Rethinking Displacement Asia Pacific Perspectives

This book responds to the need to explore the multitude of interconnected factors causing displacements that compel people to move within their homelands or traverse various borders in the contemporary world that is characterised by extensive and rapid movements of people. It addresses this need by bringing together historical and contemporary accounts and critical examinations of the displaced, by articulating the commonalities in their lived experiences. It accomplishes the task of charting a new path in displacement studies by offering a number of studies from interdisciplinary and diverse methodological approaches comprising ethnographic and qualitative research and literary interpretations to emphasise that although the forms and conditions of mobility are highly divergent, individual experiences of displacement and placelessness offer a critical challenge to the artificial categorisations of people's movements. Each chapter adds insights into the different configurations of displacement and placement, and offers fresh interpretations of migration and dislocation in today's rapidly changing world. The contributors critically examine a variety of displacement processes and experiences in the context of war, tourism, neoliberal policies of development, and the impact of various agro-forestry policies. They focus on a range of countries, enabling a thorough comparative analysis in terms of scope and range of examples and methods of analysis. This book makes an original contribution to the growing body of literature on displacement, and will appeal to a wide readership including advanced undergraduates, and graduate students and professors in disciplines such as human geography, development studies, sociology and anthropology, regional studies and comparative impact assessment.

This book responds to the need to explore the multitude of interconnected factors causing displacements that compel people to move within their homelands or traverse various borders in the contemporary world that is characterised by extensive and rapid movements of people. It addresses this need by bringing together historical and contemporary accounts and critical examinations of the displaced, by articulating the commonalities in their lived experiences. It accomplishes the task of charting a new path in displacement studies by offering a number of studies from interdisciplinary and diverse methodological approaches comprising ethnographic and qualitative research and literary interpretations to emphasise that although the forms and conditions of mobility are highly divergent, individual experiences of displacement and placelessness offer a critical challenge to the artificial categorisations of people's movements. Each chapter adds insights into the different configurations of displacement and placement, and offers fresh interpretations of migration and dislocation in today's rapidly changing world. The contributors critically examine a variety of displacement processes and experiences in the context of war, tourism, neoliberal policies of development, and the impact of various agro-forestry policies. They focus on a range of countries, enabling a thorough comparative analysis in terms of scope and range of examples and methods of analysis. This book makes an original contribution to the growing body of literature on displacement, and will appeal to a wide readership including advanced undergraduates, and graduate students and professors in disciplines such as human geography, development studies, sociology and anthropology, regional studies and comparative impact assessment.

This book explores how the management science of logistics changes working lives and contributes to the making of world regions. With a focus on the port of Kolkata and changing patterns of Asian regionalism, the volume examines how logistics entwine with political power, historical forces, labour movements, and new technologies. The contributors ask how logistical practices reconfigure both Asia’s relation to the world and its internal logic of transport and communication. Building on critical perspectives that understand logistics as a political technology for producing and organizing space and power, Logistical Asia tracks how digital technologies and material infrastructure combine to remake urban and regional territories and produce new forms of governance and subjectivity.

This multidisciplinary book examines the diverse ways in which environmental disasters with compounding impacts are being governed as they traverse sovereign territories across rapidly urbanising societies in Asia and the Pacific. Combining theoretical advances with contextually rich studies, the book examines efforts to tackle the complexities of cross-border environmental governance. In an urban age in which disasters are not easily contained within neatly delineated jurisdictions, both in terms of their interconnected causalities and their cascading effects, governance structures and mechanisms are faced with major challenges related to cooperation, collaboration and information sharing. This book helps bridge the gap between theory and practice by offering fresh insights and contrasting explanations for variations in transboundary disaster governance regimes among urbanising populations in the Asia-Pacific.

The clothing industry provides employment for 60 million workers worldwide. More than a quarter of these workers are employed in the Asia-Pacific region, where the industry is based on subcontracted production on behalf of international buyers. Rapid movements of manufacturing activity from country to country in search of cost advantages make clothing workers part of a globalizing labour market where they increasingly suffer from job insecurity. This book presents carefully researched case studies which highlight the ways in which labour is informalized, fragmented and made disposable by the globalization of production. Chapters address issues pertaining to rights and citizenship, and new forms of activism and organization in conjunction and coordination with diverse support groups, consumers, and wider global campaigns. Contributors further examine the role of the nation state, government regulatory bodies, as well as independent monitoring systems such as the International Labour Organization. Although there has been considerable effort directed to understanding how firms operate across multiple countries – in studies of the organization of global production networks, and the implications for complexities of scale, (de)territorialization and state development projects – there has been far less focus on how these processes produce precarious labour and reshape worker consciousness. Offering new insights into the understanding and support of workers in the global textile and garment industry, this book will be of interest to academics in a variety of disciplines including Asian Studies, sociology, political economy, development, human rights, labour and gender.

The South Asian region has been especially prone to mass displacement and relocations owing to its varied geographical settings as well as socio-political factors. This book examines the women’s perspective on issues related to displacement, loss, conflict, and rehabilitation. It maps the diverse engagements with women’s experiences of displacement in the South Asian region through a nuanced examination of unexplored literary narratives, life writing and memoirs, cultural discourses, and social practices. The book explores themes like sexuality and the female body, women and the national identity, violence against women in Indian Partition narratives, and stories of exile in real life and fairy tales. It also offers an understanding of the ruptures created by dislocation and exile in memory, identity, and culture by analyzing the spaces occupied by displaced women and their lived experiences. The volume looks at the multiplicity of reasons behind women’s displacement and offers a wider perspective on the intersections between gender, migration, and marginalization. This book will be useful for scholars and researchers of cultural studies, literature, gender studies, conflict studies, development studies, South Asian studies, refugee studies, diaspora studies, and sociology.

The beginning of the 21st century has seen important shifts in mobility cultures around the world, as the West’s media-driven car culture has contrasted with existing local mobilities, from rickshaws in India and minibuses in Africa to cycling in China. In this expansive volume, historian Gijs Mom explores how contemporary mobility has been impacted by social, political, and economic forces on a global scale, as in light of local mobility cultures, the car as an ‘adventure machine’ seems to lose cultural influence in favor of the car’s status character.

Social science research is emerging on a range of issues around large and small-scale mining, connecting them to broader social, cultural, political, historical and economic factors rather than purely measuring the environmental impacts of mining. Within this broader context of global scholarly attention on extractive industries, this book explores two specific contexts: the cultural politics of coal and coal mining, within the context of one particular country, India, which is the third largest coal producer in the world. Both contexts are special; with its separate Ministry, coal occupies pride of place in contemporary India, shaping the energy future and influencing the economic and political milieu of the country. The supremacy attributed to coal mining in contemporary India represents how ’coal nationalism’ has replaced ’coal colonialism’ in the country, turning this commodity into an icon, a national symbol. In recent years the extraction of coal in forest-covered resource peripheries has dispossessed and pauperised many tribal and rural communities who have used these resource-rich lands for their livelihoods for generations. The combustion of coal to produce electricity constitutes the compelling need, and the factor that prevents the Indian state from fully engaging with the impending realities of a climate-changed future. All these reasons make the timing of this book of crucial importance. In particular, The Coal Nation explores the complex history of coal in India; from its colonial legacies to contemporary cultural and social impacts of mining; land ownership and moral resource rights; protective legislation for coal as well as for the indigenous and local communities; the question of legality, illegitimacy and illicit mining and of social justice. Presenting cutting-edge multidisciplinary social science research on coal and mining in India, The Coal Nation initiates a productive dialogue amongst academics and between them and activists.