Emeritus Professor Amarjit Kaur

Biography

I am currently engaged in an ARC discovery project on Managing the Border: Migration, Security and State Policy Responses to Global Governance in Southeast Asia. I also work on Forced migration, especially trafficking and refugee issues in Southeast Asia; and Immigration restrictions and human rights and legal and extralegal status of migrants and migrant workers. My work on Migration includes historical case studies of the Epidemiology of Migration and Labour and Health (with colleagues at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, UCL and the Centre for Medical History, Exeter). Other Migration projects include studies of the Indian and Sikh diasporas and evolving diaspora cultures in Southeast Asia (with colleagues at the South Asian studies program and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore). Tessa Morris-Suzuki (ANU) and I have also set up the Asia-Pacific Migration Research Forum Network and collaborate with academics, human rights groups and NGOs in Southeast and Northeast Asia.

My most recent publications on Migration include Wage Labour in Southeast Asia since 1840: Globalisation, the International Division of Labour and Labour Transformations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Mobility, Labour Migration and Border Controls in Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) [co-edited with Ian Metcalfe]; and three special journal issues titled 'Migrant Labour in Southeast Asia: Needed, not wanted', RIMA, Vol. 39 No. 2, 2005; "Refugees and Refugee Policies in the Asia-Pacific region", UNEAC Asia Papers 2007, published online (view here); and "Migration and Integration in the Asia-Pacific Region" special issue, UNESCO, International Journal on Multicultural Societies (IJMS), Vol 9 Issue 2, 2007, published online http://www.unesco.org/shs/ijms/vol9/issue2).