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Passport Entanglements
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Passport Entanglements traces the many tangled threads—political, historical, economic, global, and local—that are tied to the existence of Indonesian aspal or “real but fake” passports that are ca...
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15 November 2022

Passport Entanglements traces the many tangled threads—political, historical, economic, global, and local—that are tied to the existence of Indonesian aspal or “real but fake” passports that are carried by as many as a third of Indonesian migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong. The book explains how and why the HK Indonesian Consulate’s attempts to regularize or “clean up” (pemutihan) these passports created significant problems for migrant workers. Passports and other types of documentation are said to facilitate migration and to offer migrant workers protection and care yet they can also be instruments of surveillance, control, and exploitation. Anthropologist Nicole Constable focuses on the politics and inequalities embedded in passports, drawing from ethnographic examples of migrant workers who were found guilty of immigration fraud and sent to prison and of others who protested and resisted the new passport policies. She considers how these instruments determine legal status and dictate rights while the renewal policies simultaneously undermined them. Contrary to global “best practices” concerning passports, Constable argues that imposing new biometric technologies does not lead to greater protection, security, or accuracy but can instead reinforce violent structures on already vulnerable women by producing new vulnerabilities and reproducing old ones.
Price: $34.95
Pages: 260
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date:
15 November 2022
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520387997
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
"Beautifully written and highly accessible, Nicole Constable’s book weaves a powerful dialogue between the anthropology of transnational labor migration in Southeast Asia, studies of documents and passports, and feminist scholarship on entanglements and care."
Nicole Constable is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and author of several books, including Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and "Mail Order" Marriages and Born Out of Place: Migrant Mothers and the Politics of International Labor.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Terms and Abbreviations
1. Passports and Ethnographic Entanglements
2. Ethnographer and Interlocutor
3. Care and Control
4. Real and Fake
5. State and Society
6. Migrant and Citizen
7. Temporalities and Scales
References
Index
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Terms and Abbreviations
1. Passports and Ethnographic Entanglements
2. Ethnographer and Interlocutor
3. Care and Control
4. Real and Fake
5. State and Society
6. Migrant and Citizen
7. Temporalities and Scales
References
Index