An innovative collaboration between transnational scholarship, and activism: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back? 

Different Stages of the Life Course of Migrants’ Movements in East Asia

University of Portsmouth – National Cheng Kung University 

Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation – National Taiwan University

Entitled ’One Step Forward, Two Steps Back? Different Stages of the Life Course of Migrants’ Movements in East Asia’, this project aimed to answer two important questions: How have the migrants’ movements in East Asia developed? How have these movements interacted with the socio-political environment of their host societies? Funded by Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, the University of Portsmouth (Dr Isabelle Cockel), in collaboration with the National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) (Dr Hsun-hui Tseng), Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation (TAEF) and National Taiwan University (NTU) (Dr Hsin-chin Hsieh) joined force and co-organised a 5-day event on 13-17 April 2024 to seek answers to these two questions.  The innovation of this project was to include practitioners, including filmmakers as well as Taiwanese and Indonesian activists, to share the stage for their advocacy campaign and discussing with their audiences about experiences. 

Treating students as the agent for change, the first part of the project was a two-day intensive course held at the NCKU on 13-14 April. Believing that ‘to see is to act’, this course utilised the screening of migration-themed documentaries as a source for information and motivation, including More Miles to Go before I Sleep (九槍) (dir. by Tsung-lung Tsai, 蔡崇隆), Squid Jigging Fishing Board (水路–遠洋紀行) (dir. By Yu-rei Lu, 盧育瑞 ) and The Hut (工寮)  (dir. By Yo-hen So, 蘇育賢). The collaboration between transnational scholarship and activism is a realization of the motto of ‘nothing about us without us’ whereby minoritised people speak for themselves and by themselves.  This motto also underlined the roundtable held on 16 April at TAEF where Indonesian activists were supported by Taiwanese activists for their production of a booklet for Indonesian workers about their labour rights in Taiwan. The project concluded by two lectures given by Cockel at NTU on 17 April. At the talks, academic staff and students were informed of the latest research findings on the racialistion of migrant workers on social media and the precarity of irregular migrant works in the informal labour market in rural Taiwan. Underlined by its innovation, this project set a good example for universities and think thanks, lecturers and students, academics and activists, to work hand-in-hand for socio-political advocacy.