The class of the UP Asian Center, AS 230, AS 234, AS 237.1, and PS 279, will be holding a poster exhibit and public forum, “Convergence, Confluence, Change In and Beyond Post-Pandemic Northeast Asia,” on 12 January 2024, 5:00 pm to 8:15pm, and 13 January 2024, 1:00 pm to 4:15 pm, Philippine Time at the Seminar Room, GT-Toyota Asian Cultural Center. The event is free and open to the public.

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ABOUT THE EVENT

This poster exhibit-public forum is a culminating event that aims to showcase the ongoing research projects through a poster presentation of students taking up AS 230, AS 234, AS 237.1 and PS 279 at the Asian Center. Bringing together classes allows for exchange of perspectives among scholars and students on political, economic, social and cultural issues that have shaped and continue to shape post-pandemic Northeast Asia, and its relations with other nations such as the Philippines.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

DR. HELENA HOF (12 January 2024)
Dr. Helena Hof is a Senior Research and Teaching Fellow in Social Science of Japan at the University of Zurich and a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Her work lies at the nexus of mobility studies, the sociology of work, skilled migration, gender, ethnicity, and race, and global cities and entrepreneurship, especially in the contexts of contemporary Japan and Singapore. In her current collaborative project on the role of skills in labor migration processes in Asia, Dr. Hof examines foreign entrepreneurs in Tokyo’s and Singapore’s knowledge-intensive startup scene. Helena holds guest researcher affiliations with Waseda's Institute of Asian Migrations in Tokyo and the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. Her most recent publications include Migratory Class-making in global Asian cities: the European Mobile Middle Negotiating Ambivalent Privilege in Tokyo, Singapore, and Dubai (with Jaafar Alloul, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies) and the book The EU Migrant Generation in Asia (Bristol University Press).

DR. KYUNG MIN BAE (13 January 2024)
Kyung Min Bae is an Assistant Professorial Fellow at UP Department of Linguistics where she has been handling Korean language courses since 2010. She obtained her master's degree from Yonsei University (2009) and doctoral degree at UP College of Education (2020) with PhD in Language Education. She is currently serving as a Director of UP Korea Research Center. She is passionate about training future generations of Korean Studies scholars in the Philippines and also translating Korean literature to English.

ABSTRACTS

Migratory Class-making in Restrictive Migration Regimes: Foreign Entrepreneurs' (Im)mobilities in Japan and Singapore
Dr. Helena Hof, University of Zurich

Migration research has often focused on the vulnerable, presumably "low-skilled" or low-wage migrants, who are more often than not moving from developing countries (the Global South) with the hope to settle (permanently) in industrialized countries of the Global North. A different perspective is that of the highly mobile, so-called skilled migrants or transnational professionals who have been framed as short-term stayers with little barriers to onward migration and little interest in staying in their destination countries long-term. This presentation unsettles the binary image of Global North and Global South and the ever-mobile (highly-skilled) as the opposite of the immobile (less skilled or less capital-rich) labor migrants. Drawing on empirical data from foreign entrepreneurship in Singapore’s and Tokyo’s knowledge-intensive industries the presentation adopts an intersectional perspective on class and (im)mobility to better conceptualize "middling migration" to and within contemporary Asia. The "ideal" immigrant state Singapore and Japan, as an emergent country of immigration with comparatively few foreign residents, serve as case studies for understanding current migration dynamics in Asian market economies. Both countries have tried to attract startups in order to boost domestic innovation. Interviews with 69 (predominantly Asian) migrant entrepreneurs demonstrate their differentiated incorporation and foreground middle-class aspirations of socio-economic mobility that require, against stereotypical notions of highly-educated migrants as ever mobile, geographical immobility in the receiving societies.

“Return” Migration to Where I was Not Born: Two Korean-Filipino Youth’s Experience
Dr. Kyung Min Bae, University of the Philippines Diliman

The presentation focuses on a rather less known side of the Korean migration to the Philippines: second-generation Korean-Filipino youth’s temporary migration to the Philippines. As interracial marriage between Korean and non-Korean citizens has been growing steadily, next generations of the Korean-Filipino population likewise grew. Yet, many of them are born in Korea and obtain Korean citizenship and hardly ever have any chance to be immersed in Filipino heritage, and so it is understudied how other cases attempt to pursue going back to their roots in the Philippines and develop certain identities.

ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS

The event is organized by the students of the UP Asian Center AS 230, AS 234, AS 237.1, and PS 279 classes of Dr. Jocelyn O. Celero, Dr. Michelle R. Palumbarit, and Dr. Joefe B. Santarita for the first semester, AY 2023-2024.

For inquiries, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 891-8500 loc. 3586.

The Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman offers M.A. degrees in Asian Studies with four fields of specialization: Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and West Asia. The UP Asian Center also has an M.A. program in Philippine Studies that allows students to major in Philippine society and culture, Philippine foreign relations, or Philippine development studies. It also offers a Ph.D. program in Philippine Studies in conjunction with the College of Arts and Letters and the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy. For an overview of these graduate programs, click here. As an area studies institution, the Asian Center also publishes Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia, the latest issue of which can be downloaded at the journal's website.