Interrogating child migrants or ‘Third Culture Kids’ in Asia: An introduction

Research on children and youth involved in migration in Asia is predominantly—and understandably—concerned with those move to improve their livelihoods. This includes those young people who move with their families as well as the effects on those ‘left behind’. Substantial routes and streams include rural-to-urban migration to the burgeoning factory work sector in China in the context of industrialization (Murphy, 2002; Pun, 2005); Filipino women moving to globalizing cities, such as Hong Kong and Singapore, in the domestic work sector (Constable, 1997); Indonesian workers migrating to Malaysia or the Gulf, lured by prospects of higher wages in rubber plantations or on constructions sites (Lindquist, 2010); young Chinese moving to Japan to work or study (Coates, 2013); and young people from Myanmar crossing the border into Thailand in search of more stable and promising futures (Ball and Moselle, 2015). In addition, significant numbers of Asians migrate to the US, Canada, Australia, the Gulf countries and Europe. The processes that engender these diverse movements extend beyond Asia, however: the global flows of capital and their consequences also spark the movements of banking staff from other parts of the world to financial hubs such as Singapore (Beaverstock, 2002); transnational corporations move staff into subsidiaries across Asia; and those disaffected by what they perceive as the daily grind of life in high income countries seek temporary reprieve in the warm climes of beach resorts in Goa and Thailand (Thang et al., 2012). Further, the relatively low-income status of, for example, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar channels an influx of international aid agency staff into these countries.