In this pathbreaking and timely work, Hamal Gurung gives voice to the growing number of Nepali women who migrate to the United States to work in the informal economy. Highlighting the experiences of thirty-five women, mostly college educated and middle class, who take on domestic service and unskilled labor jobs, Hamal Gurung challenges conventional portraits of Third World women as victims forced into low-wage employment. Instead, she sheds light on Nepali women’s strategic decisions to accept downwardly mobile positions in order to earn more income, thereby achieving greater agency in their home countries as well as in their diasporic communities in the United States. These women are not only investing in themselves and their families—they are building transnational communities through formal participation in NGOs and informal networks of migrant workers. In great detail, Hamal Gurung documents Nepali migrant women’s lives, making visible the profound and far-reaching effects of their civic, economic, and political engagement.

Susanne Åsman's compelling ethnographic account examines migration for sex work in the Sindhupalchowk district of Nepal. Åsman explores how this migration, known as "Bombay Going," is understood by the locals. With a focus on agency, Åsman investigates how the migrants carve out a space for themselves and create relatedness in the spaces in between, from their homes in rural Nepal to the brothels of Mumbai. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the politics of sex trafficking, gender, migration, or the global south.

In this pathbreaking and timely work, Hamal Gurung gives voice to the growing number of Nepali women who migrate to the United States to work in the informal economy. Highlighting the experiences of thirty-five women, mostly college educated and middle class, who take on domestic service and unskilled labor jobs, Hamal Gurung challenges conventional portraits of Third World women as victims forced into low-wage employment. Instead, she sheds light on Nepali women’s strategic decisions to accept downwardly mobile positions in order to earn more income, thereby achieving greater agency in their home countries as well as in their diasporic communities in the United States. These women are not only investing in themselves and their families—they are building transnational communities through formal participation in NGOs and informal networks of migrant workers. In great detail, Hamal Gurung documents Nepali migrant women’s lives, making visible the profound and far-reaching effects of their civic, economic, and political engagement.

In Far West Nepal - an area extremely impoverished also by Nepalese standards - labour migration to India has been an integral part of the livelihood strategies of the majority of people for several generations. This research is based on case studies among male and female migrants in Delhi coming from four villages of Far West Nepal. The analysis focuses on selected aspects of the migrants' daily lives, such as working and living conditions, management of loans and savings, and remittance transfer. It was found, that the whole migration process is mainly facilitated by transnational kin and friendship networks. To grasp the geographical and social dimensions of the migrant's lives an integrative approach in joining the sustainable livelihoods approach, Bourdieu's theory of practice, the concept of social capital and the concept of transnational migration was developed. Further results show, that the majority of the migrants are male. The unskilled migrants occupy a distinct niche, in which men have been working as watchmen and car cleaners for generations. The job market is highly organized since jobs are handed over and sold within networks. If wives of migrants are in Delhi for longer periods, they engage in housekeeping. For financial needs migrants established their own informal savings and credit associations. Although migration is firstly seen as an opportunity by the migrants, it can as well perpetuate debt and dependency and entail that they remain migrants for their whole lives.

This book offers a fresh perspective on gender debates in Nepal and analyses how the international migration of the first generation of professional female Nepali nurses has been a catalyst for social change. With unprecedented access to study participants in Nepal (the source country), following them and their networks in the UK (the destination country), this ethnographic study explores Nepali nurses' migration journeys, relocation experiences, and their international migration 'dreams' and aspirations. It illustrates how migrant nurses strive to manage social and professional difficulties as they work towards achieving their ultimate migration aims. The book shows that nursing shortages and international nurse migration are isseus of gender, on a global scale, and that the current trend of privatisation in health systems makes the labour market vulnerable, and stimulates international migration of health professionals. Arguing that international nurse migration is an integral part of the globalisation of health, the author highlights key policy strategies that are useful for global nursing and health workforce management. A well-informed and much-needed study of nurse migration in the global healthcare market, this book will be of interest to professionals and academics working in nursing studies, health and social care studies, gender and international migration studies, and global health studies, as well as South Asian studies.

El Guindi provides a comprehensive guide to the methods of visual anthropology and the use of film in cross-cultural research and ethnography. She shows how visual media — photographic, filmic, interactive — is now an accepted part of the anthropological process, a vital tool that reflects and produces knowledge about the range of cultures and about culture itself. It preserves the integrity of people, objects, and events in their cultural context, and expands our horizons beyond the reach of memory culture. El Guindi places visual anthropology within an empirically-based, analytic framework, built on systematic observation, identifying the research cycle that begins with data gathering and leads to visual ethnographic construction that is anthropological in method, process, and product. She explains how indigenous, professional, and amateur forms of pictorial/auditory materials are grounded in personal, social, cultural, and ideological contexts, and describes the non-Western critique of the Western traditions of visual anthropology. Her book is an excellent guide for ethnographic research, and for film and other media instruction concerned with cross-cultural representation.