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| 1 |
ID:
084437
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| 2 |
ID:
084440
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2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The Republic of Yemen, situated on the southwestern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, is the least economically developed country in West Asia. While it is well known that migrant domestic workers are employed in neighboring countries such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, there is little awareness that most domestic work in Yemen is also done by migrant women. The majority of migrant domestic workers come from Somalia and Ethiopia, but women from Asian countries, such as the Philippines, Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka also fill this role. These Asian women are positioned at the top of Yemeni employers' hierarchy of domestic workers: they have a high status, are employed by the upper classes, and receive the highest salaries. Ethiopian and Somali women have a lower status: they are employed by the middle and upper middle classes and receive lower salaries. Yet, women from Asian countries do not constitute a homogeneous category: important differences are evident among them and, as well, in the preferences of employers for particular categories of Asian women. This article analyzes some of these differences in respect to recruitment, employment, and living conditions, access to social support networks, and contacts with fellow countrywomen. The author argues that the shifting preferences of employers relate to the various recruitment and support networks available to Asian women. This article is based on anthropological fieldwork, interviews with fifteen Asian domestic workers, and interviews with employers in two cities in Yemen from 2003 to 2006.
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| 3 |
ID:
084434
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| Publication |
2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Numerous scholarly publications and unpublished development reports have debated the merits of "resettlement" in Laos: the movement of predominantly rural people closer to government services or to new lowland fields. Advocates have argued that settlers benefit from closer incorporation with the state and markets; critics have countered that resettlement actually exacerbates poverty. Using two case studies of resettlement villages in Laos this study illustrates significantly differing experiences, but notes that the experiences also coalesce on key points. Resettlement taps into deeply held aspirations for poverty reduction and modernity among Lao rural residents. Settler's expectations were jarred, however, as they met with inadequate government services and lowered incomes. This tension between expectation and actualization cannot be encompassed simply in terms of the state's domination of the people. Rather, settlers employed an experimental and aspiration- oriented mode of engaging with the project and, through it, the state. Settlers judged the lack of government services and charity to be the causes of the horrific conditions of resettlement villages, rather than resettlement itself. By highlighting the role of local aspirations, notions of modernity, and the experimental ethic, this examination of resettlement in Laos casts new light on how rural residents and officials achieve the "experimental consensus" on which these projects run.
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| 4 |
ID:
084431
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| Publication |
2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the last three decades in China, few and declining numbers of women have participated in the main grassroots institutions of rural government, the village committee and the village branch of the Chinese Communist Party. This article examines a project aimed at addressing this problem, initiated in 2003 in Heyang county, Shaanxi, by one of China's largest and most influential women's nongovernmental organizations, West Women, together with the state-affiliated Women's Federation. The article discusses the goals, strategies, and short-term results of the Heyang Project. It then discusses the longer-term potential of the Heyang model for achieving greater gender equity and women's empowerment in rural China. Previous studies have critiqued Chinese approaches to the goal of increasing women's participation in village government, but have not questioned the desirability or need for the goal itself. In this article, the author takes the critique one step further, to provoke questions about the very desirability of increasing women's participation in village government. She concludes that when viewed in light of other recent trends, notably large-scale rural out-migration and tax reforms, increasing women's participation in village government may not have as desirable or significant an impact on gender relations as has previously been assumed.
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| 5 |
ID:
084444
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| Publication |
2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
More than 100,000 Sri Lankan women leave their homes each year to seek employment as domestic workers in the Arab world. The oil-rich Gulf States remain the biggest recruiters, but demand has been rising sharply in Jordan, where few studies of the phenomenon have been undertaken. This article analyzes the social, economic, and political factors influencing the market for foreign domestic workers in Jordan and describes how demand there has been fueled by changes in class formation and kinship. It focuses on the largest group of domestic workers in Jordan- Sri Lankans - and draws on extensive fieldwork in Sri Lanka as well as Jordan. The article explores the dynamic relationships between domestic workers and the families who employ them, arguing that an essential strategy used by both groups involves the construction of relations of dependency. The article also chronicles Sri Lankan migrants' experiences, suggesting that there are meaningful cohorts, which are differentiated by age, length of stay, and place of residence, that have distinct experiences, attitudes to the host country, and homeward orientations. The use of Christian worship and conversion as coping strategies are also described. The author argues that several factors relating to the ways paid domestic work are managed by the state, recruiting agencies, and employers have hindered collective action for workers' rights. In the absence of other forms of activism, faith-based networks fill the void, providing essential support to migrants in need.
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| 6 |
ID:
084438
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2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Within a global gendered economy based on an international division of labor, Filipina migrants have become nannies, maids, and caregivers in affluent homes in numerous Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Filipina migrants who seek employment as domestic workers abroad have been described as "classical" transmigrants who keep in touch with family members back home and commute between their countries of origin and their destinations. In this article - based on ethnographic research in Israel, Palestine, and the Philippines between 2003 and 2008-the author argues that Filipina migrants are transnational in a much broader sense than commonly discussed in studies on migration: engaged in border-cross-ing journeys through a number of nation states, many Filipina migrants move on and on rather than back and forth. They do so within a global hierarchy of desirable destination countries, ranked according to the differences between nation-states with regard to salaries and the legal entitlements migrants can claim, the costs and risks migrants have to take in order to enter, and these countries' overall subjective and imaginative attractiveness. By migrating on, Filipina domestic workers acquire an intimate picture of the Middle East "backstage." Some even become self-pro-claimed Middle Eastern experts or politically active Christian Zionists or sentimental Orientalists, who, in spite of their Christianity, miss fasting on Yom Kippur or during Ramadan as they continue their journeys toward Western Europe and North America, where they have hopes of living and perhaps gaining citizenship
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| 7 |
ID:
084445
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| Publication |
2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The author of this piece from Luang Prabang remarks on the effects of Unesco's designation of Laos's fourth largest city as a "World Heritage Site." Was the assigning of the label in 1995 a "kiss of death" for what makes Luang Prabang special? Will the designation lead to a tsunami of tourism that will destroy the cultural character and treasures Unesco sought to preserve? Has Unesco's action given birth to a premature mad dash for modernization, development, and tourism that threatens Laos and its people almost as much as incursions and colonial ambitions and mad bombing campaigns by the U.S. Air Force did in the past?
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