Sealing Cheng - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Sealing Cheng
Paradoxes of Neoliberalism, 2021
Violence Against Women, 2008
Commentary on Hughes, Chon, and Ellerman C oncerns about trafficking arise at the turn of the 21s... more Commentary on Hughes, Chon, and Ellerman C oncerns about trafficking arise at the turn of the 21st century in the context of burgeoning migration. Generated by increasing economic inequalities in a neoliberal global economy, the legal and illegal flows of people across borders pose both symbolic and material threats to national borders and security. Simultaneously, the abuses to which mobile populations are subjected challenge the human rights ideals pledged by the global community. Human trafficking involves the movement of people, often by illegal means, for the purpose of forced labor. The undocumented and underground natures of these activities and the lack of accurate data give much leeway to assumptions, conjectures, and generalizations. The abundance of writing on human trafficking in the past decade does not mean that these tendencies have abated. Four problems are particularly detrimental to the well-being of the populations vulnerable to the abuses that take place in human trafficking: (a) conflation of human trafficking with trafficking into forced prostitution, (b) haphazard use of questionable statistics and secondary sources, (c) deployment of sensational rhetoric that obscures the complex reality on the ground, and (d) emphasis on human trafficking as a consequence of transnational organized crime and thus the need for a law enforcement approach. They are harmful because they give a skewed representation of the situation, leading to falsely premised but emotionally appealing solutions. All of these problems, unfortunately, are evident in the article "Modern-Day Comfort Women: The U.S. Military, Transnational Crime, and the Trafficking of Women," by Donna M. Hughes, Katherine Y. Chon, and Derek P. Ellerman, in the September 2007 issue of Violence Against Women. The authors argue that the U.S. military bases in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) form an international hub for trafficking of women for prostitution and related forms of sexual exploitation in Korea and the United States. According to them, the military presence produces victims including migrant women and Korean women recruited into U.S. military camp towns, Korean women marrying GIs and migrating to the United States, and Korean women who work in massage parlors in the United States. One must realize that the vulnerabilities of these different groups of women are contextually generated-depending on their nationality and immigration status, their living and working conditions, and their feelings of empowerment and knowledge of channels of redress. It is, therefore, not my contestation that the U.S. military plays no part in facilitating the many human rights abuses of migrant women possible or that the institution of the military inflicts no harm on the many people whose livelihoods
Culture, Health & Sexuality, 2012
Once a woman becomes a sex slave, her life is pretty grim. She is tortured, raped and forced to d... more Once a woman becomes a sex slave, her life is pretty grim. She is tortured, raped and forced to do inconceivable things. If she is lucky enough to escape or survive, she is often infected with HIV and remains living life fearing that the traffickers will find and kill either her or her ...
Migrant Entertainers and the U.S. Military in South Korea, 2010
On the Move for Love, 2010
Migrant Entertainers and the U.S. Military in South Korea, 2010
Migration Studies, 2022
This article examines the radical politics of a fragile togetherness on the margins of the state.... more This article examines the radical politics of a fragile togetherness on the margins of the state. A small but diverse group of long-term asylum-seekers found themselves in a decade-long limbo in Hong Kong, confronting an increasingly hostile border regime, and met regularly to ‘do something as a group’. Despite the lack of any breakthrough and advice to break away as individual cases, they have persisted in staying ‘as a group’. Drawing on participant observation with the group, Our Lives Matter, the article analyzes the ways these protracted asylum-seekers relate to each other as social beings, the mutuality and togetherness they cultivate, and the political possibilities opened up by such interconnections. Building on the scholarship of conviviality that examines ‘togetherness-in-differnece’, I develop the concept of poetics of togetherness to understand these asylum-seekers’ conviviality as practice, ethics, and a method of being otherwise on the margins, invariably dialoguing wi...
Silences, Neglected Feelings, and Blind-Spots in Research Practice, 2022
Paradoxes of Neoliberalism, 2021
Beyond Virtue and Vice, 2019
Prostitution Research in Context, 2017
This article extends Sally Merry's idea of "vernacularization" of human rights by e... more This article extends Sally Merry's idea of "vernacularization" of human rights by examining its paradoxical effects. Specifically, it traces how international norms about trafficking in persons and women's human rights become vernac- ularized into anti-prostitution policies in South Korea, and how such universal ideas facilitate the re-articulation of authentic national culture and Korean womanhood. As nationhood is gendered with reference to women's sexuality, the analysis shows how the struggle to localize women's human rights in anti- prostitution reforms may challenge the state and propel reforms but also cor- roborate state nation-building. As such, it contributes to developing culturally and historically specific knowledge about the idea of human rights in relation to gender and the nation. (Keywords: Gender, trafficking, women's human rights, prostitution, South Korea, vernacularization, nationalism)
Paradoxes of Neoliberalism, 2021
Violence Against Women, 2008
Commentary on Hughes, Chon, and Ellerman C oncerns about trafficking arise at the turn of the 21s... more Commentary on Hughes, Chon, and Ellerman C oncerns about trafficking arise at the turn of the 21st century in the context of burgeoning migration. Generated by increasing economic inequalities in a neoliberal global economy, the legal and illegal flows of people across borders pose both symbolic and material threats to national borders and security. Simultaneously, the abuses to which mobile populations are subjected challenge the human rights ideals pledged by the global community. Human trafficking involves the movement of people, often by illegal means, for the purpose of forced labor. The undocumented and underground natures of these activities and the lack of accurate data give much leeway to assumptions, conjectures, and generalizations. The abundance of writing on human trafficking in the past decade does not mean that these tendencies have abated. Four problems are particularly detrimental to the well-being of the populations vulnerable to the abuses that take place in human trafficking: (a) conflation of human trafficking with trafficking into forced prostitution, (b) haphazard use of questionable statistics and secondary sources, (c) deployment of sensational rhetoric that obscures the complex reality on the ground, and (d) emphasis on human trafficking as a consequence of transnational organized crime and thus the need for a law enforcement approach. They are harmful because they give a skewed representation of the situation, leading to falsely premised but emotionally appealing solutions. All of these problems, unfortunately, are evident in the article "Modern-Day Comfort Women: The U.S. Military, Transnational Crime, and the Trafficking of Women," by Donna M. Hughes, Katherine Y. Chon, and Derek P. Ellerman, in the September 2007 issue of Violence Against Women. The authors argue that the U.S. military bases in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) form an international hub for trafficking of women for prostitution and related forms of sexual exploitation in Korea and the United States. According to them, the military presence produces victims including migrant women and Korean women recruited into U.S. military camp towns, Korean women marrying GIs and migrating to the United States, and Korean women who work in massage parlors in the United States. One must realize that the vulnerabilities of these different groups of women are contextually generated-depending on their nationality and immigration status, their living and working conditions, and their feelings of empowerment and knowledge of channels of redress. It is, therefore, not my contestation that the U.S. military plays no part in facilitating the many human rights abuses of migrant women possible or that the institution of the military inflicts no harm on the many people whose livelihoods
Culture, Health & Sexuality, 2012
Once a woman becomes a sex slave, her life is pretty grim. She is tortured, raped and forced to d... more Once a woman becomes a sex slave, her life is pretty grim. She is tortured, raped and forced to do inconceivable things. If she is lucky enough to escape or survive, she is often infected with HIV and remains living life fearing that the traffickers will find and kill either her or her ...
Migrant Entertainers and the U.S. Military in South Korea, 2010
On the Move for Love, 2010
Migrant Entertainers and the U.S. Military in South Korea, 2010
Migration Studies, 2022
This article examines the radical politics of a fragile togetherness on the margins of the state.... more This article examines the radical politics of a fragile togetherness on the margins of the state. A small but diverse group of long-term asylum-seekers found themselves in a decade-long limbo in Hong Kong, confronting an increasingly hostile border regime, and met regularly to ‘do something as a group’. Despite the lack of any breakthrough and advice to break away as individual cases, they have persisted in staying ‘as a group’. Drawing on participant observation with the group, Our Lives Matter, the article analyzes the ways these protracted asylum-seekers relate to each other as social beings, the mutuality and togetherness they cultivate, and the political possibilities opened up by such interconnections. Building on the scholarship of conviviality that examines ‘togetherness-in-differnece’, I develop the concept of poetics of togetherness to understand these asylum-seekers’ conviviality as practice, ethics, and a method of being otherwise on the margins, invariably dialoguing wi...
Silences, Neglected Feelings, and Blind-Spots in Research Practice, 2022
Paradoxes of Neoliberalism, 2021
Beyond Virtue and Vice, 2019
Prostitution Research in Context, 2017
This article extends Sally Merry's idea of "vernacularization" of human rights by e... more This article extends Sally Merry's idea of "vernacularization" of human rights by examining its paradoxical effects. Specifically, it traces how international norms about trafficking in persons and women's human rights become vernac- ularized into anti-prostitution policies in South Korea, and how such universal ideas facilitate the re-articulation of authentic national culture and Korean womanhood. As nationhood is gendered with reference to women's sexuality, the analysis shows how the struggle to localize women's human rights in anti- prostitution reforms may challenge the state and propel reforms but also cor- roborate state nation-building. As such, it contributes to developing culturally and historically specific knowledge about the idea of human rights in relation to gender and the nation. (Keywords: Gender, trafficking, women's human rights, prostitution, South Korea, vernacularization, nationalism)