International Journal of Communication
Publishes a Special Section on
Mobilities, Communication, and Asia

The Special Section on “Mobilities, Communication, and Asia” examines the interplay of communication, power, and movement amid large-scale transformations throughout Asia. Guest-edited by Mohan J. Dutta and Raka Shome, this Special Section brings together 11 articles that theorize from and within Asia the social, political, economic, and cultural contexts of im/mobilities, and the ways in which these constitute constructions and negotiations of the social, cultural, political, and economic. The articles depict communicative negotiations amid movements in and across Asia, examining critically the hegemonic formations of Asian mobility. They offer locally grounded theoretical anchors for understanding these movements.

The global movement of capital, commodities, and labor foreground certain meanings of mobility while erasing other interpretations. Further, the global movement of capital, while enabling and encouraging mobility for some, renders many others immobile — disconnected, expelled, and erased from the possibilities of movement. Mobility and immobility thus are not binaries but are interrelated in a system that expresses and captures the desires and violence of globalization. The figure of the migrant and the various processes of migration make these relations both visible and invisible. Mediated and communication practices — such as technology, films, music, social media, and remittances — play intrinsic roles in shaping and informing various forms of migration.

Additionally, the transnational migration of communication practices themselves constitutes new forms of mobilities and immobilities, opportunities for enacting agency, identity formations, and collective organizing in resistance. The articles in this Special Section draw on the lived experiences of migrants in and across Asia to offer conceptual frameworks for examining the nature of communication amid migration, attending to the particulars of migration and simultaneously offering globally anchored entry points to theorizing mobility.

We invite you to read these articles that published September 26, 2018 in the International Journal of Communication.  Please Ctrl+Click on the titles below for direct hyperlinking to these articles.

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Mobilities, Communication, and Asia: Introduction
Raka Shome, Mohan Jyoti Dutta

Tracing the Discourse of Migrant Labor in China: Mobility, Fixity, and Displacement in the Workshop of the World
Zhuo Ban

Logics of Mobility: Social Movements and Their Networked Other
Shiv Ganesh

“I Have Always Thought of My Family First”: An Analysis of Transnational Caregiving Among Filipino Migrant Adult Children in Melbourne, Australia
Earvin Charles B. Cabalquinto

Essentialist Identities as Resistance to Immobilities: Communicative Mobilities of Vietnamese Foreign Brides in Singapore
Arul Chib, Hoan Nguyen

Im/materializing Cross-Border Mobility: A Study of Mainland China–Hong Kong Daigou [Cross-Border Shopping Services on Global Consumer Goods]
Xie ZhuoXiao

Precarities of Migrant Work in Singapore: Migration, (Im)mobility, and Neoliberal Governmentality
Mohan Dutta, Satveer Kaur-Gill

Media, Mobility, and Resilience Among Diasporic Young People 
Audrey Yue

Mobile Media Photography and Intergenerational Families
Jolynna Sinanan, Larissa Hjorth, Kana Ohashi, Fumitoshi Kato

Facebook, Long-Distance Marriages, and the Mediation of Intimacies
Kristel Anne Acedera, Brenda Yeoh

Dreams and Desserts, Indigenous Migration, Service, and Mobility in India
Dolly Kikon

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Larry Gross
Editor

Arlene Luck
Managing Editor                                                                   

Mohan J. Dutta, Raka Shome
Guest Editors