ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on temporary migrants, delving into the relationships, tensions and anomalies in the everyday lives of migrants. The bureaucratic and political management of migration is commonly framed and debated as if it were a set of issues separate from the needs and interests of migrants as well as residents and citizens. The chapter also focuses on fieldwork conducted as part of a study of temporary migrants in the Asia Pacific, the project ‘Fluid Security in the Asia Pacific’. It aims to apply the concepts of (un)knowing and ambivalence to the everyday lives of migrant workers to elicit the subtleties from detailed, trusting conversations and to acknowledge and appreciate that which is not said. The chapter describes the liminal in the lives of temporary migrants, with ambiguity as an intermediate state of being. For temporary migrants this can feel like being in a ‘stuck place’ – not being able to move forward or backward.
