Migrant Workers in Asia

Distant Divides, Intimate Connections

Nicole Constable

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317986782
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Small Business
• Index: Business

This book provides rich and provocative comparative studies of South and Southeast Asian domestic workers who migrate to other parts of Asia. These studies range from Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore, to Yemen, Israel, Jordan, and the UAE. Conceptually and methodologically, this book challenges us to move beyond established regional divides and proposes new ways of mapping inter-Asian connections. The authors view migrant workers within a wider spatial context of intersecting groups and trajectories through time. Keenly attentive to the importance of migrants of diverse nationalities who have labored in multiple regions, this book examines intimate connections and distant divides in the social lives and politics of migrant workers across time and space.

Collectively, the authors propose new themes, new comparative frameworks, and new methodologies for considering vastly different degrees of social support structures and political activism, and the varied meanings of citizenship and state responsibility in sending and receiving countries. They highlight the importance of formal institutions that shape and promote migratory labor, advocacy for workers, or curtail workers rights, as well as the social identities and cultural practices and beliefs that may be linked to new inter-ethnic social and political affiliations that traverse and also transform inter-Asian spaces and pathways to mobility.

This book was published as a special issue of Critical Asian Studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Abstracts
• Preface — Distant Divides and Intimate Connections
• 1. On Sentimental Orientalists, Christian Zionists, and Working Class Cosmopolitans: Filipina Domestic Workers’ Journeys to Israel and Beyond
• 2. High in the Hierarchy, Rich in Diversity: Asian Domestic Workers, Their Networks, and Employers’ Preferences in Yemen
• 3. Of Maids and Madams: Sri Lankan Domestic Workers and Their Employers in Jordan
• 4. Advocating for Sri Lankan Migrant Workers: Obstacles and Challenges
• 5. Transcending the Border: Transnational Imperatives in Singapore’s Migrant Worker Rights Movement
• 6. The Making of a Transnational Grassroots Migrant Movement: A Case Study of Hong Kong’s Asian Migrants’ Coordinating Body
• 7. Migrant Workers and the Many States of Protest in Hong Kong
• 8. Undocumented Indonesian Workers in Macau: The Human Outcome of Colluding Interests
• Notes
• References
• Contributors
• Index