Transnationalism and Sri Lanka’s Migrant Housemaids: The Kitchen Spoon’s Handle

The book examines how the migration of female labor from Sri Lanka to the Persian Gulf states has spurred changes in the social configurations and gender relations in a coastal village in Sri Lanka. It discusses how this migration forms part of a complex transnational movement of populations, commodities, currencies, and ideologies. In an increasingly interconnected world, events at the local level often reflect close links with global systems. Similarly, large-scale international dynamics often reflect particular economic, political, and cultural practices of small communities. The author argues that to understand either the global or the local, one must view each in the context of the other. Dr. Gamburd skillfully blends the stories and memories of returned migrants of the village, their families and neighbors with extensive interviews conducted with government officials, recruiting agents, and moneylenders, showing the confluence of global and local processes in the lives of the villagers. She also presents interesting case studies to explain how village women and men constantly transform and re-create their lived systems of values and meanings through everyday practices, sending older structures of power and authority into flux. This fascinating and analytically rich volume will interest those involved in gender studies, migration studies, anthropology, ethnography, political science, history, economics, and cultural studie.