Publications by Juan Zhang
This article examines the oriental project of imagining migrant women through commercially arrang... more This article examines the oriental project of imagining migrant women through commercially arranged cross-border marriages. Taking the 'foreign bride' in Singapore as a subject of 'oriental simplicity', it shows how contemporary orientalism continues to shape practices and beliefs in something as familiar as searching for a wife and having a family. The article questions the gendered, classed and sexualised politics that render the migrant woman from less developed nations an ambivalent figure of desire, further complicating the already problematic articulation of womanhood and selfhood in the post-colonial state. By reinforcing a cultural marketability of 'oriental simplicity', commercially arranged cross-border marriages serve to naturalise patriarchal family structures and strengthen the hegemonic ideology of the Asian family.
Contemporary experiences of Han Chinese traders in Hekou, a remote town on the China-Vietnam bord... more Contemporary experiences of Han Chinese traders in Hekou, a remote town on the China-Vietnam border inform discussions of permissive politics and entrepreneurial transgression at the peripheries of the state. Permissive politics facilitates the transnational movement of goods across national borders in both formal and informal ways. Examination of cross-border smuggling as both an everyday strategy of profit-making and an act of ordinary transgression clarifies the ways in which borderland permissiveness normalizes and even rewards certain unauthorized practices on the part of traders, vendors and individuals who undertake entrepreneurial activities.
In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, luxurious m casino resorts have become spec... more In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, luxurious m casino resorts have become spectacles of economic growth across destinations in Asia. With its emphasis on large-scale integrated r (IR), the casino and leisure industry is a site of economic rejuve even as it offers spaces of moral corruption. Integrated mega-casi ambiguous projects of development, driving the speculative proce place-making for accumulation, social control, and global compe This editorial introduction focuses on three main themes. First, m projects show the historical and complicated relations between stat and the gambling economy. Second, Southeast Asia's new mega-cas emblematic of speculative urbanism and its experiments. Third, ca development consolidates the differentiated treatment of citizen and gives legitimacy to the biopolitical governance of citizen pr claims, and urban participation.
The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity, 2019
This chapter offers an empirical account on migrant workers, their identities, and their embodied... more This chapter offers an empirical account on migrant workers, their identities, and their embodied experiences of labor hierarchy along ethnic lines in mega-casino resorts in Asia. As casino resorts become opportunities for fast-track economic development and urban renewal in the region since 2010, the Asian gaming sector has become a major industry relying heavily on rural-urban, interregional , and international migrant labor. With a focus on Filipino and Chinese casino workers in Singapore and Macau, this chapter explores complex inequalities experienced by migrants in a highly cosmopolitan and highly competitive work environment. Job hierarchies are often established based on cultural assumptions of particular characteristics and competencies attributed to different groups, consolidating classed and gendered stereotypes in the workplace. Although migrant workers in casinos try to resist negative ethnic stereotyping by emphasizing on their credentials and professionalism, they continue to perform the identity of
The mobility and agency of the unemployed have rarely been examined together in welfare administr... more The mobility and agency of the unemployed have rarely been examined together in welfare administration. Mobility research has much to offer the (im)mobility of low-skilled and unemployed workers. The article begins by critically examining dominant public discourse and policy reforms that stigmatise the assumed immobility of the unemployed. Drawing on empirical data from in-depth interviews with people on income support payments in Australia, it then offers a critical view on the mobility decision-making processes of these job-seekers. Building on previous research concerning the politics of mobility, it shows that structural inequalities impact mobility choices, making relocation difficult for many job-seekers. At the same time, it highlights the localised mobility that job search now involves, complicating orthodox associations between mobility and poweras well as assumptions that jobseekers are immobile.
Money and Moralities in Contemporary Asia, 2019
Singapore opened two casino resorts in 2010 despite strong public suspicion and resistance. Casin... more Singapore opened two casino resorts in 2010 despite strong public suspicion and resistance. Casino work brings a good income and a certain prestige, but it also places employees in a state of moral uncertainty. Drawing from fieldwork in Singapore, the chapter looks at the moral economy of casino work, especially how employees negotiate moral dilemmas with financial and professional gains. Casino employees fashion a flexible sense of self and hold on to a strong belief in professionalism and self-responsibilization. Such strategies allow employees to suspend personal emotions in the workplace, and to value personal detachment as professionalism. As casino employees recode their moral values through the logic of 'making exception', they actively contribute to the moral economy of the casino in Singapore.
Revisiting Henderson: Poverty, Social Security and Basic Income, 2019
In analysing the strengths and limitations of any national social security system it is important... more In analysing the strengths and limitations of any national social security system it is important to identify the assessment criteria for making any such evaluation. While there are no universally accepted criteria for designing an effective income support system, there is general agreement among scholars and policy-makers that a good system should not leave people living below an agreed poverty level; it should not disrupt work incentives unduly and should be well targeted and administratively efficient (Nolan, 2014). To this, we would add that a social security system should treat people who make claims on the state with dignity and respect. In other words, the administrative apparatus for assessing need and making payments should not result in what Nancy Fraser (1997) refers to as the process of adding cultural insult to economic injury. How the state treats those suffering the injustice of poverty matters in both a moral and material sense. If the process of assessing need and providing income support to individuals or households is overly intrusive and humiliating, as well as being unnecessarily costly in regard to monitoring and surveillance, then the system is not only wasteful, it fails to pass a basic test of decency.
Development zones in Asian borderlands, 2021
This chapter offers a reflection on the speculative ways in which global casino hotels become new... more This chapter offers a reflection on the speculative ways in which global casino hotels become new zones of development in many Asian destinations. As ultra-modern integrated resorts developed to boost tourism and foreign direct investment, these casino and entertainment enclaves carve out exceptional spaces in search of profit and legitimacy. Looking at casino establishments in across Asia’s special economic zones, this chapter examines the development of casino zones as a strategy for progress in places still marred by underdevelopment. New casino zones create novel forms of territorialisation and responsibilisation, enabling differentiated biopolitics of control.
Handbook on transnationalism, 2022
This chapter uses friction to shed light on transnational marriage migration within the broader A... more This chapter uses friction to shed light on transnational marriage migration within the broader Asian context. Two main points on friction are discussed in relation to the gendered experiences of im/mobilities and the intimate geopolitics of marriage and family life on a transnational scale. First, this chapter looks at experiences of im/mobility generated by heteropatriarchal norms, geopolitical inequalities, and divergent disciplinary regimes within home and national spaces. Transnational marriage migration is often fraught with many complications. Migrant precarity and migrant waiting are not an indication of exceptional circumstances but a gendered and embodied everyday norm. Second, this chapter looks closely at the intimate geopolitics across time and space that weave together unequal relations and mixed desires. Tracing historical specificities of intimate unions that involve moving bodies across territorial and sociocultural boundaries, this chapter shows how relationships and relationalities are shaped by individual as well as familial aspirations, and by temporal and longer-term mobility strategies.
How Chinese Engagements are Changing Southeast Asia: People, Money, Ideas, and their Effects, 2016
In this article, we discuss procedures for comparing the cultural salience of semantic domains an... more In this article, we discuss procedures for comparing the cultural salience of semantic domains and their constitutive signifiers between groups of respondents based on free-list data. These methods allow us to assess the relative similarity and difference of the cognitive salience of elements within a domain across groups of respondents. We argue that cultural salience is an important but often overlooked variable in the structure of semantic domains. Comparing cultural salience provides one grounds for claims of cultural difference (or lack thereof) between different socially defined groups (e.g., national, ethnic, gender, academic). We use data collected on the cultural salience of countries in a project on perceptions of Southeast Asia as an example of the methods described. This article outlines methods using free-list data for testing comparative cultural salience of items within a semantic domain between groups of respondents. The arguments and methods build on previous research while organizing this field of inquiry in a way that can enhance future research, particularly with regard to comparative studies of semantic domains, their development, and their diffusion. Previous methodological writings on free-list data provide useful ways to collect (e.
Routledge Handbook of Asian Migrations
This chapter examines migration and mobility in Asian borderlands by taking a view from the ‘marg... more This chapter examines migration and mobility in Asian borderlands by taking a view from the ‘margins’ of contemporary nation-states. Borders as ‘margins’ do not suggest that they are marginal to contemporary experiences. Rather, they provide alternative, off-centre perspectives on a range of political questions – who defines the border, who navigates the border, who is policing the border, and who claims ownership of the border – that are central to debates on governance and mobility, security and citizenship, global forces and local strategies.
This chapter follows the stories of Chinese entrepreneurs who moved to a Special Economic Zone at... more This chapter follows the stories of Chinese entrepreneurs who moved to a Special Economic Zone at the China-Vietnam border. They understand themselves as pioneers of frontier modernisation, endowed with a particular “open-up consciousness” crucial for success. Those who lack it, or those lagging behind, will not prevail over their competitive neighbours across the border. Tales and memories of the brutal 1979 Sino-Vietnamese Border War find new life in the construction of selfhood and otherness. Yet, prosperity depends on cooperation and harmony. Experience, thus, is defined by anxiety – not as an effect of past conflict but as the disavowed foundation of “effective neighbouring”.
Over the past decades, living in proximity to an increasingly powerful China has gained new meani... more Over the past decades, living in proximity to an increasingly powerful China has gained new meanings. ‘Rising China’ – the nation, the notion, and the buzzword – sparks dreams and triggers fears. The experiences and realities of relation-making across China’s borders shape life in profound and lasting ways.This book takes the experiences and politics of relation-making across China’s borders as a starting point of an anthropological inquiry into neighbouring. Neighbouring is thereby understood as both agency and experience. It involves, at once, mental and material processes; it entails techniques of negotiating proximity and makes use of asymmetries in power and wealth; it informs desire and stimulates distrust; and it denotes collective and individual efforts to manage evolving relations that we will call agonistic intimacies.
This paper interrogates the exclusionary politics of casino urbanism in Singapore, especially in ... more This paper interrogates the exclusionary politics of casino urbanism in Singapore, especially in terms of how this particular brand of urbanism reproduces disciplinary regimes through the uneven consumption of fun and leisure. Singapore's vision of becoming a world-class " state of fun " is accompanied by increasingly sophisticated measures of boundary making between global leisure citizens and the excluded others, often comprised of the working class and those deemed to be at risk or lacking self-control and responsibility. The evolving biopolitical borders coincide with the multiple borders set up around Singapore's casino spaces, ensuring the exclusive consumption of Singapore's casino urbanism by the wealthy few. The fun regimes help to normalize social exclusion, moralize disciplinary control, and give legitimacy to the new class of global consumers under the operations of the state-capital apparatus. This paper argues that exclusive casino urbanism has broader social and political implications on issues of equality, accessibility, and urban participation.
Chinese men imagine and depict Vietnamese women at the China-Vietnam frontier in a terrain marked... more Chinese men imagine and depict Vietnamese women at the China-Vietnam frontier in a terrain marked by desire and anxiety. Their anxious desires exemplify the lures and apprehensions that Chinese men experience in their cross-border business engagement with Vietnamese traders. Their vivid imagination of Vietnamese women’s sensuality, submissiveness, and cunning tactics reflects both the temptations and traps of the postwar border marketplace, where Chinese men start to explore their own sense of being and desiring through cross-border business. The long history of trade and periodical conflicts between China and Vietnam complicates these two nations’ mutual perceptions. At the border itself it is rendered all the more ambivalent because the Chinese and the Vietnamese need each other more than ever to achieve local economic prosperity; yet the lingering cloud of suspicion continues to play out in intimate ways.
Using Singapore's newly opened mega casino resorts as an example, this article illustrates how th... more Using Singapore's newly opened mega casino resorts as an example, this article illustrates how the expanding casino economy in Asia shapes, and is shaped by, an emerging mobility regime that works through the politics of exception. The coupling of mobility and exception creates a particular governing technology of tracking credibility through which mobile subjects and citizen subjects become manageable. Credibility demands that individuals must demonstrate their own rationality and capability in the exceptional space of global circulation. Exception is harnessed when logics of economic optimization and ethicalization are maintained to legitimize different processes of channeling, sorting, and bordering. They create new articulations of mobile identities and exclusion.
The emotional and moral context of high cost, small loan lending has an important bearing on how ... more The emotional and moral context of high cost, small loan lending has an important bearing on how low-income people engage in the mixed economy of credit, which is a term used to describe the different sectors involved in providing credit, from informal trans- actions between family and friends to formal fringe financial len- ders and multinational banks. Decisions about accessing credit are constrained by more than material circumstances or access to information about the financial cost of such transactions. How individuals perceive different credit options is also influenced by emotions such as shame, guilt or anger. The emotional dimension is critical for understanding how, where and when individuals access credit. The policy field needs to give more attention to these neglected dimensions of decision-making, particularly since ‘financial literacy’ programs targeted at low-income households assume that lack of financial and budgetary knowledge is the key issue. Here, we argue, drawing on an empirical study, that a wider range of cultural and emotional factors needs to be taken into account in making sense of the social relations of money, credit and debt.
This article investigates the embodied experiences of “exceptionality” of casino resort employees... more This article investigates the embodied experiences of “exceptionality” of casino resort employees in Singapore. Working in Singapore’s newly-opened mega-casino resorts, migrant and local employees claim a sense of agency over their own professionalism, mobilities, and moralities. Actively equipping themselves with expertise, knowledge, experiences, and certain moral attitudes, casino employees practice a particular kind of “self-fashioning” suited for the global labor market. The “self-fashioning” is oriented towards becoming “exceptional,” in the sense that casino employees are encouraged to be highly skilled, well connected, globally mobile, and keenly self- disciplined. However, the more casino employees are conditioned by codes of “exceptionality,” the more vulnerable they are when faced with career insecurities, future uncertainties, and moral dilemmas. This article argues that the self-fashioning of casino employees can be both empowering and suppressing. While waged employees are eager to participate in the flexible labor market, they are also held captive by the regime of exceptionality.
This paper examines how discrepant governmental rationalities and processes produce friction and ... more This paper examines how discrepant governmental rationalities and processes produce friction and shifting experiences of subjectification as transmigrants cross borders. Using the experiences of mainland Chinese marriage migrants in Singapore as an example, the paper explores the notion of ‘transgovernmental friction’ and how it reinforces state boundaries, reshapes body politics, and animates waiting as an active practice that transforms migrant subjectivities. Locating the workings of governmentality, mobility, and space in the domain of transnational marriage and family, the paper brings to light the friction and crevices of governmental processes across borders and the embodied politics of im/mobility.
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Publications by Juan Zhang