Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East

Marina de Regt, VU University Amsterdam, The NetherlandsNada Elyas, Taibah University, Madinah, Saudia Arabia, and University of Hull, UKBina Fernandez, University of Melbourne, Australia Naomi Hosod, Kagawa University, JapanMark Johnson, University of Hull, UKClaudia Liebelt, University of Bayreuth, GermanyPardis Mahdavi, Pomona College, USAAmrita Pande, University of Cape Town, South AfricaAkiko Watanabe, Bunkyo University, Japan

• 1. Making a Home in the World: Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East; Bina Fernandez and Marina de Regt 2. Forging Intimate and Work Ties: Migrant Domestic Workers Resist in Lebanon; Amrita Pande 3. Degrees of (un)freedom: The Exercise of Agency by Ethiopian Migrant Domestic Workers in Kuwait and Lebanon; Bina Fernandez 4. Immobilized Migrancy: Inflexible Citizenship and Flexible Practices Among Migrants in the Gulf; Pardis Mahdavi 5. The 'Mama Mary' of the White City's Underside: Reflections on a Filipina Domestic Workers' Block Rosary in Tel Aviv, Israel; Claudia Liebelt 6. Creating a 'New Home' Away from Home: Religious Conversions of Filipina Domestic Workers in Dubai and Doha; Naomi Hosoda and Akiko Watanabe 7. Caring for the Future in the Kingdom: Saudi and Filipino Women Making Home in a World of Movement; Nada Elyas and Mark Johnson 8. 'Shall We Leave or Not?' Ethiopian Women's Notions of Home and Belonging and the Crisis in Yemen; Marina de Regt

"This edited volume, based on ethnographic fieldwork, provides important new insights in the everyday lives of migrant domestic workers in the Middle East. With the home turned into a workplace and privacy to be found in the public, it unsettles conventional notions about the public and the private. Employing agency and mobility as key terms, the case studies go beyond the employer domestic worker relation, and convincingly show how foreign domestics forge new socialities through support networks and activism, through developing new religious ties and communities, and through marriage and childbearing." - Annelies Moors, professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands"This collection of essays is a significant addition to the growing literature and concern about migrant domestic workers around the world. Acknowledging but transcending human rights discourse of restriction and abuse, these scholarly elaborations reveal the equally important nuances of agency of Asian and African women and how they cope as individuals and as communities in the Middle East." - Ray Jureidini, professor of Ethics and Migration, Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics, Hamad Bin Khalifa University