Lines of Research
Logistics, Geo-economics, Zoning Politics, and Local Infrastructure Initiatives
Our GHI encourages research projects on politico-economic logistics and the logic of migration. We welcome analytic inquiries and theoretical engagements on the following issues:
- Whether and how the colonial past and the Cold War regime still have their traces on the countries in and beyond Asia in the 21st century, such as the ASEAN regional policies of trade agreements and economic security control, the US-China trade war, and so on?
- How can we use critical thought on logistics to rethink issues of labor and migration particularly in the Asian region (or in what ways is migration increasingly functioning logistically)?
- How do foreign direct investment, labor, and migration in the Asian region link to logistical initiatives such as zoning, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, etc.?
- How do global and local logistical initiatives impact directly or indirectly on local societies, such as governmental corruptions, public xenophobic reactions, extraction by dispossession, and so on?
- How is digitalization transforming labor and mobility, including questions of virtual migration, platform labor, and the use of digital technologies for migration control and freedom of movement?
- How do logistics and migration in and beyond Asia reorganize relations of reproduction of labor power and society?
- The transformation of the land question, the military-industrial complex, and mobility regime.
- Regarding the historical processes, ruptures and continuities in the organization and practice of migration in and beyond Asia, do logistics offer a means of understanding historical migration, or is it specific to the present moment? How do layered histories of migration continue to shape present movements?
- The nexus of logistics, displacement, and violence. The discourse of who is “native” and who is “migrant” is prevalent in many countries; at the extreme, this discourse can lead to communal fissures and even violence. Can a logistical approach help us productively think through ideas of “indigeneity/native” vs. “migrants/foreigner” and unpack this socially constructed dichotomy?