Pei Palmgren
Biography
I aim to understand the varied and shifting arrangements of control that migrants confront in search of livelihoods and security. To this end, I study migrant labor regulation, brokerage and guestwork governance, borderlands and sociospatial control, and forced migration and refugee resettlement, with an area emphasis on Southeast Asia. As an ethnographer, I examine these phenomena on the ground and in relation to political economies of development, global production, and international human rights.
My dissertation is a comparative ethnography of labor migration governance in Thailand. Drawing from participant observation in migrant rights organizations and in-depth interviews with migrant workers from Myanmar, Thai government officers, employers, and documentation brokers, I compare two regimes of labor migration to explain how, why, and with what consequences one state advances divergent systems to regulate and reproduce low-wage migrant labor.
Degrees
- MA Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
- MA Humanities and Social thought, New York University
- BA Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
Fields of Study
Political sociology, international migration, displacement, development, Southeast Asia, comparative ethnography and qualitative methods
Publications
- 2020. “Onward pushes and negotiated refuge: theorizing the fluid national and urban regimes of forced migration in Southeast Asia.” in Displacement: Global Conversations on Refuge. Edited by Silvia Pasquetti and Romola Sanyal. Manchester University Press.
- 2017. “Survival and integration: Kachin social networks and refugee management regimes in Kuala Lumpur and Los Angeles.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 34(13): 2247-2264.
- 2014. “Irregular Networks: Bangkok Refugees in the City and Region.” Journal of Refugee Studies, 27(1):21-41.
- 2011. “Navigating a Hostile Terrain: Refugees and Human Rights in Southeast Asia.” Sociology Compass, 5: 323-335.
Awards & Grants
- UCLA Graduate Division, Dissertation Year Fellowship, 2021
- UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (Thai), 2020-2021
- National Science Foundation, Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement, 2020-2021
- UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (Thai), 2018-2019
- UCLA International Institute Fieldwork Fellowship, 2017
- Social Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, 2016
- UCLA Sociology Department Excellence in Teaching Award, 2014-2015
- UCLA Graduate Division, Graduate Research Mentorship, 2015-2016
- UCLA Graduate Division, Graduate Summer Research Mentorship, 2015
- Ford Foundation, Predoctoral Fellowship (alternate – honorable mention), 2015
- UCLA Graduate Division, Graduate Summer Research Mentorship, 2014
- National Science Foundation, Graduate Research Fellowship (honorable mention), 2014
- UCLA Department of Sociology Fellowship, 2013-14, 2017-18
