At the heart of student migration education, mobility, and the time space production of everyday life

 I want to thank the members of Social and Cultural Geographies Reading Group at the Geography department NUS for creating a critical and tolerant learning space for graduate students t

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The completion of this thesis would not have been possible without the support, understanding, and guidance from some important people in my graduate life While I

wonder if all the people I list below would eventually have a chance to read my

words of thanks and gratitude, I think it is important to document

‘acknowledgements’ First, it creates a space in the thesis to speak about all other forms of efforts and relations otherwise erased from the ‘academic representation’ of

my research Second, it allows me to reflect on my academic journey and be reminded that the time has come for this chapter to close (for another to begin) The two years of graduate study has been made more fruitful by the following people:

 I am deeply grateful to my supervisor, Professor Brenda S.A Yeoh You have been a huge inspiration and role model in my academic journey since the undergraduate days I truly enjoyed working with and learning from you I would not have travelled this far without your constant encouragement, guidance, and flexibility

as an academic advisor, as well as the numerous opportunities given to me – they have helped tremendously in grooming me into an aspiring scholar Words cannot express my heartfelt gratitude!

 Special thanks go to A/P Shirlena Huang and A/P Tracey Skelton for your support and belief in my academic work Without your time and effort, my route to postgraduate study would not have been this smooth

 Several colleagues from the department have given encouragement throughout my stay with Geography – A/P Pow Choon Piew, Dr Harvey Neo, Dr Jamie Gillen, Dr Elaine Ho, Dr Sin Harng Luh, Dr Karen Lai Special mention goes to Dr Francis Collins (University of Auckland) for unreservedly sharing your ideas and opinions

 Graduate peers constitute a crucial part of my life as a graduate student here at

NUS ‘Old friends’: Jared Wong, Yong Mingli, Tan Qianhui, Erica Yap; ‘old

seniors’: Su Guojie, Vincent Song, Stacy Oon; ‘new friends’: Jason Lin, Heli Ponto The graduate room would be a ‘dead space’ if not for your breath of life To Dr Woon Chih Yuan, even though you are a colleague, you have been more a ‘peer’ and

‘friend’ – thanks for the drink sessions and I am sure there will be more to come!

 I want to thank the members of Social and Cultural Geographies Reading Group at the Geography department (NUS) for creating a critical and tolerant learning space for graduate students to voice their thoughts and opinions I also want to extend my thanks to members of the Migration Cluster for their support Graduate life would never be the same without ‘intellectual circles’ such as these

 I also thank my ‘usual’ clique of secondary school friends and undergraduate Geography friends – too long a list to be reflected here – for the countless weekends

of laughter and ‘slacking’ together

 Finally, to my family – mother, sister, and brother – thanks for the patience you have shown towards my ‘relentless pursuit of study’ Without your accommodation and understanding, I would not have been able to find the space and time to concentrate on my studies Another three more years to go, but I will be back!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Chapter One – Introduction

1.2 Stories of Student Migration from Singapore 2

Chapter Two Theoretical Junctures

2.2 Globalizing Spaces of Education: a Case of Student Migration 8

2.2.1 From ‘International’ to ‘Transnational' Student Migration 9 2.2.2 A ‘Student-Centered’ Perspective: Stories through the ‘Body’ 12 2.3 Critical Perspectives on Young People, Education, and Migration 14

2.3.1 Lifecourse, Mobility, and Migration 15 2.3.2 ‘Scholarization’ of Young People’s Lives 18 2.3.3 The Networks, Connections, and Ties that Bind 20 2.3.4 The Social (Re)production of Everyday Life 24

2.4.4 Time, Space, and Geographies of Student Migration 30

Chapter Three Singapore’s Higher Education Landscape

3.2 Education for Internationalization and Global Aspirations 34 3.3 Singapore as Education Hub in (Southeast) Asia 37

Chapter Four Research Methodologies

5.1 Introduction 56 5.2 ‘Going Away’ for Change and Continuity 57 5.3 Politics of Pace, Speed, and Slowness 61

4.2 Assembling Research Subjects: Listening to Whose Voices? 42

Chapter Five Education Migration: Stories of Youth, Transition,

and Futurity

Chapter Six Transnational Intimacy: Spatio-Temporal Production of

Proximate and Distant Lives

6.2 The Times and Spaces of Intimacies: the Story/Strategy of Aulia 82 6.3 Doing Intimacy I: Information and Communication Technologies 86

6.3.1 “Ya da ya da”: the Banal Politics of Calling Home 88 6.3.2 Skype: Virtual Co-Presence and the Intimacy of Bodies 91 6.3.3 Facebook: an Online Transnational Diary 97 6.4 Doing Intimacy II: The Persistence and Politics of ‘Visiting’ 99

6.4.1 The Reasons, Rhythms, and Work of Visiting Home 100 6.4.2 The Cultural Politics of Physical Co-Presence 104

Chapter Seven Conclusion: At the Heart of Student Migration

7.3 Education Mobilities, Social Reproduction, and Time-Space 112

SUMMARY

In a recent issue from Progress in Human Geography, Holloway et al (2010)

proposed that engaging with the literature on children, youth and families advances our understanding of the social and cultural geographies of education In their paper, they foreground existing studies that have sought to place the experiences of students-as-young people at the center of discussion This research builds on the argument that there is inadequate attention paid to the diverse socio-spatial relations and student migrants’ subjectivities, and aims to construct a more grounded, intimate, and accountable rendering of the globalizing spaces of education In centering students at the heart of the everyday, quotidian, and transnational geographies of education migration, geographers have expounded on the power

of space and place in producing, differentiating, and maintaining the socio-interactions and relations of these young people on the move Whether these are discussed through their class-travelling aspirations, youthful impulses, changing subject positions and identities, or the connectivities and ties that bind them with people and places afar, there is a strong underlying concern with how young students’ everyday lives unfold through the organization of space and place

Yet, the social (re)production of everyday life is not only contingent on the changing constellation of ‘space’/’spatiality’, but also ‘time’/’temporality’ Here, I

am interested in reflecting on, and making clear, how ‘time’ (and ‘space’) is also complicit in the production of student migrants’ intimate lives Viewed in this manner, my research takes student migration as an arena for the making, maintenance, and resistance of the routinizing effects of globalizing education spaces First, I examine how everyday temporalities in the lives of young Southeast Asian migrant students shape the ways they articulate their education migration experiences

and futures in geographically and temporally sensitive ways Second, I identify the

key transnational practices involved in the production of the complex geographies of intimacy to show how personal relationships are constantly made and re-made through changing socio-spatial and temporal demands Through the analytical chapters, I show that the motivations, mobilities and experiences of education migration, and the diverse transnational connectivities that they are refracted through, are highly differentiated and constantly (re)made through the changing configurations

of time and space This underlines the complex and contingent processes that are involved in the production of human subjectivities and relations at the heart of the student migration phenomenon

My research is conducted in Singapore with 30 Southeast Asian overseas students through a variety of methods, including in-depth semi-structured interviews, diaries/blogs, and informal (online) conversations This multi-method approach allowed me to obtain a more multiple reading of student migrants’ practices of spacing and timing

Keywords

Student migration, Times-space, Social reproduction, Everyday life, Singapore

LIST OF TABLES

Page

4.2 Observations and Reflections from Research Diary, 24 May 2011 50 4.3 Observations and Reflections from Research Diary, 19 July 2011 52

LIST OF FIGURES

Page 3.1 ASEAN Scholarship, Nurturing Young Minds 39

LIST OF PLATES

4.1 Page from a solicited diary with explicit acknowledgement

Page

53 that the author is both a ‘character’ and solicitor of the diary

5.1 Vignette from Vanessa’s journal entry on 27 June 2011 70 6.1 Skype session on 22 May 2011 with elder brother and his daughter 93

in the Philippines (top left), parents in U.S (top right), elder sister

in Vietnam (bottom left), Muriel in Singapore (bottom right)

6.2 Skype session on 6 March 2011 with mother (left), 94

elder brother and his daughter (top right), elder sister asking for

a kiss from the niece (bottom right), Muriel (bottom left)