The Centre for Greater China Studies (CGCS) would like to invite you to join a research seminar fully supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No.:UGC/IDS14/17):
1st webinar (20 May 2021, 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm Hong Kong and Perth time (UTC+8)
Topic: Children’s bodies are not capital: Arduous cross-border mobilities between Shenzhen and Hong Kong
Speakers: Professor Johanna L. Waters (Professor of Human Geography, University College London)
Discussants: Professor Celeste Yuen (Department of Educational, Administrative and Policy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong) and Professor Jenny Chiu (Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Lingnan University)
Registration: https://forms.gle/7GHseGa5mWmF3BQBA
Website: https://migration.hsu.edu.hk/
*The zoom meeting link will be sent to registered participants one day before the seminar
Co-Convenors:
Dr Lucille Ngan (Associate Professor, Department of Social Science, The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong)
Dr Antia Chan (Associate Professor, Department of Social Science, The Education University of Hong Kong)
Abstract:
This paper foregrounds and unpacks the significance of education in the migration of children in contemporary Asia, drawing principally on research undertaken in Hong Kong and across the political border with Mainland China (Shenzhen). Using the example of cross-boundary schooling, the paper explores the role played by children in emergent transnational topologies and reflects on the significance of this for understandings of ‘migration’. In this paper, we argue that whilst children are harbingers of future migration and their mobilities appear, on the surface, to function seamlessly, in reality their experiences of mobility are very immediate and embodied: corporeal, emotional and invariably arduous. The arduousness and corporality of everyday mobilities for education are rarely explored in the extant literature and we therefore attempt to highlight this important aspect of children’s experiences here, whilst also reflecting on the gendered nature of this educational experience.
About the speaker:
Johanna L. Waters is Professor of Human Geography and co-Director of the Migration Research Unit at UCL. She has worked for a number of years on aspects of transnational families, education and migration, with a particular interest in East Asia. She is presently editing a book with Brenda Yeoh (NUS) on Migration and the Family (forthcoming with Edward Elgar) and is looking forward, in the next few months, to the publication of Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities (Waters, J. and R. Brooks, 2021, Palgrave). She lives in Cambridge (UK) and has three lively children.
For enquiries, please feel free to contact us at cgcs@hsu.edu.hk or 3963 5611.
