Politics of the temporary: migrant life in urban Malaysia

In this project, I look at an aspect of contemporary migration that has been largely sidelined and marginalized in mainstream debates, policy circles and research work – what happens to ‘host societies’ in the developing South that experience a rapid increase in numbers and diversity of urban populations owing to temporary migration. What are the implications of ‘temporariness’ on people’s everyday lives, practices, experiences, social environments and the urban spaces they inhabit? How does the presence and work of diverse groups of ‘temporary migrants’ alter and re-shape social, cultural and political dynamics of societies that have already been experiencing massive transformations and developments? What new forms, new practices, new networks, new hierarchies, new inequalities, and new strategies emerge in these contexts that might provide important knowledge from a transnational sociological perspective and critical studies standpoint? In order to address these broad questions, I looked at the experience of temporary labor migration in Malaysia, following a period of field research in the country. My concern that the agency of migrants is increasingly being looked at almost exclusively through an economistic, top-down lens dominated by development has prompted me to seek out the alternative experiences, conditions and practices that the Migration Development Nexus obscures and renders invisible. I sought to do this by looking at how 'temporariness' appears from below - from the perspectives of migrants, non-citizens and other inhabitants of an actual urban center in a fast-developing country of the Global South.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Sociology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2016

Author dc:creator

• Muniandy, Parthiban

Contributors dc:contributor

• Bayat, Asef
• Gille, Zsuzsa
• Ghamari-Tabrizi, Behrooz
• Dill, Brian

• transnational migration
• temporary migrants
• Malaysia
• Southeast Asia, labor regimes

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2015 Parthiban Muniandy

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/89276

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/89276