Call for Papers ASEAS 16(1)

Issue 16(1) of Advances in Southeast Asian Studies (ASEAS), to be published in June 2023, features a focus on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mobility and migration in and between Southeast Asian countries, assessing past, current, and future trends as well as its cultural, social, economic, ecological, and legal implications.

As many other regions in the world, Southeast Asian countries have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although most countries managed to cope relatively well with the first wave in 2020, subsequent waves in 2021 saw rising death tolls and immense pressures on the region’s health and welfare systems. At the same time, travel restrictions and local as well as national lockdowns affected migrant populations disproportionally as hundreds of thousands got stuck in either their countries of origin or destination countries with little or no alternative means of making a living. This has, in turn, also impacted on migrant workers remittances that depict a vital source of income for tens of millions of families in the region. As of 2020, about 23.6 million Southeast Asian migrants were living outside their countries of origin.

There is serious concern that the restrictions on migration and mobility imposed to combat the pandemic will largely affect those people for whom mobility is an essential condition of their livelihood. In addition to labor migrants, forced migrants – people fleeing for their lives – were also confronted with additional obstructions when seeking safety outside their countries of origin. While the social dislocations that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic seems to affect primarily people living at and below the poverty line, middle-class migrants, for example international students or high-skilled migrants, were also battered by the pandemic.

We encourage the submission of research papers based on empirical field research as well as in the form of systematic or conceptual literature reviews and other desk studies, such as media analyses.

We welcome submissions that critically discuss one or more of the following aspects (non-exhaustive listing):

• the impacts of COVID-19 on domestic and transnational forced migrants
• the impacts and trajectories of COVID-19 on labor migrants
• the impacts and trajectories of COVID-19 on translocal and transnational connectedness
• national COVID-19 mitigation and containment regimes and their social, political, and economic effects on mobilities
• livelihood adaptation strategies of migrants and refugees in regard to COVID-19 mitigation and containment measures
• vulnerability and resilience of mobile populations as well as translocal households during COVID-19
• gendered implications of COVID-19 in the context of migration
• the role of information and communication technologies (ICT) for connectedness between places of origin and destination
• political struggles over forced stasis during COVID-19 and their implications

 

Guest Editors: Antje Missbach & Patrick Sakdapolrak

Managing Editor: Gunnar Stange

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 31 August 2022

Issue publication: 30 June 2023

If you intend to submit a paper, please contact the managing editor.- For submissions out of focus, please contact aseas@seas.at. - Register and submit your paper online at https://aseas.univie.ac.at/index.php/aseas/about/submissions - Please consult our author guidelines prior to submitting your manuscript!

Further Details

For online submission, please refer to our AUTHOR GUIDELINES.

For further information, please contact the editorial board: aseas@seas.at

Here is a PDF version of the call!