Associate Professor Sverre Molland
Areas of expertise
- Anthropology Of Development 160101
- Social And Cultural Anthropology 160104
- Migration 160303
- Social Policy 160512
- Government And Politics Of Asia And The Pacific 160606
- Social Theory 160806
- Studies Of Asian Society 169903
- Labour, Migration And Development 440403
Research interests
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 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.
Biography
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 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 anti-trafficking interventions along the Lao-Thai border. My recent research examines how “safe migration” has become an important modality of migration governance in the Mekong region. My current research examines anti-trafficking, modern slavery and safe migration aid modalities in a comparative perspective.
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).
Researcher's projects
Slavery, trafficking or safety? shifting migration governance regimes
This project aims to investigate why exploitation of labour migrants persists despite two decades of human trafficking, modern slavery and safe migration policy interventions. Focusing on the Mekong region, it expects to generate new knowledge of the comparative impacts of these shifting policy responses. An important analytical concern in this ongoing research is to go beyond merely critiquing these discourses to interrogate why they come into being and how they are mobilised. Expected outcomes include a new theoretical framework for analysing migration intervention models which can be used to inform future approaches, and the development of a series of international policy recommendations.
The project aims to:
- chart the comparative, ethnographic analysis of modern slavery, human trafficking and safe migration intervention modalities.
- craft migration policy futures by building an inter-disciplinary community of scholars that articulate new theoretical frameworks for analysing migration intervention modalities.
- translating research findings into policy and programme recommendations.
What is safe about “safe migration”? Migration management in the Mekong (complete)
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.
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)
Anti-trafficking, trafficking and migration along the Mekong (complete)
My book The Perfect Business? Anti-Trafficking and the Sex Trade along the Mekong (University of Hawaii Press) is one of the first ethnographies that examines how trafficking and anti-trafficking worlds interrelate. Focusing on the Lao-Thai border, this project cricially interrogates both how labour migration unfolds as well as how anit-trafficking praxis of reproduces socially, institutionally and discursively.
Available student projects
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.
Current student projects
- 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
Past student projects
- 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)
Publications
- Molland, S & Bell, M 2022, What Moves Labour Migrants? A Study of Formal and Informal Migration Infrastructures in Myanmar [RESTRICTED - NOT FOR PUBLIC DISTRIBUTION].
- Molland, S 2022, Safe migration programme interventions: regulating migrants through anticipation, traceability, and re-embedding.
- Molland, S 2021, 'Scalability, Social Media and Migrant Assistance: Emulation or Contestation?', Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, vol. online.
- Molland, S 2021, Anchoring and tracing during COVID: two modalities of mobility governance, pp. 1-5.
- Molland, S 2021, Safe Migration and the Politics of Brokered Safety in Southeast Asia, Routledge, London.
- Molland, S 2019, 'Capitalism Disrupted: Precarity and Struggle in a Southeast Asian Industrial Zone', The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 98-99.
- Molland, S 2019, 'On trafficking survivors: biolegitimacy and multiplications of life', Dialectical Anthropology, vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 279-293.
- Molland, S 2019, 'What Happened to Sex Trafficking? The New Moral Panic of Men, Boys and Fish in the Mekong Region', Sojourn, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 397-424.
- Molland, S 2019, Safeguarding Labour Migration in the Mekong Region, pp. online.
- Molland, S 2019, ''Humanitarianized' Development? Anti-trafficking Reconfigured', Development and Change, vol. 50, no. 3, pp. 763-785.
- Molland, S 2018, 'Beyond anti-trafficking? Rethinking migration management in Asia'.
- Molland, S 2018, 'China and Development Aid: The Case of Anti-trafficking and Seafood in Southeast Asia', Made in China, vol. 3, no. 2.
- Molland, S. 2018. 'Sedentary optics: Static anti-trafficking and mobile victims', Current Anthropology. 59(2), 115-137.
- Molland, S 2017, 'Migration and mobility in laos', in Vanina Bouté and Vatthana Pholsena (ed.), Changing Lives in Laos: Society, Politics and Culture in a Post-Socialist State, NUS Press - National University of Singapore, Singapore, pp. 327-350pp.
- Molland, S 2017, 'Slow anthropology: negotiating difference with the Iu Mien', Asian Ethnicity, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 250-252pp.
- Molland, S 2016, Human trafficking. Or, modern slavery?, pp. 22-24pp.
- Molland, S, ed., 2013, Editorial: Human rights at the border.
- Molland, S 2016, 'Book Review: Life Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced Laboout in the United States Denise Brennan', International Migration Review, vol. 50, no. 3, pp. E37-E38.
- Molland, S 2015, 'Safe migration as an emerging anti-trafficking agenda?', Open Democracy, vol. On line, pp. On line.
- Molland, S 2015, Movement of People in the ASEAN Region: Nomenclature and Concepts.
- Molland, S 2014, 'In search of the perfect method: reflections on knowing, seeing, measuring and estimating human trafficking', in Sallie Yea (ed.), Human trafficking in Asia: forcing issues, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, Abingdon and New York, pp. 101-117.
- Molland, S 2014, 'An Atlas of Trafficking in Southeast Asia: The Illegal Trade in Arms, Drugs, People, Counterfeit Goods and Natural Resources in Mainland Southeast Asia Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, ed', Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 444-447.
- Molland, S 2014, 'Anthropology and Development: Culture, Morality and Politics in a Globalised World', Journal of Development Studies, vol. 50, no. 2, pp. 345-346.
- Molland, S 2013, 'Tandem ethnography: On researching "trafficking' and "anti-trafficking'', Ethnography, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 300-323.
- Molland, S. (2013, March 18). Review of Eyal Weizman “The least of all possible evils: from Arendt to Gaza.” Australian Policy Online. Retrieved May 19, 2013, from http://apo.org.au/content/least-all-possible-evils
- Molland, S 2013, 'Book review: The least of all possible evils', Australian Policy Online, pp. 5pp.
- Molland, S 2012, '"Is 'Safe Migration" Along the Thai-Lao Border Truly 'Safe'?"', Pacific Affairs, vol. Online, pp. Online.
- Molland, S 2012, The perfect business? Anti-trafficking and the sex trade along the Mekong, University of Hawaii Press, USA.
- Molland, S 2012, 'The inexorable quest for trafficking hotspots along the Thai-Lao border', in Michele Ford, Lenore Lyons, Willem van Schendel (ed.), Labour migration and human trafficking in Southeast Asia: Critical perspectives, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, Abingdon and New York, pp. 57-74.
- Molland, S 2012, 'Is 'Safe Migration' Along the Thai-Lao Border Truly 'Safe?', Asia Pacific Memo, vol. 22 May, pp. 1-2.
- Molland, S 2012, 'Professional Girlfriends in Cambodia: A review of Negotiating Intimacy: Transactional Sex and Relationships Among Cambodian Professional Girlfriends, by Heidi Hoefinger', Dissertation Reviews, vol. Sept 18, pp. 1-5.
- Molland, S 2012, 'Safe migration, dilettante brokers and the appropriation of legality: Lao-Thai "trafficking" in the context of regulating labour migration', Pacific Affairs, vol. 85, no. 1, pp. 117-136.
- Molland, S. (2013). What Has Happened to 'Sex Trafficking'? (International Organization for Migration, Ed.)Global Eye on Human Trafficking, (12/April), 11–12.
- Molland, S 2011, '"I am helping them": "Traffickers","anti-traffickers" and economies of bad faith', Australian Journal of Anthropology, The, vol. 22, pp. 236-254.
- Molland, S., 2011. The Trafficking of Scarce Elite Commodities: Social Change and Commodification of Virginity along the Mekong. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 12, pp.129-145.
- Molland, S 2010, 'The Perfect Business': Human Trafficking and Lao-Thai Cross-Border Migration', Development and Change, vol. 41, no. 5, pp. 831-855.
- Molland, S., 2010. "The Perfect Business": Human Trafficking and Lao-Thai Cross-Border Migration. Development and Change, 41(5), pp.831-855.
- Molland, S 2010, 'The value of bodies: Deception, helping and profiteering in human trafficking along the Thai-Lao border', Asian Studies Review, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 211-229.
- Molland, S., 2010. Review of 'Thinking about Development'. Forum for Development Studies, 37, pp.417-419.
- Molland, S., 2005. Human Trafficking and Poverty Reduction: Two Sides of the Same Coin? Juth Pakai, 1(4), pp.27-37.
Projects and Grants
Grants information is drawn from ARIES. To add or update Projects or Grants information please contact your College Research Office.
- What is safe about 'safe migration' Migration management in the Mekong (Primary Investigator)