Postcolonial Approaches to Migration in Asia: Reflections and Projections

Abstract

This article argues that postcolonial approaches to migration in Asia are relevant and useful in this age of unprecedented migration for two important reasons. Firstly, such approaches enable the interrogation of fundamental migration-related concepts such as citizenship, race and ethnicity, diaspora, indigeneity and development. This critically questions the need for these categories of difference which have been augmented and exacerbated by migration, the nation-state and its bordering strategies. Secondly, such approaches shed light on fundamental issues of inequality, through which migration occurs as a response to differential access to opportunities and resources. By tracing how and why migration occurs in specific locations through a postcolonial lens, we can then map out the underlying power inequalities and discover possibilities for agency and social change.

“Decentring” international student mobility: The case of African student migrants in China

“…It is a novel and useful approach in that it helps place migration patterns within the context of a global regime of coloniality. Doing so is important because it reveals how power inequalities outside South–North migration patterns continue to structure student migrants' agency (Koh, 2015).…”

“…The regime of global coloniality (Grosfoguel, 2008) which defines Global North/South relations is a structural force which drives migration from South to North. This unusual example allows us to explore how global power inequalities within the regime of coloniality but outside South–North migration patterns continue to structure migrants' agency (Koh, 2015). It is clear that the Chinese state's “catch‐up mentality,” a product of its long‐term ideological and structural position, acts as a structural force which shapes the trajectory of these students.…”

“…The most explicit manifestation of inequality in the 21st century is through capital (Piketty, 2017). Inequalities within the (post)colonial world system dictate global capital flows, and this in turn shapes migration trajectories, which are responses to differential access to resources (Koh, 2015). In many ways, these students are similar to those who have been the focus of much ISM research, from East Asian semiperipheries such as China, who choose to go the West—they are middle‐class students who employ educational migration as a strategy for social reproduction (e.g., King & Sondhi, 2018; Waters, 2006).…”

“…These two theoretical models are combined in order to express the ambiguous position of semiperipheral states such as China, historically subordinate to the global core but also with a mission to catch up with and overtake the core nations, wielding its relative power over the periphery to achieve this end (Mulvey, 2020). This framework is used to examine how unequal power structures between nation states have implications for the nature of educational migration (Koh, 2015).…”

Channel crossings: offshoring asylum and the afterlife of empire in the Dover Strait

“…A small but growing part of this scholarship explores the connections between EU responses to irregular boat arrivals within the context of colonial histories and logics (for example, Saucier and Woods 2014;Danewid 2017;Proglio et al 2021). This is also part of what has been dubbed a "postcolonial turn" in critical migration studies (Koh 2015;Tudor 2018) and speaks to the same research agenda to which we wish to contribute. However, the particularities of the Channel border-zone and responses by the British state also make this, like any border-zone, a unique case which is worthy of further in-depth analysis.…”