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The Asian Migrant's Body: Emotion, Gender and Sexuality brings together papers that investigate the way Asian migrants experience, think about, perceive and utilize their bodies as part of the journeys they have embarked on. In exploring how bodies are physically and symbolically marked by migration experiences, this edited volume seeks to move beyond the immediate effects of hard labour and (potentially) exploitative or abusive situations. It shows that migrants are not only on the receiving end where it concerns their bodies, nor are their bodies only utilized for their work as migrants: they also seek control over their bodies and to make them part of strategies to express themselves. The collective papers in
The Asian Migrant's Body argue that the body itself is a primary site for understanding how migrants reflect on and experience their migration trajectories.
List of contents
Introduction: Conceptualizing the Asian Migrant's Body, by Michiel Baas & Peidong YANG 1. 'Not a lesbian in Dubai, not gay in Tehran': sexualities, migrations, and social movements across the Gulf, by Pardis Mahdavi 2. Bodies at Work: Gendered Performance and Migrant Beer Sellers in Southeast Asia, by Denise L. Spitzer, PhD 3. Body, Space and Migrant Ties: Migrant Domestic workers and Embodied resistances in Lebanon, by Amrita Pande 4. The Day Off Policy. 'Reverse Domestication' and Emotional Labour among Indonesian Domestic Workers in Singapore, by Maria PLATT, Brenda S.A. YEOH, KHOO Choon Yen, Grace BAEY and Theodora LAM 5. Embodying the good migrant in ageing: Negotiating positive subjectivities through paid work, by Michelle G. Ong 6. Proper Conjunctions of Bodies: Chastity, Age, and Care Work in Sri Lankan Migrants' Families, by Michele Ruth Gamburd 7. Border-crossing as sexual subjects: Interracial dating experience of young Chinese in New Zealand, by Alex Yang Li 8. Managing Touch: The Racialized Dynamics of Intimacy in the Los Angeles Beauty Industry, by Hareem Khan 9. Index
About the author
Michiel Baas holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Amsterdam. He is currently an Associate Fellow of the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and lecturer with the University of Amsterdam. He has conducted extensive research in the field of migration and transnationalism, particularly focusing on mobility between India, Singapore and Australia. More recent work also focuses on new middleclass professionals in urban India such, a topic which he studies through the lens of social and cultural mobility.
