Increasing attention has focused on migrant mobility.  In this Satellite Workshop, in combination with one of the Main Symposium Panels entitled “The Construction of Migrants’ Social Spaces: Issues of Mobility, Locality, and Trans-Border Networks,” we will focus on the bilateral relations between migrants and their homelands and discuss the associated dynamic changes of societies and regions.

Social science researchers have approached population mobility research from political, economic, and cultural methodologies.  However, most previous studies have perceived migration as a linear, one-way movement, assuming that migrants change their status simply from emigrants to settlers, and have discussed socio-cultural changes in this regard in host communities or in homelands.  For example, migration issues have been examined through themes such as assimilation, adaptation, accommodation, confrontation with local societies, and transformation of migrants’ culture and identity.  Migration has also been analyzed from an outsiders’ perspective, based on push/pull theory and macro-level political and economic factors, without referring to the socio-cultural factors and the experiences of the migrants themselves.

Migration is created and negotiated through communication between migrants and their homelands.  In other words, the homeland is not only the place of origin but is also articulated and imagined symbolically by the migrants, according to the changing socio-cultural environments in which they live.  Therefore, we must explore how the social space of migrants is shaped and created dynamically, not from outsiders’ perspectives, but from the migrants’ own experiences, ideas, and perceptions.  Furthermore, the study of mobility also relates to inter-regional networks that reach beyond bounded territories.