Sending Country Perspectives

This project focuses on issues arising in countries that send migrant caregivers: primarily the two major migrant-sending countries of the Philippines and Indonesia, with a smaller focus on Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

We examine how these sending countries are recruiting and training migrating caregivers, and the strategies care workers from these countries use to make the most of their migration and overseas employment. We also consider the implications of their departures for the people left at home: while migrant caregivers take up employment filling care gaps in the wealthier global north, what are the effects in their local communities?

Our project carried out fieldwork at two recruitment centres for migrant care workers in the urban centres of Manila and Jakarta. We also collected data from sending areas where the migrant caregivers’ families live, and where their wages from overseas work are sent.

Our aim is to build a new understanding of the meanings of care labour/love, and migration processes. In doing so, we will build and share knowledge that engages the voices of care workers and their families to inform scholars and policy-makers.

Because many of our research subjects are semi-literate, we also plan to develop a series of audio press releases to be shared with radio and community groups in order to reach care workers themselves.

Refereed publications

• Akhil Gupta and Purnima Mankekar (2016). “Intimate Encounters: Affective Labor in Call Centers,” positions: east asia critique, 24(1).
• Celine Parreñas Shimizu (2016). “Screening Shirtless Azn Men: The Full Frontal Power of Intimate Internet Industries,” positions: east asia critique, 24(1).
• Chaitanya Lakkimsetti (2016). “From Dance Bars to the Streets”: Moral Dispossession and Eviction in Mumbai,” positions: east asia critique, 24(1).
• Daisy Deomampo (2016). “Race, Nation, and the Production of Intimacy: Transnational Ova Donation in India,” positions: east asia critique, 24(1).
• Danièle Bélanger (2016). “Beyond the Brokers: Local Marriage Migration Industries of Rural Vietnam,” positions: east asia critique, 24(1).
• Eileen Otis (2016). “China’s Beauty Proletariat: The Body Politics of Hegemony in a Walmart Cosmetics’ Department,” positions: east asia critique, 24(1).
• Hae Yeon Choo (2016). “Selling Fantasies of Rescue: Intimate Labor, Filipina Migrant Hostesses, and American GIs in a Shifting Global Order,” positions: east asia critique, 24(1).
• Juno Salazar Parreñas (2016). “The Materiality of Intimacy in Wildlife Rehabilitation: Rethinking Ethical Capitalism through Embodied Encounters with Animals in Southeast Asia,” positions: east asia critique, 24(1).
• Leslie Wang (2016). “Outsourcing Intimacy: Producing Global Adoptability of Special Needs Children in China,” positions: east asia critique, 24(1).
• Nicole Constable (2016). “Reproductive Labor at the Intersection of Three Intimate Industries: Domestic Work, Sex Tourism, and Adoption,” positions: east asia critique, 24(1).
• Parreñas, Rhacel, Hung Thai, and Rachel Silvey (Eds.) (2016). “Introduction. Intimate Industries: Restructuring (Im)Material Labor in Asia,” introduction to special issue of journal, positions: east asia critique, 24(1).
• Parreñas, Rhacel, Hung Thai, and Rachel Silvey (Eds.) (2016). “Intimate Industries: Restructuring (Im)Material Labor in Asia.” 12 peer-reviewed articles, special issue of journal, positions: east asia critique, 24(1).
• Pei-Chia Lan (2016). “Deferential Surrogates and Professional Others: Recruitment and Training of Migrant Care Workers in Taiwan and Japan,” positions: east asia critique, 24(1).
• Sharmila Rudrappa (2016). “What to Expect When You’re Expecting: The Affective Economies of Consuming Surrogacy in India,” positions: east asia critique, 24(1).
• Silvey, Rachel (2016). “Bodies and Embodiment,” peer-reviewed chapter in Eric Sheppard, Linda Peake et al. (Eds.), Annals of the Association of American Geography Encyclopedia of Human Geography.
• Silvey, Rachel (2016). “Domestic Workers,” peer-reviewed chapter in Eric Sheppard, Linda Peake et al. (Eds.), Annals of the Association of American Geography Encyclopedia of Human Geography.
• Henry, Caitlin (2015). “Hospital Closures: The Sociospatial Restructuring of Labor and Health Care,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105(5): 1094-1110.
• Parreñas, Rhacel (2015). Servants of Globalization, 2nd edition (Stanford U. Press: Stanford).
• Silvey, Rachel and Jean-Francois Bissonnette (2014). “Bodies,” in Roger Lee et al. (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Human Geography. London: Sage.