Friedman, Sara L., and Pardis Mahdavi, eds.: "Migrant Encounters, Intimate Labor, the State, and Mobility Across Asia."(Book review)

• Author: Song, Jingyi

Friedman, Sara L., and Pardis Mahdavi, eds. Migrant Encounters, Intimate Labor, the State, and Mobility across Asia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.

Over the past few decades, the study of migrant workers, especially those who are engaged in domestic services across international borders in Asia, has yielded a rich and provocative body of research and publication. The field of migrant studies has emerged as a strong multi-disciplinary area of scholarship in history, sociology, and anthropology, yet its subject often remains contested. Is it concerned with the life and experience of migrant workers, some of whom became sex workers after entering a country they were not familiar with, or is it concerned with social and political conditions that, in many ways, forced them into an unexpected struggle for survival? When one studies migrant workers does one investigate the desires of a nation or state to send or to receive them? How do migrant workers adapt to various difficult situations to fulfill their varied goals? The appearance of Migrant Encounters, Intimate...