Mobility Humanities

This introduction, following "An Interview with Brenda S.A. Yeoh," outlines her migration research trajectory over more than thirty years by focusing on three interrelated topics: Singapore as a mobile city, mobility and infrastructures, and the Asian context. First, Yeoh approaches Singapore as a mobile city in which multiple mobilities intersect, while criticising the ideology of the global city as an enclosed city-state often imagined or aspired to by Singaporean politicians seeking to consolidate the strength of a newly independent polity. Second, in dialogue with the new mobilities paradigm that foregrounds the politics of mobility, Yeoh understands migration as a form of mobility, paying particular attention to infrastructures that facilitate and/or disrupt mobilities yet are largely taken for granted. Lastly, Yeoh examines Asian migration as distinct from European and North American experiences by emphasising "the Asian context," while simultaneously challenging the prevailing conditions of knowledge production. In this sense, her research trajectory can be seen as actively infrastructuring migration studies in the Asian context, particularly through her practice of the methodology of "inter-referencing," which extends beyond infra-Asian comparison to encompass relations between Asia and non-Asia.