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Dyadic interviewing is a research method that focuses on the interdependent relationship between two people (known as a dyad). Alongside the rise of relational approaches in geography, researchers have taken greater interest in understanding the shared lives of specifically paired individuals. Although paired interviewing presents a way to elicit the constitutive aspects of shared lives, it remains under‐discussed. Based on research methods developed for a project exploring the linked lives of older adults and their migrant carers in Singapore, we examine how intra‐dyadic relations are negotiated during the research process, either reaffirming and/or reconfiguring difference. We introduce a typology that takes into account the role(s) that space, time and mobility play in the organisation of power dynamics. Our proposed classification nuances understandings of dyadic interviewing through drawing out how these trifold dimensions of space, time and mobility mediate interdependent relations. This paper contributes to extant literatures that stress the mutuality of the research process, but with a focus on the social relations of the dyad pairs instead of between the researcher and researched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Singapore is a nation-state characterized by the convergence of multiple diaspora populations. The state and citizens alike cannot ignore a sharpened sense of difference that has led to social tensions between "old" and "new" waves of migrants/immigrants, in particular amongst those considered co-ethnics from India and China. Comparative analyses of Indian and Chinese migration are few, resulting in a narrow understanding of how both impact migrant-receiving societies simultaneously. Our paper identifies commonalities undergirding the racialization experienced by co-ethnic migrants/immigrants in Singapore. We argue that multiple dimensions of personhood – to do with one's skills, class and legal statuses; performances of "authenticity" and temporal framings of migration; and wider civilisational and developmental discourses – work together to create "polysemic immigration hierarchies". Singapore's experience illuminates subtle forms of inter- and co-ethnic racialization – drawing on, yet exceeding, tropes of "colour". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractNew global multi-directional migration flows are decentering extant analyses of White expatriate migration. As migration becomes more diversified, new lines of intellectual inquiry are surfacing about the experiences of middle-class non-white expatriates. This paper uses the case study of China, which with the rise in immigration, has an increasingly diverse ‘expatriate’ population. While the visibility of White expatriates in non-white-majority host countries may compel them to adopt lifestyles segregated from the local population, expatriates of Chinese heritage in China have the (dis)advantage of blending in with the local population. This paper examines the experiences of Singaporean-Chinese migrants in China where their ethnic proximity to the Chinese can be both a boon and a bane. We present our findings in three sections addressing: first, how ethnic proximity can enable mobilities including motility and a mobile sense of belonging; second, how mobilities can condition ethnic proximity as experiences of privilege but also reminders of non-belonging; and third, how participants’ change in life phases i.e. temporalities shift meanings of proximity, mobility and mobile belonging. Through highlighting the multidimensional nature of mobilities – proximity, motility, temporalities – this paper contributes to studies of middling migration, (ethnic) proximity and mobilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the perception that older adults are passive care dependents of their children, some Chinese older adults are becoming primary caregivers in migrant families. Using the case of Chinese older migrants who move temporarily to Singapore for grandparenting duties, this article examines the grandparenting migrants' contributions to social reproduction through transnational care circulation and underscores how their migratory experience changes their perspectives of intergenerational familial contract. While previous studies on older migrants tend to consider the impacts of welfare support in the migrant‐receiving context, we extend that body of work by integrating analyses of the private sphere with the public sphere across the migrant‐sending and ‐receiving contexts to examine how transformations in both domains impact the grandparenting migrants' ageing subjectivities. Our findings reveal gradual changes to the intergenerational familial contract in Chinese migrant families. The grandparenting migrants minimise their expectations of intergenerational reciprocity and instead emphasise the well‐being of the next generation and maintaining their autonomy in later life. Their aspiration for independent ageing, we argue, is made possible by the expanded state social protection in the homeland and the realisation that depending on their migrant children for old age care could be impractical and unfavourable for both generations [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational grandparenting examines the care that grandparents provide across borders, recreating familyhood. This paper investigates how Information Communication Technologies (ICT) mediate ageing in localised and transnational contexts. We focus on grandparenting migrants from the People's Republic of China who moved temporarily to Singapore and Sydney, Australia. We introduce the concept of "care technologies" to explicate two dimensions of governmentality. The first dimension considers how governmentality underpins care relations that extend from the individual and family to wider migration, care, and welfare regimes. The second dimension considers how ICT mediates care relations that are situated in place (i.e., localised) and those that extend across borders (i.e., transnational). These two dimensions of care technologies are intertwined: while ICT is given social meaning through care relations, it is their co‐constitution—seemingly offering possibilities of/for care—that entrench the governmentality effects of regimes that position grandparenting migrants as transient older carers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diaspora strategizing is becoming an important field of public policy in countries that seek to advance development through migration. Diaspora strategies present a way of complicating interpretations of development, as countries that represent different levels of development seek to mobilize diaspora networks nonetheless. While Singapore's diaspora strategies prioritize diaspora knowledge networks, it bears the stamp of the country's colonial history, postcolonial priorities and developmental state apparatus. We suggest that these factors result in a distinctive diaspora strategy characterized by a centralized and technocratic approach more similar to diaspora strategies found in emerging economies. Earlier research on diaspora strategies has been concerned with assessing successes or failures, but a more critical scholarship that questions the logics and outcomes of diaspora strategizing is emerging. We bring the Singaporean case into dialogue with four such critiques: first, the intellectual foundations of diaspora-centred development; second, the hyperextension of state infrastructure for emigration and stakeholder alignment; third, the selective mobilization of the idea of diaspora; and fourth, the evidence base upon which diaspora-centred development is predicated. Our goal is to further critical interrogation into the logics, efficacy and sustainability of diaspora strategizing. We situate our analyses in the international literature on diaspora knowledge mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As more countries acknowledge the potential resources represented by their emigrant populations, the diaspora strategies of migrant sending countries are gaining policy and academic attention internationally. ‘Diaspora strategies’ describe initiatives aimed at mobilising emigrants for the purposes of economic development and/or nation building. This special issue in Geoforum identifies new research directions for the study of diaspora strategies. While extant scholarship has focused on state-driven diaspora strategies so far, this special issue introduction suggests that considering a wider range of social actors that engage in diaspora strategising across different spaces and scales will reveal new and productive insights for the study of diaspora strategies. Framing this introduction is an approach that deploys topological analyses as a way of keeping in view the variety of social actors involved in diaspora strategising, their connections to one another, and an evolving constellation of power relations ranging from contestation to collaboration. The special issue introduction draws attention to, first, the subjectivities constituted by diaspora strategies; second, the array of social actors found within webs of diaspora connections; and third, the ethical considerations arising from the power geometries of diaspora engagement. In so doing, it argues for the importance of studying diaspora formations dialogically which means deploying an analytical lens that is attentive to how the actions of different social actors and institutions from one country towards a diaspora population can influence the attitudes and actions of that diaspora towards another country that also claims their loyalty and contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In focusing on the way emotional ideologies underpin migration regimes, this paper underlines how migrants manage their emotions in a quest towards wider economic and social integration. It compares the experiences of Mainland Chinese immigrants who are in Canada with those that returned to China temporarily but plan to remigrate to Canada eventually, thus sustaining transnational journeys. The paper suggests that the intersection of emotional and migration regimes imposes norms and sanctions that direct migrants towards what are considered appropriate emotions and emotional subjectivities. The economic logics shaping the circulation of emotions within and across geographical space during transnational sojourning is referred to here as the emotional economy of migration. The paper argues that certain emotions appreciate or depreciate in value as they are mobilised geographically during such transnational sojourning. The analysis contributes to migration scholarship by drawing out the emotional logics, circulations, and calculations that structure and prop up the political economy of migration regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the scholarship on extraterritorial citizenship strategies implemented by sending states in order to mobilize elite emigrants and enhance global competitiveness. It argues that these strategies should be distinguished analytically from claims of ‘diaspora’. The paper further delineates a geographical agenda by reflecting on, first, the contestations, and second, the aspects of negligence articulated in these strategies. Third, it argues that studying the proliferation of emigrant populations with multiple national affiliations helps illuminate the selectiveness of such strategies. Lastly, although geography is central to understanding these strategies, the processes studied also raise questions about the spatialities produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]