The power of embodied ritual performance to constitute agency and transform subjectivity are increasingly the focus of major debates in the anthropology of Christianity and Islam. They are particularly relevant to understanding the way transnational women migrants from South and South East Asia, Christians, Muslims and Buddhists, who migrate to Asia, Europe and the Middle East to work as carers and maids, re-imagine and recreate themselves in moral and ethical terms in the diaspora. This timely collection shows how women international migrants, stereotypically represented as a ‘nation of servants’, reclaim sacralised spaces of sociality in their migration destinations, and actively transform themselves from mere workers into pilgrims and tourists on cosmopolitan journeys. Such women struggle for dignity and respect by re-defining themselves in terms of an ethics of care and sacrifice. As co-worshippers they recreate community through fiestas, feasts, protests, and shared conviviality, while subverting established normativities of gender, marriage and conjugality; they renegotiate their moral selfhood through religious conversion and activism. For migrants the place of the church or mosque becomes a gateway to new intellectual and experiential horizons as well as a locus for religious worship and a haven of humanitarian assistance in a strange land. This book was published as a special issue of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Anthropology.

This collection focuses fresh attention on the relationships between "homeland" and "diaspora" communities in today's world. Based on in-depth anthropological studies by leading scholars in the field, the book highlights the changing character of homeland-diaspora ties. Homelands and Diasporas offers new understandings of the issues that these communities face and explores the roots of their fascinating, yet sometimes paradoxical, interactions. The book provides a keen look at how "homeland" and "diaspora" appear in the lives of both Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians and also explores how these issues influence Pakistanis who make their home in England, Armenians in Cyprus and England, Cambodians in France, and African-Americans in Israel. The critical views advanced in this collection should lead to a reorientation in diaspora studies and to a better understanding of the often contradictory changes in the relationships between people whose lives are led both "at home and away."

As a historian of a different making, Francisco seeks to capture the heart of his past and that of spirituality through lifetime memories from boyhood days in Shanghai and Macau to day dreams as a young man in Hong Kong, from new family life in San Francisco as a naturalized citizen to rebirth of mind through a number of pilgrimages to Fatima, Medjugorje and Moscow with his extended family. Together with his spiritual partner and second wife of 30 years Terry, he witnessed the crowning of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Red Square in Moscow for the 75th Anniversary of the ‘Fatima Apparition’ in Portugal. As just two amongst one thousand plus of God’s children from bishops to priests, theologians, brothers, sisters, youths and other laypersons that were there that day, they joined together at the 1992 World Youth Congress in Moscow to share a very special message with the world about the need for change. It was a message of ‘WARNING’ as prophesized by the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of God, on Sunday the 13th of May in the year 1917. But more importantly, it was also a call for love and spiritual renewal. There has been no phenomenon like it ever before recorded, but the miracle of the sun in Fatima continues to shine bright even at the darkest of times and is the hope behind this book. Many of history’s greatest thinkers have wrestled with the question of belief and non-belief in God through their literary circles and often simply by the way they have lived their lives: 1) “Is there a God?” and 2) “Why would He care about me?” Those are profound and universal questions considered in the first two books of this family story and re-visited here in this third encounter in trilogy. Though it might seem unlikely that any new arguments can be raised from either side between Science and Theology on Christendom, ultimately, each reader needs to ask through his or her own voice of Faith this question of GOD and His existence. It is at that spiritual juncture of question and answer that mankind may decide which path to follow. As seminarian students, Terry and Francis took three years of theology at St. Patrick Seminary & University in Menlo Park under the Diaconate Formation Program with the hopes of Francisco becoming a deacon with the Class of 2006. Though God had other plans for Francisco, both husband and wife humbly served at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco and at St. Bruno Church of the San Francisco Archdiocese for three decades. This soulful dialogue is for anyone seeking out answers about Judeo-Christian ethics and the belief that GOD reveals all in time.

Hong Kong is a meeting place for migrant domestic workers, traders, refugees, asylum seekers, tourists, businessmen, and local residents. In Born Out of Place, Nicole Constable looks at the experiences of Indonesian and Filipina women in this Asian world city. Giving voice to the stories of these migrant mothers, their South Asian, African, Chinese, and Western expatriate partners, and their Hong Kong–born babies, Constable raises a serious question: Do we regard migrants as people, or just as temporary workers? This accessible ethnography provides insight into global problems of mobility, family, and citizenship and points to the consequences, creative responses, melodramas, and tragedies of labor and migration policies.

The resulting cultural differences can often create problems and conflict. In Europe alone, the sheer scale of migration is forcing the issue to the top of the political agenda. The Intercultural City brings together scholars from a range of disciplines - including urban studies, geography, planning, sociology, political science and spatial design - to explore both the failings of existing policies to manage diversity and to examine how one might begin to create ways to remove obstacles and enhance the integration of migrants and minorities. Combining fresh theoretical insights with studies from cities in Europe, North America, Asia and Africa, The Intercultural City offers a timely and important contribution to the challenge of managing diversity in the city of the twenty-first century.