Anthropology of migration, Migration and Legality, Gender and Family, International Development, Early Childhood Intervention

Vietnam, Germany

Thi Thanh Nga Mai is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies (ISEK), University of Zürich. At ISEK, she works in the SNSF-funded project ‘Saving brains? Applying Ethnography to Early Childhood Interventions in the Global South’ chaired by Gabriel Scheidecker. Her focus is about early childhood interventions in the specific context of Vietnam. Specifically, she explores how such interventions unfold on the ground, the experiences of the subjected families, and expected as well as unexpected consequences. Before ISEK, Nga worked in the field of parenting support provided to families with migration background in Berlin. Between 2016 and 2021, she worked at the Max Planck Institute for the Religious and Ethnic Diversity on Vietnamese immigration to Germany. For her PhD, which she received in 2021 from the University of Amsterdam, she studied how the legalization processes had shaped intimacy and family relationships of Vietnamese migrants.

Hall, A., Manajit, S., & Mai, N.T.T. (2011). Migrant workers' rights to social protection in ASEAN: Case studies of Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung

Ngo, T.T., & Mai, N. T. (2021). In search of a Vietnamese Buddhist space in Germany, in (eds.) Meyer, B. & van der Veer, P., Refugees and Religion. Bloomsbury.

Mai, N.T.T., & Scheidecker G. (2020). Die Unterschätzten: Ein Kurzporträt der neuen Migration aus Vietnam nach Deutschland. in VLaB., Ist Zuhause da, wo die Sternfrüchte süß sind? Viet-Deutsche Lebensrealitäten im Wandel. Regiospectra Verlag Berlin

Research Project:

Saving Brains? Applying Ethnography to Early Childhood Interventions in the Global South