 26. –28. 8. 2010

Panel Title: Democratisation and Migration in Southeast Asia.
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Transnational labour migration within Southeast Asia has been on the rise since the 1990s. Up to the 1980s, migrant workers predominantly looked for work in the Middle East, Europe or the USA. In the last two decades of the 20th century, Singapore and Malaysia in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea in East Asia became prominent destinations for Southeast Asian migrant workers (and migrant professionals).
The panel seeks to address the political effects of this increased inner-regional migration with a special focus on democratisation processes. Research on migration and democracy is focussed on questions regarding the political inclusion of migrants in democ¬ratic receiving states. Migration effects on democratisation processes in sending states or in non-liberal receiving states have not been investigated, with the notable exception of trans¬national studies looking into the issues of “political” or “social” remittances.
So far, the academic debate on questions of integration, citizenship rights and human rights of migrants has concentrated on immigration in Western liberal democracies. In contrast to these immigration processes, labour migration in South East Asia is predominantly contract labour migration. This type of migration poses different questions with regard to migrants’ rights and to migrants’ political mobilisation. Contract labour migration generally takes place within the framework of bilateral government agreements, thus the sending as well as the receiving states are the addressees of migrants’ demands for protection of their rights.
If democratisation is framed as a process of establishing, securing and expanding rights of citizens – civil, political, social, and cultural rights – the struggle for migrants’ rights should be analysed as part of this process. Do migrants benefit from the extension of rights for citizens in receiving countries? Which repercussions do migrants’ organizations initiated in the receiving country have on political processes back home? And vice versa, which effect has the political culture and the degree of democratic rights enjoyed by migrants in their home country on their ability to organize for their rights in the destination? Are there transnational effects that transcend the political space of sending-receiving countries, such as Philippine migrants organising Indonesian workers in Hong Kong?
At the panel, this rights-oriented approach to democratisation could be supplemented by analysing the impact of large scale labour migration on structural conditions fostering or impeding democratisation. For example, can authoritarian regimes use labour migration as a tool to stabilize their economies and thus their legitimacy as benevolent “development dictatorships”?
The panel invites papers targeting these issues from different disciplines and theoretical perspectives. Papers drawing on empirical research are most welcome.

Please send your proposals to
Stefan Rother stefan.rother@abi.uni-freiburg.de
Arnold‐Bergstraesser Institute for socio‐cultural research, Freiburg
Conference homepage: http://www.euroseas.org/platform/en/content/the-6th-euroseas-conference-gothenburg-2010