Born Out of Place: Migrant Mothers and the Politics of International Labor

by Nicole Constable

Hong Kong is a meeting place for migrant domestic workers, traders, refugees, asylum seekers, tourists, businessmen, and local residents. In Born Out of Place, Nicole Constable looks at the experiences of Indonesian and Filipina women in this Asian world city. Giving voice to the stories of these migrant mothers, their South Asian, African, Chinese, and Western expatriate partners, and their Hong Kong–born babies, Constable raises a serious question: Do we regard migrants as people, or just as temporary workers? This accessible ethnography provides insight into global problems of mobility, family, and citizenship and points to the consequences, creative responses, melodramas, and tragedies of labor and migration policies.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction

278 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Nicole Constable is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh. Other contributors are Sharon A. Carstens, Myron L. Cohen, Mary S. Erbaugh, Elizabeth Lominska Johnson, Howard J. Martin; and Ellen Oxfeld.

Reviews

[Kogiopsis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not much to say by way of 'review' here: this is a purely academic text, ethnography from top to bottom. Constable is up front about her techniques and many of her possible biases, particularly in the sample of migrant mothers she studies being predominantly contacted through one NGO. Her writing is dense but readable, and she does a good job of integrating anthropological observation with sympathy for her subjects (which, in turn, works better because of the way she situates herself in the text - the reader is always aware of her observational lens).

From a personal perspective: obviously, as an American who has never so much as visited China, I had no idea about the situation of foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong. Reading this book made me wonder about the finer points of immigration law in my own country - are there laws here similar to the 'two-week limit' Constable describes, for instance? Something to look into, moving forwards.

[Shaan Amin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I *read* Lauren Berlant's Cruel Optimism, but I don't think I understood it until reading Constable's excellent anthropological study of migrant workers---mothers, yes, but also fathers and children---in Hong Kong. The desire for respectability, trust, and intimacy can manufacture circumstances antithetical to them---dissolved relationships & abandonment upon news of the pregnancy; not using condoms and having sex as a sign of trust and desire to form a family; not notifying one's employer of pregnancy to avoid termination, when such notice is crucial (it's unlawful to fire someone for being pregnant, and employers often just deny the true reason for the firing if they discover on their own.)

FDWs in HK are overwhelmingly Filipina and Indonesian women, and this book's subjects tend to have relationships with male migrant workers and asylum seekers from S Asia and Africa. Prepare for much nuance---many women and men in these relationships have spouses in their sending country; severed from patriarchal institutions in their home countries but shaped by them, many women expressed frustration because there wasn't a community of male allies nearby to force men to accept responsibility for the pregnancy and to provide for the family; sending age from each country is relevant, as the Philippines has higher age restrictions than Indonesia for when women can work as FDWs; the predatory nature of the employment agencies as rentiers that essentially rob women working abroad; the commonplace practice and widespread denial of abortion; deep racial tensions underlying relationships and the racial economics of romance in HK; filing frivolous asylum and torture claims that they know will never be approved, to buy time and govt support where they can also earn extra $$ and spend time in an independent modern city; and the "migratory cycle of atonement" where single mothers who return home go yet again to a new receiving country to recoup dignity/family acceptance by providing their families $$

A jaw-dropping, often-heartbreaking, always-fascinating read.