The forthcoming CHASM seminar will be delivered by Dr Seb Rumsby, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Birmingham’s Institute for Research into International Migration and Superdiversity (IRiS), on September 30th, 2025. Dr Rumsby is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research encompasses everyday politics, migrant labour exploitation, irregular migration, ethno-religious politics, grassroots development, and financialization.

This presentation examines the strategies by which marginalized labour migrants endeavour to sustain livelihoods in the context of precarious employment, indebtedness arising from migration financing, remittance obligations, and inflationary pressures. Focusing on the recent migration of Vietnamese workers to the United Kingdom, the seminar situates migrants’ financial and employment decisions within the broader political economy shaped by financial and immigration regimes in both sending and receiving countries. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork with the Vietnamese community in the UK, Dr Rumsby will analyse the rationales underpinning migrants’ economic practices amidst legal precarity and exploitative labour conditions.

For registration, visit the University of Birmingham event page.