Stigmatisation, identities and the law: Asian and comparative perspectives

Impressive growth in Asia, as one of most dynamic regions in the world, sometimes happens at the expense of marginalisation.Individuals who do not fit normative ideals, who are deemed economically unproductive or who do not participate in heterosex-centred reproduction are often regarded as different, even deviant, and come to take on or are given identities that are marginalised.These include, but are not limited to, people with physical or intellectual disabilities, the elderly, gender and sexual minorities, never-married parents or unmarried people.Stigmatisation can be pronounced in homogenous or insular societies and communities that use 'culture' and 'tradition' as a justification to extract conformity.It can also appear where the self-sufficiency of individuals and heterosexual, biological and nuclear families is touted as a moral virtue that aligns with neoliberal and anti-welfare ideologies.Against this backdrop, we sought papers that would speak to the theme of this Special Issue.We were interested in the processes of stigmatisation involving a range of interactions and relationships, including being treated as burdensome and unproductive members of society, or regarded as a threat to the social order, as well as social processes in which those who are stigmatised respond to such treatment by coming up with strategies, taking action or deciding not to take action.How do these processes emerge and transform, and what do they look like?How do people respond to differential treatment based on their stigmatised identities at home, at work or against state authorities?How are they protected or persecuted under the law and what forms of recourse do they have?What do these experiences tell us about the manner in which law matters to identities, human relationships and social life?In collaboration with David Engel (SUNY Buffalo, Law), Rosie Harding (University of Birmingham, Law) and Sida Liu (University of Toronto, Sociology and Law), we first put out a call for workshop papers.We received forty submissions, out of which we chose fifteen.Although we had planned to hold the workshop in person in June 2020 at the National University of Singapore, we converted the workshop to an online event due to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak.At the workshop, the authors received feedback from an online audience around the world, engaged in conversation with one another and received feedback from us and our three collaborators.In the end, six of the authors moved forward with the Special Issue with this Journal.Together, these authors cover a wide range of stigmatised identities: from the more conventional 'blemishes of character' attributes as described by Goffman, such as sex workers, sexual minorities and ethnic minorities, to people whose identities push the boundaries of how we conceptualise stigma, such as elderly prisoners and female international arbitrators.Although our reference to 'stigmatisation' is inspired by Erving Goffman, we did not require the authors to draw extensively from Goffman's Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963) or subsequent scholarship that built on his work in any particular manner.Nevertheless, their analyses of stigma and the processes of stigmatisation help to bring light to the plight of marginalised identities in different parts of Asia and advance the scholarship on stigma and stigmatisation in the Global South.

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