Search

This article explores the ways in which Nepali migrants perceive, experience and rework their downward class mobilities within the processes of labour migration to South Korea (hereafter Korea). It focuses on the temporal dimension of the migration process in relation to the Korean labour migration regime in terms of three aspects: the temporariness of sojourn, temporal disjunctures and adaptations in workplaces, and temporal resynchronisation in transnational spaces. First, the article argues that the temporariness of their sojourn under the Employment Permit System (EPS) is perceived by migrants as a 'liminal time' or a 'time-out' from the life course, serving to make the precariousness of life and work bearable. Second, illustrating the subjective experiences of Nepali migrants as underclass workers in unfamiliar workplaces, the article argues that they experience their working-class positions through temporal disjunctures between time in Nepal and Korea, and heteronomous time as discipline under the EPS. Lastly, it is shown that their downward class identities are reworked by dividing working time and social time, with a further temporal resynchronisation between migrants and their homeland. The conceptual and empirical insights offered by this study aim to contribute to the discussions of temporalities of migration and class analysis of people on the move. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hong Kong is residence to around 200,000 Filipina domestic workers who have migrated to the city in order to earn money for their families and futures. The employment of these migrants is organized through temporary two-year contracts. However, since many women stay for 'multiple contracts' in Hong Kong, their situation may be better characterized as permanently temporary. In this respect, scholars have coined the term 'permanent temporariness', signifying both a specific experience of temporal or circular migration, as well as a sort of disciplinary mechanism that informs people's everyday lives. Lacking in these understandings, however, is a solid theoretical exploration of the temporal dimension. Based on ethnographic work, individual and group interviews, this article attempts to further the theoretical discussion on permanence and temporariness by focusing on the 'lived time' of Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong. The article discusses how temporariness and permanence are enacted and experienced in the everyday lives of Filipina workers, how these women reflect on and cope with this, and, how this informs everyday life decisions and negotiations with employers. The study indicates that engaging permanently in temporary labour involves many uncertainties that are reflected in the domestic workers' experiences and decisions with respect to their migration trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By focusing on the relations of intimacy between migrant wives working in Singapore and their left-behind husbands living in the Philippines, this article investigates how transnational couples negotiate the liminalities and temporariness embedded in the experience of labour migration. Using the timescales of migration as a conceptual frame, the article analyses the mutual, if uneven, shaping of marital relationships at the micro-timescale of transnational family time and the meso-timescale of Singapore's labour migration regime. It focuses on how 'doing family' across distance is centrally facilitated through the affordances of communication technologies to create rhythms and manage ruptures. These technologies are crucial in (re)making domestic family time in the transnational household. The way the micro-temporalities of transnational family life are reorganised works in tension with how couples negotiate liminal conditions imposed by Singapore's work permit and pass system. The article argues that temporariness and precarity, which deter the imagination of a stable future, are constantly negotiated in the lives of the transnational family through different temporal strategies. By bracketing off intense emotions and downplaying ruptures in relationships, the transnational family is able to focus on their future aspirations of achieving their projects through migration. As migration timelines are indefinitely extended and family separation is prolonged, the transnational family strives to endure through these strategies of (re)making their temporalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the disjunctures that exist between the temporalities of legal status and those of migrants' lived experiences, and explores the relationship between precarity and temporality. Ethnographic research conducted among recent migrants from China living in Perth, Western Australia with a focus on migrants who have been sponsored by employers to work and remain in Australia, demonstrates that while migrants may hold temporary or permanent visas, their migration objectives and settlement processes do not necessarily accord with their formal status. Many individuals who arrived in Australia with the intention of quickly attaining permanent residency find their plans are stymied by shifting circumstances and changes to migration legislation. They instead continue to experience the precarious employment, liminality and family disruption that come with a prolonged and indeterminate temporariness. Meanwhile others have become permanent residents despite arriving as self-imagined sojourners, employment in Australia very often only the next step in a series of temporary labour migrations. Even after many years of permanent status, however, these migrants commonly experience a limited sense of belonging and imagine futures that entail circular patterns of on-migration. The case studies presented disrupt the sense of permanence that is implied in secure legal statuses, and provide evidence of the lasting impact of precarious temporalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the temporal dimensions of migration trajectories by focusing on a small number of Indian migrants in Singapore who identify as gay. In particular it does so by examining the way 'being gay' factored into their decision to come to Singapore (the past), the way it plays a role in their ongoing trajectories (the present) and the way it gradually starts taking up a more prominent role in their plans for 'the future'. Drawing upon queer migration studies as well as recent studies with a renewed focus on the temporalities of migration, this article argues that 'queer temporalities' need to be understood as doubly layered. On the one hand it relates to the im/possibility of a queer (migrant) future while on the other hand pointing at an issue a growing group of migrants in general are faced with: the way rights, opportunities and 'futures' are queered from mainstream society. While so far the attention with reference to this has mainly been focused on low skilled migrants who, as is the case also in Singapore, are often excluded from ever permanently staying on in their host nation, with the increasing fine-tuning of migration programmes, this article argues that we need to expand our attention to other groups of variously skilled migrants as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]