Papers by Nicole Constable
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Vanderbilt University Press eBooks, Jan 25, 2008
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Oñati socio-legal series, Dec 1, 2013
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TRaNS, Oct 10, 2014
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Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Aug 1, 2012
This article offers a critical analysis of the US ‘International Marriage Broker Regulation Act’ ... more This article offers a critical analysis of the US ‘International Marriage Broker Regulation Act’ in relation to its promoters and critics, the women it intends to protect, and the surrounding ‘trafficking’ discourse. I argue that the act was supported by faulty logic and inaccurate data, and that its passage was linked to conflations of foreign brides with victims of trafficking
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Population Space and Place, Apr 28, 2021
Building on ethnographic research and on studies of noncitizenship, this paper examines ‘excluded... more Building on ethnographic research and on studies of noncitizenship, this paper examines ‘excluded belonging’, a condition that is constructed over time, through a process of interactions between noncitizens and migratory assemblages. Noncitizens respond to the shifting parameters of inclusion and exclusion in their everyday lives in their attempts to construct a substantive sense of belonging that is often fleeting, fragile and ever challenged. Maintaining this condition entails work, learning, struggles and strategising by noncitizens within spaces of exclusion and with institutional actors who deny them rights and also assist them. Ethnographic research in Hong Kong (2010–2018), among women migrant workers whose pathways shift as they become mothers, overstayers, nonrefoulement (asylum) claimants and rejected refugees, illustrates the lived paradox of excluded belonging, as illustrated by the challenges they face in relation to acquiring food, shelter and children's education while facing increasing migratory exclusion and the growing threat of deportation.
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Born Out of Place
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Maid to Order in Hong Kong, 2017
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This chapter questions the idea of Hong Kong as an ideal destination for migrant workers. It anal... more This chapter questions the idea of Hong Kong as an ideal destination for migrant workers. It analyses the key obstacles faced by migrant workers in securing their labor rights. Migrant domestic workers may be reluctant to report abuse because of debts and financial difficulties. They are often required to pay high recruitment fees and to sign loan agreements that can take the form of debt bondage. The “live-in” requirement adds to the difficulty of reporting abuse, as does the “two-week rule” which requires workers to return home within two weeks of the termination of their contracts -- rarely long enough to find a new employer. If workers do file cases against their employers, it leaves them for months without income and without money for living costs, visa renewal, and with mounting debts. These factors help to explain why some workers choose to overstay their visas and why other workers, such as in the famous cases of Kartika Puspitasari and Erwiana Sulistyaningsih, find it impossible to leave their abusive employers.
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Critical Asian Studies, 2008
Andolan and the “Muttontown Slave Case” In May of 2007 an Indonesian woman named Samirah appeared... more Andolan and the “Muttontown Slave Case” In May of 2007 an Indonesian woman named Samirah appeared at a Dunkin’ Donuts shop in Syosset (Long Island, N.Y.), her face bruised, wearing only trousers, and wrapped in a towel. The police were called and, as the New York Times later reported in June, an investigation was then launched into the abuse of two live-in Indonesian domestic workers, Samirah and Enung, who were employed by an Indian couple who lived in Muttontown, a wealthy Long Island exurb. The couple, Varsha and Mahender Sabhnani, had grown up in well-off families with several live-in servants, he in India and she in Indonesia. The article described them as successful immigrants who began their lives in the United States in the early 1980s with very little money and made their fortune in the perfume export business. As their wealth grew, their lifestyle became less modest and in 2002 Samirah, who had once worked as a maid in Saudi Arabia, was brought to the United States from In...
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Love and Globalization, 2008
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Ethnos, 2019
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positions: asia critique, 2016
This article explores, ethnographically and critically, migrant women's contributions to thre... more This article explores, ethnographically and critically, migrant women's contributions to three intersecting sectors of “intimate industries” in Asia: domestic work, sex tourism, and adoption. These three sectors are normally understood as separate and distinct, and in the cases discussed below, women are paid formal wages only as domestic workers. Yet focusing on the intersections between these sectors illustrates the critical ongoing significance of global and regional class hierarchies and the intersections of gender, race, and nationality within the context of global capitalism. They simultaneously raise critical questions about why some intimate and reproductive activities are considered “work” while others are not. These intersections are especially pertinent for understanding the construction of less-valued forms of immaterial labor that have been largely overlooked by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their influential work on late global capitalism and empire. Moreover,...
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… and identity politics in South and …, 2003
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Intimate Mobilities: Sexual Economies, Marriage and Migration in a Disparate World, edited by Christian Groes and Nadine T. Fernandez, 2018
In contrast to intra-ethnic transnaitonal marriages associated with established transnational com... more In contrast to intra-ethnic transnaitonal marriages associated with established transnational communities and transnational processes, this article provides an analysis of temporary marriages and intimate relationships that do not necessarily build on and lead to ongoing transnational communities or links across national boundaries. Much like romances and intimate relations between tourists and locals – many of which are short-lived and only “transnational” in a short-term sense – temporary relationships develop between Indonesian or Filipino women domestic workers in Hong Kong and South Asian and African asylum seekers or temporary “illegal” workers. Some consider their relationships “marriages” (and have Muslim nikah rituals), but most are short-lived because neither partner has legal rights to remain in Hong Kong, and few opt to go to the partner’s home country. While such relationships rarely form ongoing “transnational” communities – or have not done so yet – they are nonetheless important for what they reveal about how different types of mobilities intersect, and how sex, gender, and class are related to global inequalities. Temporary cross-border marriages offer unique insights into the functioning of the global economy and reveal the shortcomings of “functional” narratives of transnationalism that reinforce hegemonic win-win notions of migration and development.
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American Anthropologist, Sep 1, 1998
Hong Kong: The Anthropology of. Chinese Metropolis. Grant Evans and Maria Tarn Siu‐Mi. eds. Honol... more Hong Kong: The Anthropology of. Chinese Metropolis. Grant Evans and Maria Tarn Siu‐Mi. eds. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997.336 pp.
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Gender & Society
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The Cambridge Handbook of Kinship
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Papers by Nicole Constable