ABSTRACT
The movement of workers continues unabated, but has taken different forms in recent decades. As you read this, millions of people are travelling between countries for work, some legally, some illegally. Many of these travellers are women who will become maids for a period of perhaps two years. Those coming from Southeast Asia are increasingly moving to the major cities of their region, especially Singapore and Hong Kong. In tracking the shifting patterns of movement for work, we need to understand the combination of mental and material elements of that movement. We need to see their movement as a type of ‘mobility’ between related sites and social positions, rather than having the permanency implied in the term ‘migration’. Thus what was once called ‘internal’ migration needs to be seen as part of a larger pattern of mobility that launches people into transnational movement for work.
