Proletarian and Gendered Mass Migrations: A Global Perspective on Continuities and Discontinuities from the 19th to the 21st Centuries

Proletarian and Gendered Mass Migrations connects the 19th- and 20th-century labor migrations and migration systems in global transcultural perspective. It emphasizes macro-regional internal continuities or discontinuities and interactions between and within macro-regions. The essays look at migrant workers experiences in constraining frames and the options they seize or constraints they circumvent. It traces the development from 19th-century proletarian migrations to industries and plantations across the globe to 20th- and 21st-century domestics and caregiver migrations. It integrates male and female migration and shows how women have always been present in mass migrations. Studies on historical development over time are supplemented by case studies on present migrations in Asia and from Asia. A systems approach is combined with human agency perspectives.

Contributors include Rochelle Ball, Shelly Chan, Dennis D. Cordell, Michael Douglass, Christiane Harzig, Dirk Hoerder, Muhamad Nadratuzzaman Hosen, Hassène Kassar, Kamel Kateb, Amarjit Kaur, Kiranjit Kaur, Gijs Kessler, Akram Khater, Elizabeth A. Kuznesof, Vera Mackie, Adam McKeown, Tomoko Nakamatsu, Ooi Keat Gin, Aswatini Raharto, Marlou Schrover, and Patcharawalai Wongboonsin.

Dirk Hoerder has taught worldwide migrations, borderland interactions, and sociology of acculturation at University of Bremen and Arizona State University and in Toronto and Paris. Publications include Cultures in Contact (Duke University Press, 2002), Historical Practice of Diversity (Berghahn Books, 2003), Connecting Seas and Connected Ocean Rims (Brill, 2011).

Amarjit Kaur teaches at the University of New England, Australia, and focuses on international labour migration, forced migration in Southeast Asia, and issues of governance, inequality and labour rights. Publications include Wage Labour in Southeast Asia since 1840 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), Women Workers in Industrialising Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).