New special collection in International Migration Review

Workshop group photo

In 2023, SARI supported an ECR workshop in Malaysia on intra-Asian migration. Papers from the workshop are now published in a special collection of International Migration Review.

In February 2024, 25 scholars working on forced and irregular migration within Asia, most of them early career researchers, came to Malaysia for a weekend of stimulating discussions and presentations about their research. The workshop was supported by a grant from the ANU South Asia Research Institute. South Asia featured in the work of several presenters from Bangladesh and India whose research addressed:

  • Tamil irregular labour migrants in the Gulf
  • Partition-induced forced migration in West Bengal
  • The rights, politicisation and lived experiences of Rohingya migrants in Bangladesh and India

This month, September 2026, we are pleased to announce the results of that workshop: the publication of a special collection in the International Migration Review titled Routine Irregularities: The Contested Governance of Irregular and Forced Migration in Asia.

This special collection situates Asia at the heart of contemporary discussions of irregular and forced migration. Foregrounding the scholarship of researchers working in and from Asia, we position the collection as a deliberate decentering of Global North preoccupations with border control, instead emphasizing the diverse expressions of inequity and resistance that characterize the “routine irregularities” of migration governance in the majority-world. Each article offers a timely intervention in irregular and forced migration debates, hastening analytical departures from Eurocentric epistemes by centering the knowledge production of those directly researching the contextually specific histories, policies, practices, and outcomes of migration in the region where it occurs most.

Niro Kandasamy, Niru Perera, Matt Withers

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