Introduction: Politics of Citizenship and Transnational Gendered Migration in East and Southeast Asia

Even in this age of globalization when people, ideas and goods readily move across national borders on an unprecedented scale, political rhetoric in support of prevailing notions of the static boundaries of citizenship remain pervasive. In particular, the increasing frequency, intensity and scale of transnational migrations?combined with innovations in transportation and communications technologies?have generated new challenges to the concept of citizenship. In the twenty-first century, it is crucial to understand the transnational and increasingly fluid definitions of collective consciousness and individual identity that cannot be understood in the context of existing conceptions of race and territorially bounded political community. Political communities across nations and historical epochs have included or excluded groups according to different and often shifting criteria. Treating citizenship and a sense of belonging as unfixed and subjected to changes over time, this special issue examines the politics of citizenship in selected East and Southeast Asian countries in the ages of transnational gendered migration. The special issue explores how transnational gendered?including both female and male?migration has affected citizenship or a sense of belonging from interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives. Transnational gendered migration poses a challenge to the notion of citizenship and has been an important instigator of legal and social reforms.2 Japan, South Korea, the