Asian Research Center for Migration

The purpose of this paper is to employ enclave economy in the perspective of economic sociology to explain the existence and process of the Thai enclave in Hong Kong. In-depth interviews and case studies are employed in relation to Thai restaurant and grocery shop owners and employees in Hong Kong. This study is an attempt to explain the clustering of Thai ethnic small businesses in Kowloon City through a discourse on the ethnic enclave economy. The Thai migrant enclave in Hong Kong is explored with dimensions of segregation, namely evenness, exposure, clustering, concentration, and centralization (Massey and Denton’s, 1988). This study suggests that these Thai enclave businesses have two differentials compared to the findings of Zhou (1992) in Chinatown restaurants in New York. The findings provide evidence for social workers, migrant associations and policymakers in developing ideas of ethnic business enabling. There should be a wide range of supporting and welfare policies for the empowerment of migrants and minority ethnic groups. An immigrant enclave should no longer be regarded as a ghetto for many business opportunities can be found there. Two ethnic economy development differentials are developed. First, ethnicity similarity between the minority group and the majority ethnic enables ethnic business accessing earlier to an interethnic clientele from wider society. Second, internal factors of the ethnic enclave and external factors of the wider society have constrained the diversification of ethnic business.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the microcredit system, social networks within self-help groups (SHGs) and micro-entrepreneurial activities at the grassroots aiming at well-being, sustainability and income generation. The empirical study took place in Phnom Penh. Focus group and in-depth interviews were employed. Two SHGs in Phnom Penh were selected for this study. The social network approach was used to distinguish the type of nodes and cliques within SHGs. The result suggests that there exist lending and borrowing nodes and cliques. Strong ties exist within a clique and only weak ties link between cliques. Job and business information transmits well on weak ties but not entrepreneurship. This explains the failure of the process of microcredit in fostering microenterprise among very poor and low-educated borrowers. The findings were based on a small sample from two SHGs. Further study is needed for justification of the findings. It was original research which took place in Phnom Penh. Homogeneous lending and borrowing cliques in microcredit networks were identified. A model of hierarchical microcredit network was hypothesized to explain how some members of a SHG are able to utilize the credit in starting up their microbusinesses while others failed.

Occupation, blockage and storming are not rare in social movements a decade after China resumed sovereignty in Hong Kong. The organizers and participants usually involve locally born young people. Some of them are secondary school students in their teens. They are known as the fourth generation or post-1980s born Hongkongers. The paper examines the cultural context of social movements involving these youth activists. It focusses on the campaign against the Sino-Hong Kong Express Railway development project. The project called for the demolition of the Tsoi Yuen Village, a small rural village located on its designated route. Since then, the role of the younger generation in social movements has been recognized more broadly. Social media are widely employed in all stages of the movements with citizen journalists actively involved. The impressive ‘prostrating walk’ imitating Tibetan pilgrims has become a symbol of these youth activists. It has kept appearing in other campaigns including Occupy Central in Hong Kong in 2014. This paper argues that the rise of nativism, advancement in ICT technology and the shift towards new social movements contribute to the dominant role of youth in recent social movements of Hong Kong. Collective identity of Hongkonger in response to the top-down assimilation by China strengthens the movement.

This article investigates the housing process of ethnic minorities in Hong Kong. The study is an attempt to explain how these minority ethnic groups are filtered and trapped in the private rented housing sector in inner city enclaves. Focus group and in-depth interviews are used to study the low-income Pakistani and Nepalese migrants in two districts in Hong Kong. Affordability, discrimination and locational consideration draw the Pakistani and Nepalese families towards the private rented sector in tenement slums. A model of enclave tenement trap is built based on empirical research conducted in Hong Kong. The model and findings provide directions for civil society institutions and housing policy.

This paper analyses the unequal hydropower exchange of hydropower dams on Myanmar-Thai transboundary rivers revealing that power relationships between dams and their socio-environmental effects are discussed from the perspective of critical hydropolitics. In this study, the case of the Nu–Salween–Thanlwin River is reviewed. This study is an attempt toward developing a conceptual model to explain the unequal hydropower exchange of hydropower dams on transboundary rivers. The evidence is drawn from an extensive review of academic literature, reports, newspapers and websites on this topic. Cascao and Zeitoun’s (2010) four pillars of power, namely, geographical, material, bargaining and ideational power, are reviewed in the case of the Salween–Thanlwin River and its riparian states. On the basis of a realist discourse, power relationships between dams and their socio-environmental effects are discussed from the perspective of critical hydropolitics. Multiple levels of power asymmetry regarding geographical, material, bargaining and ideational power are observed. The powerful states are high electricity consumers and importers. They invest in hydroelectric dams of adjacent developing states and buy back most of the electricity generated to fuel their industrialization and urbanization. Weak states generally do not have high bargaining power. They depend on the investment of high material power states for domestic and economic development and gain from the export of electricity. However, the externalities of hydropower dams are transferred to these weak states. This contributes to an unequal hydropower exchange model. This conceptual model stems from Cascao and Zeitoun’s (2010) four pillars of power – geographical, material, bargaining and ideational power. The author limits the framework to hydroelectric dams in transboundary rivers. The powerful states are high electricity consumers and importers that dominate the dam development projects and exchange process.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the microcredit system, social networks within self-help groups (SHGs) and micro-entrepreneurial activities at the grassroots aiming at well-being, sustainability and income generation. The empirical study took place in Phnom Penh. Focus group and in-depth interviews were employed. Two SHGs in Phnom Penh were selected for this study. The social network approach was used to distinguish the type of nodes and cliques within SHGs. The result suggests that there exist lending and borrowing nodes and cliques. Strong ties exist within a clique and only weak ties link between cliques. Job and business information transmits well on weak ties but not entrepreneurship. This explains the failure of the process of microcredit in fostering microenterprise among very poor and low-educated borrowers. The findings were based on a small sample from two SHGs. Further study is needed for justification of the findings. It was original research which took place in Phnom Penh. Homogeneous lending and borrowing cliques in microcredit networks were identified. A model of hierarchical microcredit network was hypothesized to explain how some members of a SHG are able to utilize the credit in starting up their microbusinesses while others failed.

Thailand is a popular destination for irregular labor migration from Myanmar. Among some three million Burmese migrant workers in Thailand, more than half are undocumented. Undocumented migrant workers rely on brokers to smuggle them into Thailand. Some undocumented migrant workers are lured, tricked, and forced to work but they are not rewarded with a reasonable wage. A conceptual framework of the shadow sector of labor migration is formulated in this study, which attempts to explain why ethnic minorities in Myanmar are socially categorized by the level of their deprived citizenship. Those low in the hierarchy of categorization are likely to fall into the shadow sector of the labor migration process. Ethnic minorities from areas of insurgency are exposed to a high risk of human trafficking.

In multi-ethnic societies, different cultures interact with each other, and communities often have to consider acculturation strategies. These strategies are fluid and develop across geographical boundaries while intersecting with cultural diversity. A host society's stance toward migrants and governmental migration policies significantly influence these strategies. This dynamic is evident in the case for Cambodia's ethnic Cham youth, who are Muslims in a predominantly Buddhist Khmer society. Chamic ethnicities are found widely in South East Asia, including in Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia, so their transnational connections and experiences are worth investigating in detail. This article draws on discourses on acculturation orientation and expectation to delve into Cham youth's acculturation, particularly exploring the factors shaping their labour migration patterns. Based on fieldwork conducted in Cham villages in the Tbong Khmum Province of Cambodia, this research introduces a conceptual model highlighting ineffective enculturation and differential acculturation among Cham migrant workers. The findings enrich academic knowledge of acculturation orientation and expectation as well as labour migration patterns.

Women in conflict situations face specific vulnerabilities such as rape, sexual, physical and mental abuse, exploitation and inequality in decision-making. This research tries to identify the role of civil society organizations (CSOs) working to empower women in Pa Kahtawng IDP camp in Mai Ja Yang, an area of Kachin state, Myanmar, not under government control. This research delved into how CSOs have been working to build capacity for women’s development through training on gender, health, income generation, and women’s rights, but have reached different levels of success. Kachin women face numerous obstacles to their empowerment, as they still encounter entrenched cultural influences in their family and larger community dominated by men.

In this chapter, I highlight the displacement experiences of six returned families and their eventual repatriation to Caicua in 2012 to draw attention to how lives are rebuilt in rural communities that continue to confront the realities of post-conflict society. I argue that in the case of Caicua, repatriation has yet to provide a ‘durable solution’ in itself, since returnees have received little official recognition and social assistance from the Timor-Leste state. Community-level reconciliation is, moreover, stalled as Caicua residents continue to anticipate the return of their remaining relatives in Naibonat. Notwithstanding the lack of a permanent resolution, translocal circulations established between Caicua and Naibonat challenge the securitisation of the Indonesia–Timor-Leste border and call forth the need to broaden existing notions of ‘durable solutions’ to displacement.

This chapter is from The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Timor-Leste (edited by Andrew McWilliam and Micheal Leach). I examine the legacy of internal displacement in Timor-Leste during the Indonesian occupation and the long term impacts on local livelihood practices and land access.Kinship, marriage and ancient ritual alliances open up channels for displaced people to gain access to land to rebuild livelihoods.

This thesis is a study of the strategies two rural communities employ to negotiate land and livelihoods under conditions of internal displacement. I contend that internal displacement has enduring and trans formative effects. The dynamics of internal displacement are examined in the context of East Timar, a country that has tolerated cumulative foreign domination, and where displacement is predominately considered a product of conflict. I take an alternative view to suggest that displacement has equally been produced by successive attempts of state territorialisation and development interventions. One effect of conceptualising internal displacement as conflict-induced is the dominant representation of 'displaced' East Timorese as passive and disempowered victims of war and occupation. E ngaging local perspectives and experiences of displacement, the ethnographic case studies presented in this thesis seek to illustrate how 'displaced' East Timorese respond, adapt and ...

This paper presents four case studies that highlight how Indonesia and Timor-Leste remain intricately entwined at the social, political, cultural and personal levels. Abstract Since 1999, when a United Nations (UN) transitional administration was established in the wake of the East Timorese vote for independence from Indonesia, the case of Timor-Leste has been a relative mainstay in research and policy debates on post-conflict reconstruction. Timor- Leste is often characterised by scholars as a ‘postconflict’ country and, as a consequence, compared to other countries that have recently emerged from political strife. While this focus is understandable, it has also meant that surprisingly little scholarly attention has focused on the connections, points of similarity and interrelations between Timor- Leste and its near neighbour and former occupier Indonesia. Only recently have researchers begun to explore the multiple dimensions of Timor-Leste/ Indonesian relations and unpack the rel...

In this In-Brief, Pyone Myat Thu and Roannie Ng Shiu argue that cultural awareness training has the potential to boost productivity in the Australian Seasonal Worker Program, as working relationships between employer and employee are harmonised. This In-Brief is based on research conducted in preparation for the cultural awareness training package delivered at the Inaugural Seasonal Worker Program Conference held in July 2012.