Staggered Pathways: Temporality, Mobility and Asian Temporary Migrants in Australia

Migrant mobilities between Australia and Asia are becoming more temporary and less linear. This project investigates the lived experience and the governance of 'temporally fluid' migration flows from Asia to Australia; explores migrants' senses of belonging over time at local, national and transnational scales; and develops methods and theories to analyse and visualise complex migrant journeys across borders, regions, visa statuses and labour markets. The use of time and temporality as framing concepts of the research will advance knowledge on how migration policy and migrants' decisions and experiences influence each other, and how belonging and transnationalism are being transformed by new types of mobility in the Asia-Pacific region.

Researcher: Dr Shanthi Robertson

Funding: Australian Research Council (opens in a new window), Discovery Early Career Researcher Award

Period: 2015-2018

Project website: shanthirobertson.com (opens in a new window)

Photograph: Vincent Albanese (opens in a new window)

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The Institute for Culture and Society is located in Parramatta, “the place where the eel sets down” in Dharug language,
along the north bank of the Parramatta River. It sits on the traditional lands and waters of the Burramattagal people of the Dharug Nation,
who have been stewards and caretakers of these territories since time immemorial, in what today is referred to as Greater Western Sydney,
one of the most diverse cultural communities in the world and home to the largest number of Indigenous Australians in the country.
The Institute for Culture and Society acknowledges the Dharug, Eora, Dharawal (also referred to as Tharawal)
and Wiradjuri peoples as traditional custodians and Indigenous knowledge-holders, whose storytelling serve
as historical record, a form of teaching and learning, a way to care for Country,
and an expression of Indigenous culture and identity.