Passport Entanglements examines the problems with documents issued to Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong and explores the larger role that passports and other types of documentation play in gendered migration, precarious labor, and bureaucracy. Focusing on the politics and inequalities embedded in passports, anthropologist Nicole Constable considers how these instruments determine legal status and dictate rights. Constable finds that new biometric technologies and surveillance do not lead to greater protection, security, or accuracy, but rather reinforce violent structures on already vulnerable women by producing new vulnerabilities and reproducing old ones.
The role of “real but fake” passports in Asian migration and labor precarity
By Nicole Constable, author of Passport Entanglements: Protection, Care, and Precarious Migrations Since the 1990s, I have done field research in Hong Kong among Filipino and Indonesian migrant workers and activists, most …
Read More >
