Summer in Malaysia

Ethnographies of Displacement

Sarah Lawrence College and the Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement and Education

June 1 - June 23, 2024

Bard, Bennington, Sarah Lawrence, and Vassar colleges have joined forces to form the Consortium of Forced Migration, Displacement and Education (CFMDE). This consortium was formed as a response to the unprecedented acceleration of forced migration throughout the world due to war, political/ethnic/religious persecution, and poverty. Our students will be engaging in a number of different learning initiatives including, at the core, an innovative shared curriculum in Forced Migration across all four campuses.

As a signature project of CFDME, the Malaysia program offers undergraduate students from across Consortium colleges the opportunity to visit and learn about issues and challenges facing marginalized and displaced communities outside of a Western context. An estimated 150,000 Rohingya refugees live in Malaysia. Malaysia is also a major destination country for migrant workers from Indonesia, Thailand, India, Nepal, Philippines, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. The unofficial count of undocumented workers and displaced peoples ranges from around 200,000 to 300,000.

Migrants (refugees, guest-workers, and undocumented alike) find themselves navigating the challenges of everyday in Malaysia in ways that require ingenuity, creativity, and mutual trust between different cultural and ethnic groups. Informality becomes critical for those who seek to find resources and ways to secure a dignified life in the major cities of Malaysia. Migrants turn to informal means to finding homes, forming relationships, finding employment, and building lives in the new country. In cities like Georgetown and Kuala Lumpur, different communities of migrants, including refugees, often live in the same spaces and neighborhoods, relying upon each other in forms of grounded cosmopolitanism for support and resources. These include taking care of children and elderly, caring for the sick, cooking for different families, and providing financial assistance during emergencies.

Using Malaysia as an international field site will allow for greater engagement with issues of forced migration and displacement in that region of the world; for example, the ongoing crisis of Rohingya refugees from Burma and the major problem of human trafficking affecting the region. Everyday migrant life in Malaysia offers profoundly different perspectives on the experiences of different communities, allowing us to challenge commonly held beliefs and assumptions about migration. For instance, formal socio-legal categorizations that distinguish between documented and undocumented migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers are often not enough to help us understand the ambiguity and diversity of experiences and practices that such communities engage in. By turning the focus on informal and the everyday, we will pay attention to practices of place-making and community building that migrant communities from various backgrounds engage in, individually and collectively.

Curriculum

Fieldwork and Ethnography: 2 Credits (to be issued by the student’s home institution)

During the program in Malaysia, students will be required to conduct visits to different sites for at least two hours each day. They will need to conduct mini ethnographic observations* at the sites, in addition to any interviews or conversations with professionals, experts, and activists that they may be meeting. The group will then meet together each afternoon to share and discuss their experiences and work for the day, followed by an hour of writing of reflections and field notes. As part of their written assignment, these reflections will be shared in a private blog that each student will post to daily.

*Please note that students will not be conducting interviews with any members of the groups, homes or schools they visit.  No one is permitted to interact with any members of any groups, homes or school without consent and supervision by the staff at these facilities.

Course Goals & Expectations 

The focus of this program is to provide students with the opportunity to learn how to conduct ethnographic research and writing in a non-western social and cultural setting. To prepare, students will be given a series of key texts to read beforehand on key elements of participant observation and ethnographic writing, which they would then be expected to apply during daily site visits, observations, and interviews. In addition, students will also read and discuss scholarship pertaining to migration, culture, and society in Southeast Asia and Malaysia. At the sites in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, students will spend two hours each day conducting observations at various sites listed for the program. At the end of each day, students will record their field notes and reflections, which will become part of their term project. Students will also be expected to present and share their work as part of the Consortium’s Annual Teaching Lab at one of the four member colleges.

Students will travel to Kuala Lumpur, where they will be provided an orientation and training for conducting ethnographic research in Malaysia, followed by two weeks of site visits. The group will then travel to Cameron Highlands for a three day stay. The group will then travel to Georgetown, Penang, where they will stay in hostels/homestay in the center of the old Georgetown. While in Penang, students will meet together with Dr. Muniandy every day in the morning before travelling as a group to different sites in Penang Island, including refugee settlements in Butterworth and Seberang Prai.