Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2025

 

Remittance as Belonging:

Global Migration, Transnationalism, and the Quest for Home

 

Hasan Mahmud

 

Date: April 30, 2025

Time: 17:30-19:00 (JST)

Format: In person only

Venue: Room 301, 3F, Building 10, Sophia University

Registration: Not required

 

Remittance as Belonging argues that migrants' remittances express their sense of belonging and connectedness to their country of origin. Drawing on three and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork with Bangladeshi migrants in Tokyo and Los Angeles, Hasan Mahmud demonstrates that while migrants go abroad for various reasons, they travel essentially as members of their family and community and maintain their belonging to home through transnational practices including remittance sending. By conceptualizing remittance as an expression of migrants' belonging, the book presents detailed accounts of remittances' emergence, growth, decline and revival as a function of transformations in migrants' sense of belonging to home.  

 

Dr. Hasan Mahmud is an Assistant Professor in Residence at Northwestern University in Qatar, dedicated to exploring the lived experiences of migrants and the structures that shape their mobility, identity, and belonging. He holds a PhD and MA in Sociology from UCLA, an MA in Global Studies from Sophia University in Tokyo, and an MSS and BSS in Sociology from the University of Dhaka. He is the author of Remittance as Belonging: Global Migration, Transnationalism, and the Quest for Home (2024) and co-editor of Beyond Economic Migration (2023).

 

Honored on the Rector's List at the United Nations University in Tokyo representing Sophia University Global Studies program, Dr. Mahmud brings a decolonial perspective to migration studies, ensuring that migrant agency and aspirations remain at the forefront of academic and policy discussions. Through his teaching and scholarship, he seeks to foster deeper, more empathetic understandings of migration, globalization, and transnational belonging

 

This talk is organized by James Farrer (Professor of Sociology, Sophia University).