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Yeoh BSA, Lam T, Somaiah BC, Acedera KAF. The critical temporalities of serial migration and family social reproduction in Southeast Asia. Time Soc 2023; 32:411-433. [PMID: 38021271 PMCID: PMC10663122 DOI: 10.1177/0961463x231164473] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/01/2023]
Abstract
The prevailing neoliberal labour migration regime in Asia is underpinned by principles of enforced transience: the overwhelming majority of migrants - particularly those seeking low-skilled, low-waged work - are admitted into host nation-states on the basis of short-term, time-bound contracts, with little or no possibility of family reunification or permanent settlement at the destination. As families go transnational, 'family times' become inextricably intertwined with the 'times of migration' (Cwerner, 2001). In this context, for many migrant-sending families in Southeast Asian source countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, parental migration as a strategy for migrating out of poverty or for socio-economic advancement requires the left-behind family to resiliently absorb the uncertainties of parental leaving and returning. Based on research on Indonesian and Filipino rural households (studied from 2008 through 2017) including paired life-story interviews with parental/non-parental adult carers and children, the article investigates the crucial links between the time construct of seriality in migration on the one hand, and the temporal structure of family based social reproduction on the other. It first focuses on how serial migration produces, and is produced by, spiraling needs and expanding aspirations, hence creating its own momentum for continuity. The paper then explores how competing temporal logics create difficult choices for migrants, leading to the recalibration of priorities within constrained resources. By drawing attention to the co-existence of and contradictions between multiple temporalities in the lives of migrants and their families, a critical temporalities framework yields new insights in understanding the social reproduction of families in a migratory context.
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Affiliation(s)
- Brenda S A Yeoh
- Department of Geography and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore
| | - Theodora Lam
- Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore
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Dommaraju P, Heng Shu Hui SC, Yeoh BSA. Investigating demographic outcomes in the COVID-19 pandemic: perspectives from Asia. Asian Population Studies 2023. [DOI: 10.1080/17441730.2023.2194073] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/31/2023]
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Spitzer DL, Lam T, Wee K, Yeoh BSA. Close encounters: Migrant bodies, workplace, and intimate labor in Asia. Gender Work & Organization 2022. [DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12837] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Denise L. Spitzer
- School of Public Health University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta Canada
| | - Theodora Lam
- Asia Research Institute National University of Singapore Singapore Singapore
| | - Kellynn Wee
- Department of Anthropology University College London London UK
| | - Brenda S. A. Yeoh
- Department of Geography and Asia Research Institute National University of Singapore Singapore Singapore
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Yeoh BSA. Is the temporary migration regime in Asia future-ready? Asian Population Studies 2022. [DOI: 10.1080/17441730.2022.2029159] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/02/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Brenda S. A. Yeoh
- Department of Geography and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore
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Affiliation(s)
- Brenda S. A. Yeoh
- Department of Geography National University of Singapore Singapore Singapore
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Yeoh BSA, Somaiah BC, Lam T, Acedera KF. Doing Family in "Times of Migration": Care Temporalities and Gender Politics in Southeast Asia. Ann Am Assoc Geogr 2020; 110:1709-1725. [PMID: 33634218 PMCID: PMC7872196 DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2020.1723397] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/09/2019] [Revised: 10/23/2019] [Accepted: 12/27/2019] [Indexed: 05/10/2023]
Abstract
The prevailing labor migration regime in Asia is underpinned by rotating-door principles of enforced transience, where low-wage migrant labor gains admission into host nation-states based on short-term, time-limited contracts and where family reunification and permanent settlement at destination are explicitly prohibited. In this context, we ask how migrant-sending families in Southeast Asian "source" countries-Indonesia and the Philippines-sustain family life in the long-term absence of one or both parents (often mothers). Through temporal concepts of rhythm, rupture, and reversal, we focus on how temporal modalities of care for left-behind children intersect with gendered power geometries in animating transnational family politics around care. First, by paying heed to the structuring effects of rhythm on social life, we show how routinized care rhythms built around mothers as caregivers have a normalizing and naturalizing effect on the conduct of social life and commonplace understanding of family well-being. Second, we explore the potential rupture to care rhythms triggered by the migration of mothers turned breadwinners and the extent to which gendered care regimes are either conserved, reconstituted, or disrupted in everyday patterns and practices of care. Third, we examine the circumstances under which gender role reversal becomes enduring, gains legitimacy among a range of poly care rhythms, or is quickly undone with the return migration of mothers in homecoming. The analysis is based primarily on research on Indonesian and Filipino rural households conducted in 2017 using paired life story interviews with children and their parental or nonparental adult caregivers.
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Affiliation(s)
- Brenda S A Yeoh
- Department of Geography and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
| | | | - Theodora Lam
- Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
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Arlini SM, Yeoh BSA, Khoo Choon Yen, Graham E. Parental migration and the educational enrolment of left-behind children: evidence from rural Ponorogo, Indonesia. Asian Population Studies 2019. [DOI: 10.1080/17441730.2019.1609294] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Silvia Mila Arlini
- Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Brenda S. A. Yeoh
- Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Khoo Choon Yen
- Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Elspeth Graham
- School of Geography and Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews, Fife, UK
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Abstract
Increasing feminisation of transnational labour migration has raised concerns over potential 'care crises' at home, and consequently a 'care deficit' for children left in origin countries. Our paper focuses on how left-behind children from Indonesia and the Philippines understand, engage and react to changes in their everyday lives in their parents' absence. While many children had no say over their care arrangements, some were able to assert their agency in influencing their parents' decisions and eventually migratory behaviours. Their thoughts and actions reinforce the importance of including children's views in development and migration studies to improve both the children's and families' well-being, and make migration a sustainable strategy for all.
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Affiliation(s)
- Theodora Lam
- Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore
| | - Brenda S. A. Yeoh
- Department of Geography and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore
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Baey G, Yeoh BSA. “The lottery of my life”: Migration trajectories and the production of precarity among Bangladeshi migrant workers in Singapore's construction industry. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 2018. [DOI: 10.1177/0117196818780087] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Within the scholarship on precarity, low-waged contract-based migrants are recognized as centrally implicated in precarious employment conditions at the bottom of neoliberal capitalist labor markets. Precarity as a socially corrosive condition stems from both the multiple insecurities of the workplace as disposable labor, and a sense of deportability as migrant subjects with marginal socio-legal status in the host society. Our study of Bangladeshi construction workers in Singapore contributes to refining understandings of precarity by approaching labor migration as a cumulative, intensively mediated process, whereby risks and vulnerabilities are compounded across different sites in migrants’ trajectories, even as they enact themselves as mobile, aspiring subjects. As a condition-in-the-making, precarity is experienced and compounded, through a continuum beginning in pre-migration indebtedness, multiplying through entanglements with the migration industry, and manifesting in workplace vulnerabilities at destination. It is most finely balanced when predictability and planning yield to arbitrary hope.
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Lam T, Yeoh BSA. Migrant mothers, left-behind fathers: the negotiation of gender subjectivities in Indonesia and the Philippines. Gend Place Cult 2016; 25:104-117. [PMID: 29682633 PMCID: PMC5890304 DOI: 10.1080/0966369x.2016.1249349] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/19/2015] [Accepted: 07/15/2016] [Indexed: 05/25/2023]
Abstract
The distinct feminization of labour migration in Southeast Asia - particularly in the migration of breadwinning mothers as domestic and care workers in gender-segmented global labour markets - has altered care arrangements, gender roles and practices, as well as family relationships within the household significantly. Such changes were experienced by both the migrating women and other left-behind members of the family, particularly 'substitute' carers such as left-behind husbands. During the women's absence from the home, householding strategies have to be reformulated when migrant women-as-mothers rewrite their roles (but often not their identities) through labour migration as productive workers who contribute to the well-being of their children via financial remittances and 'long-distance mothering', while left-behind fathers and/or other family members step up to assume some of the tasks vacated by the mother. Using both quantitative and qualitative interview material with returned migrants and left-behind household members in source communities in Indonesia and the Philippines experiencing considerable pressures from labour migration, this article explores how carework is redistributed in the migrant mother's absence, and the ensuing implications on the gender roles of remaining family members, specifically left-behind fathers. It further examines how affected members of the household negotiate and respond to any changing gender ideologies brought about by the mother's migration over time.
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Affiliation(s)
- Theodora Lam
- Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore
| | - Brenda S. A. Yeoh
- Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore
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Goh ECL, Ng V, Yeoh BSA. The family exclusion order as a harm-minimisation measure for casino gambling: the case of Singapore. International Gambling Studies 2016. [DOI: 10.1080/14459795.2016.1211169] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
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Graham E, Jordan LP, Yeoh BSA. Parental migration and the mental health of those who stay behind to care for children in South-East Asia. Soc Sci Med 2014; 132:225-35. [PMID: 25464878 PMCID: PMC4405005 DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.10.060] [Citation(s) in RCA: 39] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/02/2014] [Revised: 10/30/2014] [Accepted: 10/31/2014] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
The international migration of parents from the global south raises questions about the health impacts of family separation on those who stay behind. This paper uses data collected in 2008 and 2009 for a project on Child Health and Migrant Parents in South-East Asia (CHAMPSEA) to address a largely neglected research area by investigating the mental health of those who stay behind in Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam to care for the children of overseas migrants. A mixed-methods research design is employed to answer two questions. First, whether carers in transnational (migrant) households are more likely to suffer mental health problems than those in non-migrant households; and secondly, whether transnational family practices and characteristics of migration are associated with mental health outcomes for stay-behind carers. The Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20) was completed by carers in selected communities (N = 3026) and used to identify likely cases of common mental disorders (CMD). Multivariate logistic regression and thematic analysis of qualitative interviews (N = 149) reveal a nuanced picture. All stay-behind carers in the Indonesian sample are more likely than carers in non-migrant households to suffer CMD. Across the three study countries, however, it is stay-behind mothers with husbands working overseas who are most likely to experience poor mental health. Moreover, infrequent contact with the migrant, not receiving remittances and migrant destinations in the Middle East are all positively associated with carer CMD, whereas greater educational attainment and greater wealth are protective factors. These findings add new evidence on the 'costs' of international labour migration and point to the role of gendered expectations and wider geopolitical structures. Governments and international policy makers need to intervene to encourage transnational family practices that are less detrimental to the mental health of those who stay behind to care for the next generation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elspeth Graham
- Department of Geography and Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL, UK.
| | - Lucy P Jordan
- Department of Social Work and Social Administration, 5/F The Jockey Club Tower, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
| | - Brenda S A Yeoh
- Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, 1 Arts Link, Kent Ridge, Singapore 117570, Singapore
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Yeoh BSA. Engendering International Migration: Perspectives from within Asia. Global and Asian Perspectives on International Migration 2014. [DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-08317-9_7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/31/2023]
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Graham E, Jordan LP, Yeoh BSA, Lam T, Asis M. Transnational families and the family nexus: perspectives of Indonesian and Filipino children left behind by migrant parent(s). Environ Plan A 2012; 44:10.1068/a4445. [PMID: 24273371 PMCID: PMC3836409 DOI: 10.1068/a4445] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/31/2023]
Abstract
As a significant supplier of labour migrants, Southeast Asia presents itself as an important site for the study of children in transnational families who are growing up separated from at least one migrant parent and sometimes cared for by 'other mothers'. Through the often-neglected voices of left-behind children, we investigate the impact of parental migration and the resulting reconfiguration of care arrangements on the subjective well-being of migrants' children in two Southeast Asian countries, Indonesia and the Philippines. We theorise the child's position in the transnational family nexus through the framework of the 'care triangle', representing interactions between three subject groups- 'left-behind' children, non-migrant parents/other carers; and migrant parent(s). Using both quantitative (from 1010 households) and qualitative (from 32 children) data from a study of child health and migrant parents in Southeast Asia, we examine relationships within the caring spaces both of home and of transnational spaces. The interrogation of different dimensions of care reveals the importance of contact with parents (both migrant and nonmigrant) to subjective child well-being, and the diversity of experiences and intimacies among children in the two study countries.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elspeth Graham
- Department of Geography and Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews, Irvine Building, North Street, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL, Scotland;
| | - Lucy P Jordan
- Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, International Centre for Child Well-Being, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, England;
| | - Brenda S A Yeoh
- Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, AS2, #03-01, Arts Link, Kent Ridge, Singapore 117570;
| | - Theodora Lam
- Asian MetaCentre, c/o Asian Research Institute, National University of Singapore, 469A Tower Block, Bukit Timah Campus, Singapore 259770;
| | - Maruja Asis
- Scalabrini Migration Center, 40 Matapat St., Brgy. Pinyahan, Quezon City 1100, Philippines; marlaasis:smc.org.ph
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Graham E, Teo P, Yeoh BSA, Levy S. Reproducing the Asian family across the generations: “Tradition”, gender and expectations in Singapore. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2002. [DOI: 10.18356/b8413168-en] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
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Yeoh BSA, Huang S, III JG. Migrant Female Domestic Workers: Debating the Economic, Social and Political Impacts in Singapore. International Migration Review 1999. [DOI: 10.2307/2547324] [Citation(s) in RCA: 74] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/10/2022]
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