Idea for a conference on African Migration to Southeast Asia - September 2013

[Eric Ansah]

Dear all,

 

As China-Africa engagement booms and Africa looks east, there is a growth in movement of African students, professionals and middle classes to China, Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries. While there are countless studies on China and Africa, African migration to Southeast Asia is an under-studied and hidden phenomenon, not least because of our China-centric focus.

 

With that in mind, I have been thinking about organising a mini-conference or international workshop to address African migration to Asia with a focus on Southeast Asia.

 

Aim: To share the existing state of the art knowledge on African migration to Asia and learn from diverse research approaches and disciplinary perspectives. For instance, in which ways have anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, international relations scholars, post-colonial and area studies researchers, occidentalists, development experts and so on, been interested and studied the recent African migration to Asia over the past decade (2000-2010)?.

 

There are at least 2 analytical aspects the conference/workshop could focus on:

1. compare African migration to Europe (traditional destination) to African migration to East Asia

2. compare African migration to Southeast Asia to African migration to East Asia (China).

 

Outcomes:

Three likely outcomes could be -

a. everyone sharpens their research approach and improve their research designs by overcoming disciplinary or other "blindspots"

b. a Special issue of a peer-reviewed journal could be organised to publish papers from the mini conference/intl.workshop

c. joint research projects by participants on various aspects

 

For keynote speaker, Prof. Arndt Graf (Chair of Southeast Asian Studies, Wolfgang Goethe Univ. in Frankfurt) and Director of the AFRASO (Africa's Asia Options) Programme has agreed to participate if the conference is held in September. 

 

My questions to China/Africa discussion group participants:

 

1. What do you think about the idea of the conference - are there any changes you would suggest?

2. Which topics would you like to see covered in such a conference?

3. Which panel could you organise or present?

4. On which dates in September could you fly over Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) for 2-3 days as part of your travel itinerary?

 

Presently the conference is just an idea with a zero budget. The Asia Africa Development Universities Network (AADUN) based at Univ. of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur) is interested but there is no perspective on funding yet. Would anyone be interested to co-finance/co-organise the conference or knows any benevolent funding sources?

 

Please drop me any suggestions by posting it to this forum or by email: eric_...@yahoo.co.uk

 

Many thanks,

 

Eric Schubert Ansah,

Senior Research Fellow

Institute of Ethnic Studies

National University of Malaysia