Asian Migrant Workers in the Arab Gulf States (edited by Masako Ishii, Naomi Hosoda, Masaki Matsuo and Koji Horinuki) examines how nationals and migrants construct new relationships in the segregated socioeconomic spaces of the region (namely, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates). Instead of assuming that segregation is disadvantageous for migrant workers, it emphasizes multiple aspects and presents various voices. In this way, the book tries to unfold the region’s segregated socioeconomic space, as well as its new forms of networking and connectedness, in order to understand how the various peoples coexist: a situation that often entails conflict and discrepancies between expectations and reality.

Labor migration from Asia to the oil-exporting countries in the Middle East has burgeoned in the last decade to a current level of over two million workers. Because foreign labor contracts have become a potent source of foreign exchange to the sending countries in Asia as well as a safety valve for high unemployment, the export of labor has become

Indonesians and Their Arab World explores the ways contemporary Indonesians understand their relationship to the Arab world. Despite being home to the largest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia exists on the periphery of an Islamic world centered around the Arabian Peninsula. Mirjam Lücking approaches the problem of interpreting the current conservative turn in Indonesian Islam by considering the ways personal relationships, public discourse, and matters of religious self-understanding guide two groups of Indonesians who actually travel to the Arabian Peninsula—labor migrants and Mecca pilgrims—in becoming physically mobile and making their mobility meaningful. This concept, which Lücking calls "guided mobility," reveals that changes in Indonesian Islamic traditions are grounded in domestic social constellations and calls claims of outward Arab influence in Indonesia into question. With three levels of comparison (urban and rural areas, Madura and Central Java, and migrants and pilgrims), this ethnographic case study foregrounds how different regional and socioeconomic contexts determine Indonesians' various engagements with the Arab world.

Comprises non-binding principles and guidelines for labour migration drawn from relevant international instruments and international and regional policy guidelines, including the International Agenda for Migration Management. Serves as a practical guide to governments and to employers' and workers' organizations with regard to the development, strengthening and implementation of national and international labour migration policies.

Ethnographic research in Pakistan, the Middle East, and the United States helps to explain how transnational working classes from Pakistan are produced in the context of American empire and its War on Terror.