This talk will feature Dr. Helena Hof's latest publication "The EU Migrant Generation in Asia: Middle-Class Aspirations in Asian Global Cities." This event is co-sponsored by the Waseda Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies.

Date and venue:

January 26 (Thursday) | 18:00-19:30 JST

Hybrid: In-person at Waseda University and Online via Zoom (Registration Required)

Room 711, Building 19, Waseda University

Speaker:

Dr. Helena Hof (Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer, University of Zurich / Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity)

Dr. Helena Hof is a Visiting Researcher at the Institute of Asian Migrations (IAM), Waseda University, and an alumnus of Waseda’s Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies. In her doctoral and postdoctoral research at Waseda, she focused on the entanglements of physical mobility, career mobility, and social mobility in European migrants’ early-career trajectories in the global cities of Tokyo, Singapore, and Sao Paulo. Helena’s home institution is the University of Zurich where she is a Senior Research and Teaching Fellow at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies. She also holds an affiliation as a Research Fellow with the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany (MMG-MPG) where she started a new four-year research project in March 2021.

Abstract:

Drawing on an extensive study with young individuals who migrated to Singapore and Tokyo in the 2010s, this book sheds light on the friendships, emotions, hopes and fears involved in establishing life as Europeans in Asia.

It demonstrates how migration to Asian business centres has become a way of distinction and an alternative route of middle-class reproduction for young Europeans during that period. The perceived insecurities of life in the crisis-ridden EU result in these migrants’ onward migration or prolonged stays in Asia.

Capturing the changing roles of Singapore and Japan as migration destinations, this pioneering work makes the case for EU citizens’ aspired lifestyles and professional employment that is no longer only attainable in Europe or the West.