ABSTRACT While increasing scholarly interest in ‘digital foodscapes’ has highlighted the politics of food‐based capitalism and the digitalisation of food in urban contexts, less attention has been paid to the everyday digital practices around foodwork in transnational households connecting migrants and their left‐behind families. The failure to account for how pervasive and intertwined the digital is in transnational families' foodwork practices presents an incomplete picture of the gender and generational dynamics that are imbricated in digital media technologies. To fill this gap, we draw on multi‐sited in‐depth interviews and visual food diaries from a study of migrant domestic workers in Singapore and their left‐behind children in the Philippines. By focusing our analytical lenses on both migrant mothers and left‐behind children, and the logics and logistics of their digital foodwork practices, we attend to three interrelated themes. First, we analyse migrant mothers' discourses and practices of foodwork in the proximate space of the homeland and the mediated space of smartphones. Next, we uncover foodwork relationality by examining how left‐behind children engage and negotiate with the mediated foodwork of long‐distance mothers and other carers. Lastly, we examine how digital foodwork in transnational families shapes the reconstitution of gendered and generational ‘transnational foodcare chains’.
ABSTRACT Despite being one of Hong Kong's largest ethnic minorities, Filipino migrants have a significant albeit understated impact on its foodscape. Hong Kong has a reputation for being a culinary melting pot, yet Philippine food has only recently gained popularity and visibility among its broader population. However, since the influx of foreign domestic labor in the 1970s, Filipinos have found various ways to access homeland foods abroad. This paper explores how Filipino migrants in Hong Kong have established food networks to meet demand for Philippine products. I employ the Filipino term sari‐sari (‘varied’) to describe the multiple ways through which these products arrive and circulate within the migrant community. These transnational networks differ in scale, from large‐scale importers to individuals transporting goods in suitcases. Beyond these logistics, I emphasize the personal, social, and cultural significance of these foods, tracing how social relationships punctuate and enable their flows. In particular, I discuss how Filipino grocery stores in Hong Kong continue and transform the tradition of sari‐sari stores from the Philippines. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted from June 2024 to April 2025 among Filipino domestic helpers in Hong Kong, I analyse migrant Filipino foodways through three cases across scales: Filipino grocery stores, food networks, and the production and consumption of cassava cake. These examples illuminate issues of food security, as well as performances of class, culture, identity, and community for migrants.
ABSTRACT In rural Thailand, unclear and unregulated property rights of state forestlands have led, for decades, to conflicting land claims between state agencies and villagers. To solve this problem, on the one hand, grassroots activists proposed the communal land title bill so that local people could obtain formal recognition of their land rights and secure government support in the development of their land and livelihoods. On the other hand, the government, due to its opposition to any attempt to privatize public land, has offered usufruct rights to formalize farmers' occupation of state forestland without granting de jure property rights, a programme known as Kor Tor Chor (KTC). Viewing the issues through the lens of a property rights system, this paper contextualizes the conjuncture of state views and villager views regarding rights and the security of land tenure and livelihoods beyond the rigid spectrum of state, private and common property. We argue that the variant outcomes of the KTC programme have been influenced by multi‐party coalitions of state actors, non‐state actors and local communities' desires for development and environment integration in the backdrop of the historical specificity of locality. The paper utilizes cases in Nan Province, northern Thailand, to exemplify the potential for the bottom‐up formalization of land rights as an alternative to top‐down and across‐the‐board schemes implemented by national state agencies.
ABSTRACT This article examines Indigenous planning as a vital epistemological and practical framework for disaster risk reduction in the Pacific, centering Hawaiian knowledge systems. Through case studies of the 2018 Kīlauea eruption and the 2023 Lahaina wildfire, this paper demonstrates how ʻike Hawaiʻi—utilising kupuna lensing (Hawaiian analytic research method), moʻolelo (stories) and Hawaiian naming practices—offers culturally grounded approaches to reducing risks from disasters. The article argues that Pacific communities in Hawaiʻi, Aotearoa and Fiji reframe dominant disaster planning paradigms by asserting relational ethics, intergenerational resilience and cultural infrastructure utilisation. Challenging dominant views about Pacific cultural heritage, it is argued that this heritage serves as an active site of Indigenous planning, resilient urban design and community action. The paper calls for a paradigm shift in disaster planning and policy—one that centers Indigenous methodologies, language and land‐based relationships. By situating Hawaiian planning practice within broader Pacific Indigenous geographies, the article contributes to decolonial scholarship and advocates for integrating Indigenous frameworks into mainstream planning discourse. This approach affirms that Indigenous planning is not supplementary but foundational to sustainable futures in the region.
Against the backdrop of sustained demographic contraction across the Asia-Pacific, the developmental state (DS) paradigm, long premised on growth, faces profound challenges. While existing research on shrinking regions focuses on urban planning, little attention has been paid to how the state restructures its spatial power under contraction. Drawing on South Korea's Regional Innovation-centred University Support System (RISE) framework and "Glocal University 30" policy, this article examines how the DS adjusts its spatial governance logic by mobilising higher education as a territorial tool. Through a multi-scalar textual analysis, the study finds that South Korea's reform constitutes a mechanism of spatial consolidation via competitive resource allocation. Under contractionary conditions, the state advances administrative rescaling: formally devolving power to local governments while intensifying central control through performance metrics and competitive funding. This creates a "differentiated survival structure" where flagship universities become regional anchor nodes while peripheral ones face accelerated decline. The article conceptualises this as "Competitive Shrinkage Governance." These findings suggest that for Asia-Pacific economies facing similar "post-growth" demographic traps, the DS maintains spatial order through strategic institutional differentiation, offering critical lessons for regional governance in an era of demographic contraction.
