CALL FOR PAPERS

PACIFIC WORLDS IN MOTION:
An Interdisciplinary Conference on Asian Migrations
Green College/St.John’s College,
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
March 14-15, 2008

This graduate conference hopes to understand Asian migration studies within Canada from and across the Asia Pacific region. Two broad themes are covered:

(1) Asian Canadian Migrations. 2007 marks a number of important anniversaries in the history of Asians in Canada: the 1907 anti-Asian riots, the 1947 Citizenship Act, the 1967 Immigration Act, and the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China (which catalyzed large-scale immigration from Asia to Canada). These anniversaries broadly frame a historical outline for the first theme of the conference that aims to understand the material and intellectual cultures of various Asian Canadian communities including Chinese, South Asian, Filipino, Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese communities. It will consider how a sense of Asian Canadian identity has emerged in the past century.

(2) Transpacific Worlds of Migration. This conference situates and compares Asian Canadian migrations among parallel migration histories and processes occurring across the Asia Pacific region, including intra-regional migrations within Asia or migrations from Asia to the major regions of the world, especially the United States, Latin America, Africa, Europe and Australia. We will welcome papers comparing Asian migrations across various scales, including translocal, transnational and transregional levels and employing various theories and methodologies. Some of the major issues that will be examined include identity, race, immigration, gender, multiculturalism, globalization, religion and community formation from a transpacific perspective.

This two-day conference, jointly sponsored by the University of British Columbia’s two graduate residential colleges (Green College and St. John’s College) aims to bring together graduate students and early career researchers from all disciplines pursuing research on Asian Canadian Studies and Transpacific Migrations. Preference will be given to those who have chosen dissertation topics that explicitly deal with questions and issues within the broad rubric of Asia Pacific Migration Studies. We hope that this conference will start processes of mentorship among senior scholars, early career researchers, and graduate students. Partial subsidies (meals and accommodation) will be available for graduate students.

Plenary Speaker: Prof. Brenda Yeoh, Professor of Geography, Chair, Southeast Asian Studies, Head, Migration Studies Cluster, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

What to Submit
• A one page abstract of your paper (up to 500 words)
• AV needs
• Contact information
When to Submit
• Dec 30, 2007
Where to Submit:
• Mark Lawrence M. Santiago
Department of Geography, University of British Columbia
Green College, 6201 Cecil Green Park Road,
Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1 Canada
asiacanada@gmail.com