Roundtable:
Telling Tales of Migrant Lives: Challenges Within NGO & International Agency Research, Advocacy and Campaigns

Date: 2 October 2009
Time: 3pm-5.30pm
Location: Research Cluster Meeting Room A, Level 6, Block AS7, FASS, NUS
Discussant: Dr Xiang Biao, University of Oxford, UK

List of speakers:
Mr John Gee, President, Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2)
Dr Kevin McGahan, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Political Science, NUS
Miss Monica Smith, PhD Candidate, Department of Geography, NUS
Dr Sallie Yea, Visiting Fellow, Department of Geography, NUS

As people become highly mobile, research on and related to the phenomena of migration has burgeoned. In particular, a significant body of research has been devoted to illuminating issues arising from the migration of different groups of migrants such as migrant domestic workers, migrant labourers in formal sector jobs and refugees. Human trafficking has also been taken up as a research agenda by scholars. Often marginalized and slipping between the cracks of society and legality, these groups of migrants have also garnered the attention of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) seeking to give voice and render direct assistance to migrants.

 

To increase their effectiveness in generating awareness on issues faced by migrants, informing official policies and providing aid, resource sharing between researchers and activists would seem to be intuitive. Yet, despite overlaps in aims and the potential benefits of a mutual exchange of information, the worlds of advocacy and academia co-exist with relatively few avenues for interaction. There is an urgent need to bridge the gap between both worlds.

 

The roundtable on migration NGOs therefore aims to 1) stimulate discussions around the links and problematics between academic research and NGO work; 2) discuss current debates within migration research as they relate to NGO, advocacy and policy work; 3) present to graduate students diverse forms of methodology and research; 4) expose graduate students to options for future careers in academia and NGO work as well as those fields that link the two; 5) provide an opportunity for visiting fellows and graduate students across disciplines who are studying migration to come together to listen and to discuss work; 6) provide an opportunity for graduate students to receive experience in event organizing, and; 7) facilitate dialogue with NGOs and universities outside of Singapore.

The programme and abstracts for the roundtable can be downloaded here

Registration

Persons interested in attending the workshop should email their name, affiliation and email address to the following address: fasswe@nus.edu.sg.