Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. viii, 245 pp. (Figures.) US$55.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8122-4754-1.
Sex, when engaged transnationally, is not simply fantastically creative; it can also be surprisingly transformative. Sara Friedman and Pardis Mahdavi explain that this transformative experience occurs at two levels: at the personal level when each partner brings her/his sexual norms and expectations into the relationship, and at the national level when international marriages (especially with foreign women) have forced recipient countries to amend their membership rules. They write, “migrant intimacies create new possibilities for interpersonal relationships, sexual desires, and gender domesticity” (2). Building on previous sociological and anthropological studies on transnational intimate labour, the book adds a nuanced and comparative perspective to the topic.
Rich in ethnographic research across Asia, and including the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, this edited volume brings established immigration scholars (primarily anthropologists) of Asia to explore creative strategies of intimate labourers and how migratory labour, especially by female workers, has transformed intimate relationships. It is divided into three parts. Part 1 (The Intimate Lives of Intimate Laborers) addresses the transformative experience of migrants’ intimate lives through their own morality and values. Hyun Mee Kim describes how remittances by Vietnamese wives in South Korea to their families back home can significantly improve a couple’s marital intimacy. Kim explains that Korean men are well aware of their foreign partners’ motivation for marriage, and therefore understand that “remittances are a form of economic compensation offered in exchange for their contribution to the family through reproduction [i.e. giving birth to a child]” (38). Filippo Osella looks at the personal transformations of South Indian migrants to the Gulf. He has documented some of the “social ills” that these migrants have brought back to modern Kerala. For instance, Osella mentions a situation of “divorce where wives sought separation from their migrant husbands because these men had asked them to perform ‘lewd sexual acts’ learned from watching pornographic DVDs in the Gulf” (53). Meanwhile, “migrants’ wives are suspected of taking lovers to make up for their husbands’ long-term absences, leading to intense policing and control of their sexuality” (53).
Part 2 (Migration and the National Family) discusses how immigration and nationality laws can shape the types of national families and legal regimes for reproductive migrants. Pardis Mahdavi evaluates Kuwaiti laws that stipulate “a child born to an unmarried, noncitizen mother will be … defined as stateless” (76). There are at least 100,000 stateless people in Kuwait. Because pregnant, unmarried migrants seeking prenatal assistance or to report their pregnancies (including sexual assaults) can be sent to prison, some migrant women have decided to hide their pregnancies and abandon their child in order to continue working in the country. Moreover, the law allows for an abandoned child to gain Kuwaiti citizenship. Similarly, Nicole Constable details migrants’ creative use of existing laws in Hong Kong to file torture claims (even in the absence of torture) after becoming pregnant in order to temporarily extend their legal stay. In Japan, Nobue Suzuki shows, Filipina mothers have brought legal challenges against Japan’s Nationality Law, demanding that their children born out of wedlock to a Japanese father be allowed to obtain Japanese nationality even in instances when the father acknowledges paternity after birth. Suzuki has found that despite their success, these children have grown up struggling to find a recognized existence for themselves in either/both side(s) of the family and parental society.
Part 3 (Negotiating the State) problematizes state actions and explores the creative responses of foreign migrants to their illegality and/or irregularity. Ironically, the state, which determines legality, sometimes produces the irregularity that it aims to prevent. For example, Mark Johnson and Christoph Wilcke discuss migrants’ decisions to become “freelancers” in the Middle East and the Gulf in order to circumvent gendered and restrictive laws on domestic worker employment. Hsiao-Chuan Hsia provocatively argues that the Taiwanese state promotes its competitiveness in the global economy by strategically using legality to lower the costs of production and reproduction. Similarly, Brenda Yeoh and Heng Leng Chee examine the Singapore government’s strict regulatory distinction between migrant wives and domestic workers, which has created a new form of illegality when foreign wives with a history of domestic work in the country seek employment. In the final chapter, Sara Friedman criticizes Taiwan’s strict and discriminatory laws on cross-Strait marriages, which have resulted in mainland Chinese wives pursuing legal strategies that are publicly deemed as “illegal” or “inauthentic” practices.
Overall, I found the book, in most parts, to be intellectually stimulating and plan to use it in my graduate seminar on “Transnationalism, Citizenship, and Migration in Asia.” I have only minor and, perhaps, unfair critiques. As a political scientist, I think the authors should have tried to engage intellectually with scholars beyond the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and the law when discussing the role of state and state actors. Ideally they would also have engaged with the publications by scientists on the subject. Even if they deliberately elided this body of work for some reason, at the very least, the authors could have complemented their fieldwork among foreign migrants with interviews with policy makers and other political elites. In addition, a concluding chapter to bring the arguments advanced by various authors together would also be helpful for readers.
Apichai W. Shipper
Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA
pp. 309-310