We hope that the sessions will also provide the basis for a social gathering of geographers working in Southeast Asia or with Southeast Asian migrant communities elsewhere in the world.

1) Globalizing Food and Commodity Networks in Southeast Asia

This session seeks to explore the ways in which Southeast Asian food systems and natural resource commodities are increasingly integrated into globalized networks of investment, trade, retailing, and regulation.  Processes of interest include:  certification processes for food products and resource commodities;  alternative production and consumption arrangements;  the expansion of European supermarket chains into SE Asia;  the role of non-corporate networks in regulating linkages to global markets; agrarian change resulting from integration into globalized commodity markets; commodity chains and transformations at village and household scales.

2) Migration and Identity in/from Southeast Asia

This session explores the identity transitions and transformations that Southeast Asian migrants (and their left-behind families) undergo as a result of relocation.  The movements might include rural-urban or lowland-upland migration within national boundaries, temporary (but possibly long-lasting) assignments for contract work elsewhere in Asia, or permanent settlement in North America, Europe, or Australia.  How do migrants recompose and renegotiate gender/generational/ethnic/class/place identities in their new settings?  How does migration rework identities in places of out-migration?  What images of rural origins persist for rural-urban or transnational migrants and what are the material effects of these imaginaries? What is the future of sub-national regional identities in a context of greater mobility?