Publications

Read Danau Tanu’s publications on international education, youth, mobility and other related topics. This page lists peer-reviewed academic publications and includes a monograph, journal articles and book chapters. (For easy-to-read, publicly available open-access articles, click below.)

Monograph

December 2020 (Paperback). Growing Up in Transit: The Politics of Belonging at an International School. Berghahn Books: New York.


2018 (Hardback & eBook). Growing Up in Transit: The Politics of Belonging at an International School. Berghahn Books: New York. (Paperback release in December 2020)

See Easy Reads for short teaser articles based on extracts from Growing Up in Transit.

Latest Publication

2024. ‘Boredom, Hope, and Intimate Labor in Transit: Young Male Refugees and Their Intimate Relationships with Older, Local Women in Indonesia‘. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 709:1, 145-164. By Danau Tanu & Antje Missbach.

For the latest short articles, go to Easy Reads.

Peer-reviewed academic journal articles

To access academic articles that are not publicly available, please contact Danau.

2024. ‘Boredom, Hope, and Intimate Labor in Transit: Young Male Refugees and Their Intimate Relationships with Older, Local Women in Indonesia‘. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 709:1, 145-164. By Danau Tanu & Antje Missbach.

2019. ‘Are Hafus “Dirty” or “Special”?: Negotiating mixed-race identities among Japanese-Indonesian youths in Indonesia‘. Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 25:3, 376-391. By Danau Tanu. Read full version here.

Mika says, ‘When I was small, I felt a deep sense of ‘[inferiority] complex’ about being mixed and hated it when my Indonesian mother would visit the school. So I would ignore her.’ …

‘It felt as though I had been denying my mother the whole time, and it hurt. It was painful to feel as though being hafu was about negating Indonesians and erasing the worth of my mother’s existence.’

ARE HAFUS ‘DIRTY’ OR ‘SPECIAL’?


2018. ‘Fun, “Family”, and Friends: Developing pro-environmental behaviour among high school students in Indonesia‘. Indonesia and the Malay World, 46(136):303-324. By Danau Tanu & Lyn Parker.


2016. ‘Going to school in ‘Disneyland: Imagining an international school community in Indonesia‘. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 25(4):429–450. By Danau Tanu. Read accepted version (do not use this version for citations).


But the second I opened my mouth and uttered some English words, a look of horror came over her. I immediately stopped explaining about my research and (thoughtlessly) used English to ask the question, ‘Do you speak English?’

She shook her head, shifted in her seat, and leaned so far back that her chin dug into her neck.

I instantly recognised her reaction—she was terrified of English and the proposition that she engage with it.

LANGUAGE IN FIELDWORK

2016. ‘Language in fieldwork: Making visible the ethnographic impact of the researcher’s linguistic fluency‘. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 27(3): 353-369. By Danau Tanu & Laura Dales.


2014. ‘Becoming “International”: The Cultural Reproduction of the Local Elite at an International School in Indonesia‘. South East Asia Research, 22(4): 579-596. By Danau Tanu.

Book chapters

2021. ‘Apathetic or Disillusioned? New Media Habits of Indonesia’s University-Educated Digital Natives’. In Jemma Purdey (ed), Australia-Indonesia Connections: Mobility, Youth and Exchange. UGM Press: Yogyakarta. By Levriana Yulianti, Danau Tanu, Dave Lumenta


Mixed Race in Asia - book cover

2017. ‘Sometimes white, sometimes Asian: young serial migrants of mixed descent straddling transnational racial boundaries’. In Zarine L. Rocha and Farida Fozdar, eds. Mixed Race in Asia: Past Present and Future. Routledge: London & New York. By Danau Tanu.

For some reason, I didn’t want to be Asian. I wanted to fit in like an American student. I think that really affected me in some ways.

It was really strange because in the [United] States, I felt like I was Asian.

But then when I went to Japan, I felt more Western in the way people were treating me. I felt more welcome[d]—like all the kids wanted to talk to me and wanted to know where I was from.

‘Tim’ in SOMETIMES WHITE, SOMETIMES ASIAN


2016. ‘Unaccompanied Young Asylum-Seekers Stuck in Transit in Indonesia: Intimate Relationships and Resilience‘. In Marisa O. Ensor and Elżbieta M. Goździak, eds. Children and Forced Migration: Durable Solutions During Transient Years. Palgrave Macmillan: Cham. By Antje Missbach & Danau Tanu.


Beyond Third Culture Kids - book cover

2016. ‘Toward an interdisciplinary analysis of the diversity of “Third Culture Kids”‘. In Saija Benjamin and Fred Dervin, eds. Migration, Diversity, and Education: Beyond Third Culture Kids, pp. 13-35. Palgrave Macmillan: London. By Danau Tanu.


2015. ‘The missing link: Cultural performance and intercultural hyphenated identities of Australian-Indonesian youth’. In Antje Missbach and Jemma Purdey, eds. Linking People: Connections and Encounters Between Australians and Indonesians. Regiospectra: Berlin, pp. 173-196. By Monika Winarnita & Danau Tanu.