N Constable
Biographic Data
| ID | 8079 |
|---|---|
| NAME | N Constable |
| GIVEN NAMES | N |
| FAMILY NAME | Constable |
| SIGNATURE | CONSTABLE N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pittsburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5664-6220 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 812 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Mobilizing Documents
This co‐authored essay builds on a growing anthropological literature that engages critically and creatively with idealized official and popular ideas about documents of/in migration regimes. Documents are often championed as a common and unquestionable good in transnational migration but they are intrinsically tied to inequalities and exclusions. As such they can be the source of hope for migrants, but are frequently also the source of violence,…
Christian Souls and Chinese Spirits
Passport Entanglements
Passport Entanglements
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 work…
Passport Entanglements
Ethnographer and Interlocutor
Marriage and Marriageability
Reviewed by: Marriage and Marriageability: The Practices of Matchmaking between Men from Japan and Women from Northeast China by Chigusa Yamaura Nicole Constable (bio) Marriage and Marriageability: The Practices of Matchmaking between Men from Japan and Women from Northeast China. By Chigusa Yamaura. Cornell University Press, 2020. xii, 203 pages. $39.95, cloth; $25.99, E-book. Over the last two decades, the number of academic books and articles …
Continual arrival and the longue durée
Most studies of ‘emplacement’ focus on immigrants or refugees who seek permanent settlement. In contrast, this article examines the significance of emplacement for ‘temporary migrants’ who live under conditions of ongoing arrival, contingency, and temporariness and have no expectation of remaining permanently. For temporary migrant workers in Hong Kong, specifically domestic workers, I argue that emplacement has become a form of collective and on…
Migrant mothers, rejected refugees and excluded belonging in Hong Kong
Building on ethnographic research and on studies of noncitizenship, this paper examines ‘excluded belonging’, a condition that is constructed over time, through a process of interactions between noncitizens and migratory assemblages. Noncitizens respond to the shifting parameters of inclusion and exclusion in their everyday lives in their attempts to construct a substantive sense of belonging that is often fleeting, fragile and ever challenged. M…
Afterword
This afterword highlights the importance of these articles in relation to care and control in Asian migration. The collection introduces new areas for ethnographic research and new analytic approaches. It inspires me to think about the multiple entanglements of care (as, for example, aid, activism, labour, or protection) and control (as surveillance, registration, law, or social pressure) in my current research on Indonesian passports and biometr…
Romance on a Global Stage
By the year 2000 more than 350 Internet agencies were plying the email-order marriage trade, and the business of matching up mostly Western men with women from Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America had become an example of globalization writ large. This provocative work opens a window onto the complex motivations and experiences of the people behind the stereotypes and misconceptions that have exploded along with the practice of transnational c…
Temporary Intimacies, Incipient Transnationalism and Failed Cross-Border Marriages
Assemblages and affect
Drawing from stories told by migrant women in Hong Kong, this article builds on previous studies of 'left-behind children' and calls for greater attention to the spectrum of sorts of absent children and to the formation of queer or less normative forms of migratory families. Taking a two-pronged approach, I present an on-the-ground ethnographic and affective approach through several vignettes, and consider key elements of a more mid-range and dis…
Revisiting Distant Divides and Intimate Connections in Asia
I am honored to comment on Engseng Ho's provocative essay through the lens of my own research on inter-Asian connections and mobilities in and beyond Asia. The abstract for the panel, entitled “The Flow of Migration beyond the State,” stated that “much scholarship on Asia is framed by organizational schemes that engage in spatial relationships and contrasts” (e.g., cores and peripheries, uplands and lowlands, mainland and islands) and that the id…
Reproductive Labor at the Intersection of Three Intimate Industries
This article explores, ethnographically and critically, migrant women's contributions to three intersecting sectors of “intimate industries” in Asia: domestic work, sex tourism, and adoption. These three sectors are normally understood as separate and distinct, and in the cases discussed below, women are paid formal wages only as domestic workers. Yet focusing on the intersections between these sectors illustrates the critical ongoing significanc…
Born Out of Place
Born Out of Place focuses on the largely invisible and easily overlooked topic of babies born to migrant worker mothers. Such a focus brings to light the flaws and unintended consequences of migration laws and labor policies, the often poignant and painful experiences of migrant mothers, and the ambivalent roles of fathers. Within the context of contemporary global capitalism, this research yields a deeper and fuller understanding of the practica…
Migrant Motherhood, ‘Failed Migration’, and the Gendered Risks of Precarious Labour
This article offers an ethnographically-based counterpoint to recent optimistic macro-approaches to the “migration-development nexus” that view international labour migrants as “agents of change,” depict migration as a win-win for the sending and receiving states, and associate migration with positive changes in the sending community, including the influx of monetary remittances and the entry of new ideas, such as gender equity and human rights (…
Conference as feminist ethnography and the blurring of boundaries
Media, Erotics, and Transnational Asia
International Marriage Brokers, Cross-Border Marriages and the US Anti-Trafficking Campaign
This article offers a critical analysis of the US 'International Marriage Broker Regulation Act' in relation to its promoters and critics, the women it intends to protect, and the surrounding 'trafficking' discourse. I argue that the act was supported by faulty logic and inaccurate data, and that its passage was linked to conflations of foreign brides with victims of trafficking and domestic violence and of introduction agencies with human traffi…
Maid to Order in Hong Kong
Telling Tales of Migrant Workers in Hong Kong
Migrant domestic workers confront a multiplicity of difficulties and challenges. Within the ‘host’ context, some join religious groups that offer comfort by replicating the religion of home; others experiment with new religions or denominations that appeal to them within the modern global context; others ignore or reject religion altogether. This article offers an ethnographic analysis of the religious stories and activist experiences of four wom…
Migrant Workers and the Many States of Protest in Hong Kong
Migrant domestic workers rarely take part in — let alone organize — public protests in the countries where they work. Public protests are virtually unheard of among migrant domestic workers in Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia, and especially in the Middle East and the Gulf States. Over the past decade and a half, however, migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong — mostly Filipinas and Indonesian women — have become highly active, organizing and parti…
Global Cinderellas
Marrying for a Future
Marrying for a Future: Transnational Sri Lankan Tamil Marriages in the Shadow of War." South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 43(3), pp. 571–572
The Commodification of Intimacy
Over the past three decades, scholars have paid greater attention to the intensification and complex interconnectivity of local and global processes. Anthropological studies of cross-border marriages, migrant domestic workers, and sex workers have burgeoned, demonstrating growing scholarly interest in how social relations have become evermore geographically dispersed, impersonal, mediated by and implicated in broader political-economic or capital…
Romance on a Global Stage
By the year 2000 more than 350 Internet agencies were plying the email-order marriage trade, and the business of matching up mostly Western men with women from Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America had become an example of globalization writ large. This provocative work opens a window onto the complex motivations and experiences of the people behind the stereotypes and misconceptions that have exploded along with the practice of transnational c…
Maid to Order in Hong Kong
At Home but Not at Home
Sexuality and Discipline among Filipina Domestic Workers in Hong Kong
Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong are viewed as sexually threatening and thus in need of strict discipline. In this article I present and analyze the discourse on the sexuality of Filipina domestic workers, arguing that their reputation is linked primarily to their ambiguous social and class identities, and to broad changes in the familial and economic landscape of Hong Kong. Clothing serves as one forum in which sexuality is expressed, disc…
Jealousy, Chastity, and Abuse
Telling Tales of Migrant Workers in Hong Kong
Migrant domestic workers confront a multiplicity of difficulties and challenges. Within the ‘host’ context, some join religious groups that offer comfort by replicating the religion of home; others experiment with new religions or denominations that appeal to them within the modern global context; others ignore or reject religion altogether. This article offers an ethnographic analysis of the religious stories and activist experiences of four wom…
Brides, Maids, and Prostitutes
This essay critically examines the blurred boundaries – or the analytical shadow lines – in scholarly and popular conceptualizations of Asian women migrants. I ask what women who migrate from the global South to the North as maids, brides, or sex workers have in common? How important are the commonalities and the distinctions between them? When are such blurs warranted, and what are the implications of such blurs for women’s self-perceptions and …
Hong Kong
Hong Kong: The Anthropology of. Chinese Metropolis. Grant Evans and Maria Tarn Siu-Mi. eds. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997.336 pp
International Marriage Brokers, Cross-Border Marriages and the US Anti-Trafficking Campaign
This article offers a critical analysis of the US 'International Marriage Broker Regulation Act' in relation to its promoters and critics, the women it intends to protect, and the surrounding 'trafficking' discourse. I argue that the act was supported by faulty logic and inaccurate data, and that its passage was linked to conflations of foreign brides with victims of trafficking and domestic violence and of introduction agencies with human traffi…
Women and Writing in Modern China
Introduction 1. Women, writing, and the discourse of nationalism 2. Woman, moral virtue, and literary text 3. The body and the text 4. The new woman and the new literature 5. Women's writing and social engagement Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
Guest People
Reproductive Labor at the Intersection of Three Intimate Industries
This article explores, ethnographically and critically, migrant women's contributions to three intersecting sectors of “intimate industries” in Asia: domestic work, sex tourism, and adoption. These three sectors are normally understood as separate and distinct, and in the cases discussed below, women are paid formal wages only as domestic workers. Yet focusing on the intersections between these sectors illustrates the critical ongoing significanc…
Nostalgia, Memory, and Modernity
On the surface, Beijing photographic bridal portraits and albums bear a striking resemblance to those in Taiwan [Adrian Citation2003], and to bridal practices that are popular in other parts of East Asia [Kendall Citation1996, Lee Citation2002]. Yet despite many important similarities, I argue that Beijing bridal portraiture ought not be dismissed as simple mimicry, nor as yet another example of globalization, westernization, or hegemonic global …
Continual arrival and the longue durée
Most studies of ‘emplacement’ focus on immigrants or refugees who seek permanent settlement. In contrast, this article examines the significance of emplacement for ‘temporary migrants’ who live under conditions of ongoing arrival, contingency, and temporariness and have no expectation of remaining permanently. For temporary migrant workers in Hong Kong, specifically domestic workers, I argue that emplacement has become a form of collective and on…
Migrant mothers, rejected refugees and excluded belonging in Hong Kong
Building on ethnographic research and on studies of noncitizenship, this paper examines ‘excluded belonging’, a condition that is constructed over time, through a process of interactions between noncitizens and migratory assemblages. Noncitizens respond to the shifting parameters of inclusion and exclusion in their everyday lives in their attempts to construct a substantive sense of belonging that is often fleeting, fragile and ever challenged. M…
Migrant Motherhood, ‘Failed Migration’, and the Gendered Risks of Precarious Labour
This article offers an ethnographically-based counterpoint to recent optimistic macro-approaches to the “migration-development nexus” that view international labour migrants as “agents of change,” depict migration as a win-win for the sending and receiving states, and associate migration with positive changes in the sending community, including the influx of monetary remittances and the entry of new ideas, such as gender equity and human rights (…
Assemblages and affect
Drawing from stories told by migrant women in Hong Kong, this article builds on previous studies of 'left-behind children' and calls for greater attention to the spectrum of sorts of absent children and to the formation of queer or less normative forms of migratory families. Taking a two-pronged approach, I present an on-the-ground ethnographic and affective approach through several vignettes, and consider key elements of a more mid-range and dis…
Afterword
This afterword highlights the importance of these articles in relation to care and control in Asian migration. The collection introduces new areas for ethnographic research and new analytic approaches. It inspires me to think about the multiple entanglements of care (as, for example, aid, activism, labour, or protection) and control (as surveillance, registration, law, or social pressure) in my current research on Indonesian passports and biometr…
Media, Erotics, and Transnational Asia
Maid to Order in Hong Kong
As middle-class Chinese women have entered the Hong Kong work force in unprecedented numbers over the past two decades, the demand for foreign domestic workers has soared. Approximately 150,000 individuals now serve on two-year contracts, and the vast majority are women from the Philippines. Nicole Constable tells their story. Interweaving her analysis with anecdotal evidence collected in interviews with individual domestic workers, she shows how…
Marrying for a Future
Marrying for a Future: Transnational Sri Lankan Tamil Marriages in the Shadow of War." South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 43(3), pp. 571–572
Revisiting Distant Divides and Intimate Connections in Asia
I am honored to comment on Engseng Ho's provocative essay through the lens of my own research on inter-Asian connections and mobilities in and beyond Asia. The abstract for the panel, entitled “The Flow of Migration beyond the State,” stated that “much scholarship on Asia is framed by organizational schemes that engage in spatial relationships and contrasts” (e.g., cores and peripheries, uplands and lowlands, mainland and islands) and that the id…
Conference as feminist ethnography and the blurring of boundaries
Chain of Love
Christian Souls and Chinese Spirits
How do the people of a village that is both Chinese and Christian reconcile the contradictions between their religious and ethnic identities? This ethnographic study explores the construction and changing meanings of ethnic identity in Hong Kong. Established at the turn of the century by Hakka Christians who sought to escape hardships and discrimination in China, Shung Him Tong was constructed as an "ideal" Chinese and Christian village. The Hakk…
Protestantism in Contemporary China. Allan Hunter , Kim-Kwong Chan
At Work in Homes
Jealousy, Chastity, and Abuse
Guest People
Sexuality and Discipline among Filipina Domestic Workers in Hong Kong
Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong are viewed as sexually threatening and thus in need of strict discipline. In this article I present and analyze the discourse on the sexuality of Filipina domestic workers, arguing that their reputation is linked primarily to their ambiguous social and class identities, and to broad changes in the familial and economic landscape of Hong Kong. Clothing serves as one forum in which sexuality is expressed, disc…
Guest People
Hong Kong
Hong Kong: The Anthropology of. Chinese Metropolis. Grant Evans and Maria Tarn Siu-Mi. eds. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997.336 pp
Women and Writing in Modern China
Introduction 1. Women, writing, and the discourse of nationalism 2. Woman, moral virtue, and literary text 3. The body and the text 4. The new woman and the new literature 5. Women's writing and social engagement Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
Maid to Order in Hong Kong
As middle-class Chinese women have entered the Hong Kong work force in unprecedented numbers over the past two decades, the demand for foreign domestic workers has soared. Approximately 150,000 individuals now serve on two-year contracts, and the vast majority are women from the Philippines. Nicole Constable tells their story. Interweaving her analysis with anecdotal evidence collected in interviews with individual domestic workers, she shows how…
At Home but Not at Home
Servants of Globalization
Journal of Asian American Studies - Volume 5, Number 1, February 2002
A Transnational Perspective on Divorce and Marriage
Building on the burgeoning literature on gender and transnationalism, this article considers how Filipina women's labor and marriage migrations are intertwined in complex and paradoxical ways with global, local, and personal factors. Central to the article are the stories of two women, one a Filipina overseas contract worker in Hong Kong and the other a Filipina in the Philippines who sought to meet a foreign marriage partner through corresponden…
Chain of Love
Brides, Maids, and Prostitutes
This essay critically examines the blurred boundaries – or the analytical shadow lines – in scholarly and popular conceptualizations of Asian women migrants. I ask what women who migrate from the global South to the North as maids, brides, or sex workers have in common? How important are the commonalities and the distinctions between them? When are such blurs warranted, and what are the implications of such blurs for women’s self-perceptions and …
Nostalgia, Memory, and Modernity
On the surface, Beijing photographic bridal portraits and albums bear a striking resemblance to those in Taiwan [Adrian Citation2003], and to bridal practices that are popular in other parts of East Asia [Kendall Citation1996, Lee Citation2002]. Yet despite many important similarities, I argue that Beijing bridal portraiture ought not be dismissed as simple mimicry, nor as yet another example of globalization, westernization, or hegemonic global …
Migrant Workers and the Many States of Protest in Hong Kong
Migrant domestic workers rarely take part in — let alone organize — public protests in the countries where they work. Public protests are virtually unheard of among migrant domestic workers in Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia, and especially in the Middle East and the Gulf States. Over the past decade and a half, however, migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong — mostly Filipinas and Indonesian women — have become highly active, organizing and parti…
The Commodification of Intimacy
Over the past three decades, scholars have paid greater attention to the intensification and complex interconnectivity of local and global processes. Anthropological studies of cross-border marriages, migrant domestic workers, and sex workers have burgeoned, demonstrating growing scholarly interest in how social relations have become evermore geographically dispersed, impersonal, mediated by and implicated in broader political-economic or capital…
Dreaming of a Mail-Order Husband
Maid to Order in Hong Kong
Telling Tales of Migrant Workers in Hong Kong
Migrant domestic workers confront a multiplicity of difficulties and challenges. Within the ‘host’ context, some join religious groups that offer comfort by replicating the religion of home; others experiment with new religions or denominations that appeal to them within the modern global context; others ignore or reject religion altogether. This article offers an ethnographic analysis of the religious stories and activist experiences of four wom…
Media, Erotics, and Transnational Asia
International Marriage Brokers, Cross-Border Marriages and the US Anti-Trafficking Campaign
This article offers a critical analysis of the US 'International Marriage Broker Regulation Act' in relation to its promoters and critics, the women it intends to protect, and the surrounding 'trafficking' discourse. I argue that the act was supported by faulty logic and inaccurate data, and that its passage was linked to conflations of foreign brides with victims of trafficking and domestic violence and of introduction agencies with human traffi…
Conference as feminist ethnography and the blurring of boundaries
Born Out of Place
Born Out of Place focuses on the largely invisible and easily overlooked topic of babies born to migrant worker mothers. Such a focus brings to light the flaws and unintended consequences of migration laws and labor policies, the often poignant and painful experiences of migrant mothers, and the ambivalent roles of fathers. Within the context of contemporary global capitalism, this research yields a deeper and fuller understanding of the practica…
Sociology (30 works) · Political science (23 works) · Gender Studies (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (18 works) · Gender Studies (13 works) · History (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity (12 works) · Ethnography (12 works)