Abstract: This paper examines the multiple scales and spaces of eviction that shape Indonesian migrant workers' journeys from urban margins to work sites in global cities. It traces migrants' life histories as a lens onto the spatial struggles that animate their marginal positions across multiple landscapes of urban redevelopment. The paper engages the growing body of literature on "migration infrastructures," with an emphasis on the social texture and everyday politics of the institutions tasked with managing migration. Based on extended fieldwork in West Java, and shorter-term research in Singapore and the UAE, the analysis finds both longstanding patterns of socio-spatial exclusion and state-led violence, as well as some surprising emergent political subjectivities and elements of transnational occupancy urbanism.
co-sponsored by Center for Asian Studies