Sri Lankan Housemaids in Lebanon

Nayla Moukarbel completed her PhD in Migration Studies at the University of Sussex in 2007. She has a background in sociology, having obtained a BA from the American University of Beirut and a Maîtrise from the Sorbonne University in Paris.

• Table of contents - 8 1 Introduction - 10 2 My journey into the field - 42 3 Gender and domestic work in migration - 94 4 Power, resistance and racism in domestic work - 124 5 Symbolic power - 158 6 Resistance - 200 7 Conclusion - 222 Notes - 240 References - 242

“This thought-provoking and reflexive book on Sri Lankan domestic workers in Lebanon successfully avoids both tales of victimhood and celebrations of agency. Nayla Moukarbel makes important new theoretical contributions on relations between domestic workers and their employers, highlighting the importance of geographical, temporal and cultural specificities. She also provides new empirical data: not only on the working and living conditions of domestic workers, but from embassy interviews with employers of runaways, dinner party conversations between employers and experiences in detention centres. In short, this book is just what research should be: reflexive, empirically grounded and theoretically sophisticated.” - Bridget Anderson, Senior Researcher, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society University of Oxford