The Asia-Pacific in the Age of Transnational Mobility

The Search for Community and Identity on and through Social Media

Edited by Catherine Gomes

Publication date:

01 December 2016

Publisher

Anthem Press

Dimensions:

229x153mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781783085927

The growing mobility of people within and into the Asia Pacific region has created environments of increasing diversity as nations become hosts to both permanent and temporary multicultural societies. How do we begin to gauge the impact of mobility and multiculturalism on individuals and groups in this diverse region today? The authors of The Asia Pacific in the Age of Transnational Mobility turn to social media as a tool of inquiry to map how mobile subjects and minorities articulate their sense of community and identity. The authors see social media as a platform that allows users to document and express their individual and collective identities, sometimes in restrictive communication environments, while providing a sense of belonging and agency. They present original empirical work that attempts to help readers understand how mobile subjects who circulate in the Asia Pacific create a sense of community for themselves and articulate their ethnic, ideological and national identities.

List of figures and tables; Acknowledgements; Notes on Contributors; Introduction; Section 1: Social Media, Mobility, Transience and Transnational Relationships; 1. Female Indonesian Migrant Domestic Workers in Hong Kong: A Case Study of Advocacy through Facebook and the Story of Erwiana Sulistyaningsih; 2. Media and Mobilities in Australia: A Case Study of Southeast Asian International Students’ Media Use for Well-Being; 3. Connecting and Re-Connecting with Vietnam: Migration, Vietnamese Overseas Communities and Social Media; 4. Liking It, Not Loving It: International Students in Singapore and Their Navigation of Everyday Life in Transience; Section 2: Social Media and Existing Multicultural Relationships in a Controlled Communication Environment.; 5. Is ‘Allah Just for Muslims’?: Religion, Indigenization and Boundaries in Malaysia; 6. Ethnic Minorities in the Multi-Ethnic Heritage in Melaka: Reconstructing Dutch Eurasian and Chitty Melaka Identites through Facebook; 7. Nostalgia and Memory: Remembering the Malayan Communist Revolution in the Online Age; 8. New and Traditional Media in Malaysia: Conflicting Choices for Seeking Useful and Trusted Information in Everyday Life; Index.

‘This is a crucially important volume on transnational mobility that brings together excellent studies covering a geographical range from Australia to Vietnam. What sets the volume apart from others that have engaged with questions of transnationalism is that each study builds on exceptionally rich material while engaging with the bigger questions of migration and mobility.’
—Michiel Baas, Research Fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore