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Women in Motion: Globalization, State Policies, and Labor Migration in Asia, by Nana OishL Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. 264 pp. $21.95 paper. ISBN: 0804746370.
This tour-de-force is the first to examine gender and migration in Asia in a regional framework. Oishi analyzes influences on legal migration from the global level, to state policy, to society, to the individual. She draws on interviews with policymakers, international organizations, recruitment agencies, NGOs, and migrants as well as secondary policy documents to analyze the causes of gendered migration in Asia.
Oishi deftly raises puzzles and, through careful multilevel analysis, uses them to examine the complexity of regional migration. In chapter 1, she asks why more men emigrate from low-income countries in the region (Bangladesh, India and Pakistan), while more women emigrate from better-off countries (Philippines, Sri Lanka, Indonesia). Does poverty force women to stay home? Or is it religion? Yet women from largely Muslim Mindanao in the Philippines, and women from Indonesia, migrate in large numbers.
Chapter 2 discusses labor demand and immigration policies in the region. In Singapore and Hong Kong, rapid export-oriented industrialization pulled single and married women into the workforce. These countries welcomed female domestic workers from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka to do housekeeping and care work. Japan remains an outlier,...