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Globalisation and international mobility have led people to settle in vastly different cultural contexts. Transnationally situated migrant families are becoming a more regular feature of children's and youths' lives in today's world. Thailand, one of four major economies in Southeast Asia, hosts over half of the region's migrant workers. In 2018, there were three million migrants living in Thailand and an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 of those were children and youths. It has been noted that migration experiences constitute substantial interferences in children's and youths' development and well-being, given the environmental and cultural changes they are exposed to. However, despite this trend, very few studies focus on the children of migrant workers. Language and language acquisition are central issues in debates about transculturation, cultural identity in transnational migration, as well as integration in host countries. Based on qualitative research with Myanmar migrant workers' children, aged between 12 and 18, in two Migrant Learning Centres (MLCs) in Ranong province in southern Thailand, this study contributes to current debates on transnational family migration by arguing for the centrality of language acquisition in the everyday lives of young migrants and their self-perceived integration into the host society.

PurposeThis article presents fieldwork perspectives and research reflexivity gained from the cross-national research team, with the aim of promoting better qualitative research practices in transnational research. It focuses on how the team incorporates diverse cultural perspectives and insider and outsider roles to enhance the research in the data collection process.Design/methodology/approachThis article is drawn from the authors' qualitative research with 25 Japanese retirees in Thailand, addressing cultural challenges encountered by researchers in the cross-national team when conducting field research.FindingsOur findings indicate that researchers with an emic view in the cross-national team who shared nationality and cultural background as the participants facilitated an effective recruitment process and productive collaboration in data gathering. They also served as cultural brokers, tailoring smooth communication during interviews on certain cultures, participant traits and sensitive issues. On the other hand, the outsiders helped the team uncover more transnational issues that the insiders had overlooked. Additionally, combining emic and etic perspectives helps to avoid ethnocentric narratives or purely etic and emic conclusions.Originality/valueThis article addresses a gap in the methodological reflections in transnational research that remains largely overlooked. Our reflection highlights the advantages of cross-national teams, which include researchers from emigration and immigration countries. Their status and roles as insiders and outsiders significantly facilitate a positive impact on the research process and increase the extent of investigating the complex cultural dynamics of transnational practices. The incorporation of emic and etic perspectives is suggested in the methodological approach for transnational migration research.

Southeast Asian countries host significant numbers of forcibly displaced populations, both within countries and across borders. This brief review paper provides a basic overview on recent forced migration research in Southeast Asia for the period 2013 to 2018. To this end, a keyword search with two predefined sets of search terms was carried out in the Web of Science database in September 2018. The identified research literature corpus was then analyzed regarding persons of concern, study site(s) (country/ies) as well as main drivers of migration. The results show that the major part of studies focuses on refugees and asylum seekers in the region's main host countries, namely Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. This correspondence between current research trends and the distribution of refugees and asylum seekers in Southeast Asia could, however, not be identified for internally displaced persons (IDPs). Although Southeast Asian countries account for a substantial share of worldwide IDPs, only a very limited number of identified studies focus on this group of persons of concern. (ASEAS/GIGA)