Everyday Worldmaking: Comparative Experiences of Asian Migrant Women in Paris and Singapore

The project seeks to find the ways and forms in which migrant women, Chinese, Indian and Sri Lankan, who come to Paris and Singapore weave themselves into the city and its fabric by various assertions of capacities that enable their social worlds in a foreign city. As migrant women, homelessness and spacelessness are an accompaniment. Away from home, in a new social-cultural space, women are expected to navigate through the city, people, norms, and cultural values by appearing passive. In our study, we aim to understand Chinese, Indian, and Sri Lankan migrant women's lives in Paris and Singapore as they navigate the city as spouses, mothers, single or divorced and partners of working professionals as they embody varied roles irrespective of how the state views and labels them. In this regard, we aim to study migrant women and various tactics implemented to be residents with cosmopolitan sensibilities across two metropolitan cities that envisage diverse liveability with endless opportunities. We will be examining activities and engagements undertaken by women as part of their everyday to bring their subjectivity beyond a singular identity of working or dependent. This is done by studying their creativity and capacities carried as skillsets from their home country.  Analytical frameworks of right to the city, belonging, cosmopolitanism, creativity, placemaking, situational agency, friendships, and gendered informal economy will be used to study phenomenon of agentive gendered migrant world making.  

This project is a laureate of the Paris-NUS Joint Research Projects Call for proposals 2024.