My research examines the intersections between migration, development and security in a comparative perspective, with specific focus on governance regimes and intervention modalities in mainland Southeast Asia.  

There are four analytical domains that are of particular importance:

• Space-governance relations: how do spatial (and temporal) dimensions of migration policy and interventions come into being, and how do they effect interventions?
• Biolegitimacy: How does life legitimise interventions and how is life legitimated within aid and migration discourses?
• Development aid  and migration governance networks: what accounts for continuity and change within trans-institutional networks of aid and migration governance, and how can they be accounted for ethnographically?
• Intervention modalities in a comparative perspective.

I am an anthropologist specialising in the intersection between migration, aid and security in mainland Southeast Asia. Initially trained in social anthropology at University of Oslo and Asian Studies at Macquarie University in Australia, I worked for the United Nations Development Programme in the Mekong region before returning to the social sciences. After completing my PhD and a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Anthropology at Macquarie University, I was in 2012 appointed lecturer in Anthropology (Development Studies) at the Australian National University. I am the current co-editor of the Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology (TAPJA) and have served in several leadership roles, including the Discipline Head of Anthropology and Research Convenor within the School or Archaeology and Anthropology, The Australian National University.

I have two decades research and programme experience on human trafficking, development and mobility in the Mekong region. In my PhD fieldwork I carried out research on migration and sex commerce along the Lao-Thai border as well as various development organisations which implement anti-trafficking projects. My current research examines how “safe migration” has become an important modality of migration governance in the Mekong region. My overarching research agenda advances the study of the securitisation of aid and mobility in a comparative perspective. Its theoretical contribution is to illuminate how relations and structures of power permeate through development and humanitarian practices as well as how such efforts are mobilised, enacted, and legitimated. I extend my academic research through collaborations with UN agencies and other external partners through consultancies, commissioned research, and other forms of engagements.

I am the author of Safe Migration and the Politics of Brokered Safety in Southeast Asia and  The Perfect Business? Anti-Trafficking and the Sex Trade along the Mekong (University of Hawaii Press).

What is safe about “safe migration”? Migration management in the Mekong

Over the last few years, some non-governmental organisations (NGOs), International Organisations (IOs) and Governments have moved attention away from anti-trafficking and launched “safe migration” programmes in the Mekong region. Safe migration denotes a conceptual shift in policy as it targets migrants moving through space, as opposed to being confined by it. Yet, there has been no independent study into how such emergent policies and programmes are operationalised or the ways in which they affect migrants. 

This research project aims to: 

 • examine the policy and migratory contexts in which the shift from anti-trafficking programs to safe migration program is taking place; 

 • investigate how these changes, framed in policy as “safety”, are operationalised by implementers and experienced by migrants; 

 • advance anthropological theorising of migration governance by examining shifting modes of policy making which places mobility at the centre of the governing of social life;

 • enrich ethnographic methodological approaches to the study of migration and its governance; 

 • inform future policy responses, including those relating to Australia's role in the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime, bilateral funding of migration management in the region, as well as policies on seasonal workers and the 457 visa scheme in Australia. 

Despite the considerable resources devoted to managing labour migration to Australia, the Asia-Pacific Region and beyond, significant knowledge gaps remain regarding policy implementation and its impact on migrants. The focus on border control and policing of labour migrants has eclipsed scholarly attention on “safe migration” programmes. This project investigates the emergence and operationalisation of “safe migration” as a specific policy modality which seeks to enhance governments and aid programmes targeting of labour mobility in the Mekong region.

This research project has culminated in a range of research outputs including my book Safe Migration and the Politics of Brokered Safety in Southeast Asia (Routledge)

Human trafficking in the Mekong Region & Changing discourses of migration governance

I have followed the emergence and change in how anti-trafficking and related migration-policy discourses have unfolded in the Mekong region since the early 2000s. My book The Perfect Business? Anti-Trafficking and the Sex Trade along the Mekong (University of Hawaii Press) examines how trafficking and anti-trafficking worlds interrelate along the Lao-Thai border. In recent years, anti-trafficking discourses have expanded and merged with other kin-terms, such as “modern slavery”, “supply chain governance”, “migration management” and “safe migration”. An important analytical concern in this ongoing research is to go beyond merely critiquing these discourse to interrogate why to come into being and how they are mobilised.

I am keen to supervise PhD, MA and Honours theses on the broad topic of development and mobility. I have specific interests in human trafficking and forced migration, securitisation of aid as well as contemporary discourses of humanitarian exception. Although my geographical focus is on mainland Southeast Asia I maintain a keen interest in other geographical areas for comparative purposes.

• Climate, code, and culture: The social worlds of smart energy technology projects in the Pacific
• Migrant? Refugee? Neither? Both?  Human Mobility in a time of Managed Migration (PhD), Chair
• Translating Solidarity: Effects of translation on solidarity economics policy in Ecuador (PhD)
• Wartime labour migration in Sudan: An ethnography of Nuba mobility (PhD)

• People’s development aspirations and the state’s policy imperatives: An anthropology of happiness and policy planning with specific reference to Bongo village in Southwest Bhutan (PhD), Chair
• Babysitter or Mbak? : Unpacking a new type of work in Indonesia (PhD)
• The Transnational Governance of Human Trafficking in Japan (PhD)
• Australia and policy responses to refugees (MA)
• Cross-border humanitarian aid in Myanmar (PhD)
• Education policy  & nation building in Rwanda (Honours)
• Humanitarianism and development in East Timor (Honours)
• Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and UNRWA (PhD)
• Human trafficking and policy responses in a comparative perspective
• The post-MDG agenda (Honours)
• Forced Migration and Vigilantism in Malaysia (PhD)
• Development and mental health (Honours)
• Emerging Industrial Elites in Pakistan (PhD)
• Policy Entrepreneurs and Labour Migration in Indonesia (PhD)
• Learning to be Refugees : The Bhutanese in Nepal and Australia  (PhD)
• Street Children and Development in Jakarta (MA)