Spotlight April 2024
Fluid Asia Through Two Blockages: Labor Unfreedom and Geothermal Justice
A CAS Brief by Shae Frydenlund
The theme of this year’s Center for Asian Studies symposium – Fluid Asia – invites critical engagement with the social and physical fluidities that are shaping life and landscapes in the region. As the symposium approaches, I am thinking about various fluid dynamics of capitalist development in Southeast Asia – the movement of dispossessed rural people into cities where they work, which is commonly described in terms of flooding, the proliferation of hydroelectric dams along the Mekong, agricultural transitions from water-intensive subsistence crops to water-saving commercial crops in the Himalayas, to name a few. Water and its properties are a compelling vantage point for studying changes in capitalism; however, I am especially interested in the generative tension between fluidity and its foil: blockage.
My own research is concerned with two instances of fluidity and blockage in Southeast Asia. First, the quandary of “free-flowing” migrant labor: the movement of workers drives capitalist development all over Asia (and beyond), but they are simultaneously subjected to conditions of labor unfreedom that block their ability to maneuver in labor markets. Second, the fluid properties and politics of geothermal energy development in Indonesia’s Ring of Fire: proposed projects aim to harness steam that is produced as cool water meets molten Earth, but indigenous women in target communities have organized to oppose the construction of well heads that would block social reproduction, erode livelihoods, and defile living space.
The lived experiences of Burmese workers in Southeast Asia and the United States demonstrate that capitalist development – specifically urban development – is predicated on the forced flow of labor and the simultaneous blockage of labor rights. As Stephen Campbell (2022) shows in his recent book, Along the Integral Margin, people dispossessed by disaster and failed promises of rural development in Myanmar are compelled to move to urban centers but are confined to varying types of non-normative work and even enslavement. But why are people who “flow” locked into shitty jobs? Asking this question in the context of the Burmese diaspora, I found that state immigration regimes articulate with racialized labor discipline to direct displaced people into meatpacking and manufacturing work and block their ability to work in other sectors or organize for better working conditions. This blockage is what enables capitalists to dam “flows” of migrant and refugee labor, making migrant labor especially profitable to exploit. In Kuala Lumpur, for example, Malaysian produce and poultry bosses perceive an “inundation” of Rohingya asylum-seekers as an oversupply of dangerous interlopers who have no option but to work for low wages, but this racist narrative of human flooding combines with a lack of legal documentation that actively devalues Rohingya labor and prevents access to jobs in higher-wage sectors. In other words, conditions of labor unfreedom. In Denver, affixing refugee-ness to Burmese workers enables employers to separate people who were resettled as refugees from other minoritized employees and reframe exploitation as justice and a humanitarian gift. The fluidity of migrant labor – like the freedom of wage labor itself – is always so-called.
Read full Brief with citations here.
2024 Asian Symposium: Fluid Asia
Friday, April 12, 2024 8:45am - 5:30pm
Center for British and Irish Studies, Norlin Library, 5th Floor
CAS Has a New Home!
Over winter break, the Center for Asian Studies moved from our temporary location in the CASE Building to our permanent home in the Denison Building.
We have been busy setting up new office space and settling in, but please come by and say "hi"!
Our official address is the Denison Arts & Sciences Building, 366 UCB, 1080 Broadway, Boulder CO 80309.
Teaching Taiwan
an Experiential Learning Essay
By Lauren Collins
One of my favorite undergraduate courses to teach is Memory and the Politics of Heritage in Asia.
This class uses examinations of material objects (not only museums, monuments, and memorials, but also archives, school curriculum, and oral histories) to explore how history does not exist as a passive, fixed account, but is instead an active and ongoing struggle to shape narratives, preserve memory, and influence collective consciousness. In this class, we explore his- tory as a living, contested terrain.1 How- ever, it can be difficult for undergraduate students sitting within the four walls of my classroom, place-bound on my campus, to truly feel how competing narratives of history are actively being contested and fought over in real time as we study them. For this reason, when I had the opportuni- ty in the summer of 2023 to take a group of undergraduate students to Taiwan on a faculty-led program to explore memory politics there in real-time, I immediately agreed. In my experience, there is nothing more powerful to understanding mem- ory politics than taking students to the physical spaces where history has taken place and is actively being remembered, suppressed, and shifted.
Waging Peace Project Essay Contest Winner Announced
The Center for Asian Studies and Partnership for International Strategies in Asia (PISA) joined Norlin Library and several departments on campus to host the exhibit, Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War. Curated by Ron Carver, the display of photographs, documents, and oral histories documented dissent within the United States active duty armed forces, among officers, and returning veterans, as well as their means of disseminating information to mobilize others. Launched on October 30, 2023, the first week included a series of events that engaged multiple units across campus including the College of Music, the English Department, the College of Media, Communication and Information, the History Department, the College of Arts and Sciences Honors Program, the Applied History Program, and the Center of the American West. The Waging Peace Project at was made possible by support from the Chino Cienega Foundation.
With film screenings, panel discussions, poetry readings, and lectures, the Waging Peace project amplified the message that the American War in Vietnam has had a legacy of baneful consequences that endure to this day. Recordings of most of the events can be found on the PISA page on the Center for Asian Studies website.
As a key feature of the project, students were invited to submit essays with their reflections on viewing the exhibit. Renowned photojournalist Nick Ut, whose photo of the so-called “Napalm girl” helped to move public opinion against the war, selected Ian Messa’s essay and Vietnam Veteran Curt Stocker presented the award on behalf of Veterans for Peace. Ian hails from Golden, Colorado. He is majoring in geography and pursuing an environment-society geography B.A. with hydrology and GIS certificates, as well as a civil engineering minor. Congratulations Ian!
Indonesian Student Exchange Program Launches
Fall 2023 was ’s first semester as a host for the Indonesian International Student Mobility Awards (IISMA), through which the Indonesian government provides study abroad opportunities for undergraduate students. We look forward to hosting another group in fall 2024.
Two students who spent a semester at wrote short essays about their experiences.