Megha Amrith
Biographic Data
| ID | 121802 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Megha Amrith |
| GIVEN NAMES | Megha |
| FAMILY NAME | Amrith |
| SIGNATURE | AMRITH M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Gottingen, Germany |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4662-5797 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 106 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Encounters and Inequalities in Southeast Asia's Lucrative Wellness Industry
The White Lotus is distinctive not only in its critique of wealthy tourists in luxury resorts, but in centring the emotional labour and aspirations of resort workers – spa labourers, ‘wellness mentors’ and security personnel. Echoing this focus on the interactions between workers, consumers and local communities, this article puts forward a research agenda on the contested encounters and inequalities of Southeast Asia's multi-billion-dollar welln…
Reimagining social protection: Financialised futures among ageing migrant domestic workers in Asia
A common narrative among Filipino migrant domestic workers in Singapore and Hong Kong is that their work abroad is to guarantee a better future for their families. Migrant women frequently extend their temporary contracts, sometimes over decades to support family life projects. Yet their contracts can only be extended until retirement age, after which they must return to their countries of origin. This paper focuses on migrant women approaching t…
Fleeting joy, divergent expectations and reconfigured intimacies: The visits home of Filipino migrant care workers in Singapore
For Filipino migrant care workers in Singapore, visits home are highly anticipated and longed for, but only as long as they remain brief. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, this paper examines such visits as emotionally complex events that bring intense joy as migrants reunite with dispersed family members, but also reveal divergent expectations and feelings of loss and betrayal. These experiences are especially felt among migrant women …
Southern reconfigurations of the ageing-migration nexus
Doctoral Thesis Review – Anmeldelse av doktoravhandling
The Temporal Borders of Transnational Belonging: Aging Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore
Amidst public debate about the need for migrant domestic workers to assist with eldercare in Asia, we hear little about the futures of the workers themselves. This paper focuses on low-wage migrant domestic workers of different nationalities who have spent decades in Singapore, and how they imagine, prepare for, or avoid discussion of their aging futures. Singapore's immigration regime enforces mandatory retirement and return migration when domes…
Introduction: Living in the 'Here and Now': Extended Temporalities of Forced Migration
Disposable kin: Shifting registers of belonging in global care economies
As is well discussed in the literature, paid domestic workers become like kin through living with and caring for their employers. Exploring two disparate cases, aging Asian domestic workers in Singapore and African eldercare workers in the United States, the article focuses on two critical junctures when these kin relations are disavowed: the care worker's retirement and the death of a patient. We argue that the flexible registers of kinship that…
Care
There are many universal assumptions about what care is and how it ought to be provided. Such assumptions are widely embedded in public debates, government policies, and institutional forms of support. This entry presents three areas of anthropological work on how care is practised around the world in order to challenge these assumptions and demonstrate how care varies in unexpected ways. First, the entry explores how care is structured and, in p…
Ageing bodies, precarious futures: The (Im)mobilities of 'Temporary' Migrant Domestic Workers Over Time
In both historical and contemporary studies of contract mobile labour, little attention has been granted to ageing migrant bodies from a lifecourse perspective. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with older migrant domestic workers in Singapore, this article investigates how, in the context of restrictive regimes of mobility shaping temporary labour migration, age crucially factors into the (im)mobility of migrant domestic workers. Growi…
The linear imagination, stalled: Changing Temporal Horizons in Migrant Journeys
In this article, I engage with a growing interest in questions of time in the study of migration to consider how changing temporal horizons in migrant journeys play an important role in shaping multilocal migration imaginaries. I draw on two ethnographic cases with migrant care workers from the Philippines, of different generations and at different points of their migration journeys, to examine how initially held linear imaginaries of migration b…
The Substance of Care: Ethical Dilemmas in Migrant Medical Labour
As transnational mobilities for health in the Southeast Asian region intensify, this article investigates the everyday socialites that take shape in spaces of medical care. Told through the narratives of Filipino medical workers and caregivers in Singapore, this paper examines the socialities among migrants and locals who work together, and who care for patients in fast-paced public hospitals, as well as nursing homes on the margins of the city. …
Domestic Economies: Women, Work, and the American Dream in Los Angeles, by Susanna Rosenbaum
Gender, Work and Migration: Agency in Gendered Labour Settings
While the feminisation of transnational migrant labour is now a firmly ingrained feature of the contemporary global economy, the specific experiences and understandings of labour in a range of gendered sectors of global and regional labour markets still require comparative and ethnographic attention. This book adopts a particular focus on migrants employed in sectors of the economy that are typically regarded as marginal or precarious – domestic …
Tentative friendships among low-income migrants in São Paulo’s commercial districts
The city of São Paulo, historically important as a destination for migrants from across the world, has experienced newer waves of immigration in the past few decades. As Brazilian national legislation and municipal policies have been ill prepared to handle these recent flows, migrants find themselves without much institutional support and rely instead on other networks to find their way in the city. This article is based on ethnographic research …
Caring for Strangers: Filipino Medical Workers in Asia
Today, the Philippines has become one of the largest exporters of medical workers in the world, with nursing in particular offering many the hope of a lucrative and stable career abroad. This timely volume narrates their stories in a multi-sited ethnography that follows aspiring migrants from Manila’s vibrant nursing schools to a different reality in Singapore’s multicultural hospitals and nursing homes, and back home to a Filipino village. In so…
Migration, Health and Inequality in Asia
Focusing on health, migration and inequality, this contribution examines the role of citizenship in shaping migrants' experiences of health. The idea of national citizenship has frequently dominated the framing of debates about whether states or markets should play the dominant role in health. Yet, health inequalities are embedded in transnational flows of people, capital and ideas, which are themselves a product of history. Migration is thus ess…
Urban Marginality and the Affective Lives of Migrants: Representations in Film
This article examines urban migration and experiences of marginality and vulnerability in the context of neoliberal globalisation and increasingly precarious conditions of life and work. It will focus in particular on three films, which have powerfully addressed these themes: Last Train Home (Lixin Fan, 2009), Paper Dolls (Tomer Heymann, 2006) and I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2006). All three films are set in contexts of urban tr…
Pathways to urban citizenship for low-income migrants in São Paulo
Recent waves of migrants are establishing an increasingly visible presence in the urban landscape of São Paulo, both in its centre and its peripheries. Though a city with a rich history of immigration and diversity, the arrival of migrants in recent decades has not been accompanied by specific municipal policies for the migrant population, an absence which affects in particular, low-income migrants. Urban social movements for migration take on th…
They Think We are Just Caregivers: The Ambivalence of Care in the Lives of Filipino Medical Workers in Singapore
Notions of care have multiple inflections in the lives of Filipino medical workers in Singapore. The present paper explores ethnographically how Filipino migrants narrate and experience ambivalent notions of care as they move across borders. Their labour is fraught with ambiguity as they distance themselves from ideas of care in their working lives. They position themselves as professionals and attempt to shed the long-standing associations of Fi…
Disposable kin: Shifting registers of belonging in global care economies
As is well discussed in the literature, paid domestic workers become like kin through living with and caring for their employers. Exploring two disparate cases, aging Asian domestic workers in Singapore and African eldercare workers in the United States, the article focuses on two critical junctures when these kin relations are disavowed: the care worker's retirement and the death of a patient. We argue that the flexible registers of kinship that…
The linear imagination, stalled: Changing Temporal Horizons in Migrant Journeys
In this article, I engage with a growing interest in questions of time in the study of migration to consider how changing temporal horizons in migrant journeys play an important role in shaping multilocal migration imaginaries. I draw on two ethnographic cases with migrant care workers from the Philippines, of different generations and at different points of their migration journeys, to examine how initially held linear imaginaries of migration b…
Ageing bodies, precarious futures: The (Im)mobilities of 'Temporary' Migrant Domestic Workers Over Time
In both historical and contemporary studies of contract mobile labour, little attention has been granted to ageing migrant bodies from a lifecourse perspective. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with older migrant domestic workers in Singapore, this article investigates how, in the context of restrictive regimes of mobility shaping temporary labour migration, age crucially factors into the (im)mobility of migrant domestic workers. Growi…
Southern reconfigurations of the ageing-migration nexus
The Temporal Borders of Transnational Belonging: Aging Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore
Amidst public debate about the need for migrant domestic workers to assist with eldercare in Asia, we hear little about the futures of the workers themselves. This paper focuses on low-wage migrant domestic workers of different nationalities who have spent decades in Singapore, and how they imagine, prepare for, or avoid discussion of their aging futures. Singapore's immigration regime enforces mandatory retirement and return migration when domes…
Tentative friendships among low-income migrants in São Paulo’s commercial districts
The city of São Paulo, historically important as a destination for migrants from across the world, has experienced newer waves of immigration in the past few decades. As Brazilian national legislation and municipal policies have been ill prepared to handle these recent flows, migrants find themselves without much institutional support and rely instead on other networks to find their way in the city. This article is based on ethnographic research …
Pathways to urban citizenship for low-income migrants in São Paulo
Recent waves of migrants are establishing an increasingly visible presence in the urban landscape of São Paulo, both in its centre and its peripheries. Though a city with a rich history of immigration and diversity, the arrival of migrants in recent decades has not been accompanied by specific municipal policies for the migrant population, an absence which affects in particular, low-income migrants. Urban social movements for migration take on th…
They Think We are Just Caregivers: The Ambivalence of Care in the Lives of Filipino Medical Workers in Singapore
Notions of care have multiple inflections in the lives of Filipino medical workers in Singapore. The present paper explores ethnographically how Filipino migrants narrate and experience ambivalent notions of care as they move across borders. Their labour is fraught with ambiguity as they distance themselves from ideas of care in their working lives. They position themselves as professionals and attempt to shed the long-standing associations of Fi…
Caring for Strangers: Filipino Medical Workers in Asia
Today, the Philippines has become one of the largest exporters of medical workers in the world, with nursing in particular offering many the hope of a lucrative and stable career abroad. This timely volume narrates their stories in a multi-sited ethnography that follows aspiring migrants from Manila’s vibrant nursing schools to a different reality in Singapore’s multicultural hospitals and nursing homes, and back home to a Filipino village. In so…
Introduction: Living in the 'Here and Now': Extended Temporalities of Forced Migration
The Substance of Care: Ethical Dilemmas in Migrant Medical Labour
As transnational mobilities for health in the Southeast Asian region intensify, this article investigates the everyday socialites that take shape in spaces of medical care. Told through the narratives of Filipino medical workers and caregivers in Singapore, this paper examines the socialities among migrants and locals who work together, and who care for patients in fast-paced public hospitals, as well as nursing homes on the margins of the city. …
Migration, Health and Inequality in Asia
Focusing on health, migration and inequality, this contribution examines the role of citizenship in shaping migrants' experiences of health. The idea of national citizenship has frequently dominated the framing of debates about whether states or markets should play the dominant role in health. Yet, health inequalities are embedded in transnational flows of people, capital and ideas, which are themselves a product of history. Migration is thus ess…
They Think We are Just Caregivers: The Ambivalence of Care in the Lives of Filipino Medical Workers in Singapore
Notions of care have multiple inflections in the lives of Filipino medical workers in Singapore. The present paper explores ethnographically how Filipino migrants narrate and experience ambivalent notions of care as they move across borders. Their labour is fraught with ambiguity as they distance themselves from ideas of care in their working lives. They position themselves as professionals and attempt to shed the long-standing associations of Fi…
Urban Marginality and the Affective Lives of Migrants: Representations in Film
This article examines urban migration and experiences of marginality and vulnerability in the context of neoliberal globalisation and increasingly precarious conditions of life and work. It will focus in particular on three films, which have powerfully addressed these themes: Last Train Home (Lixin Fan, 2009), Paper Dolls (Tomer Heymann, 2006) and I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2006). All three films are set in contexts of urban tr…
Pathways to urban citizenship for low-income migrants in São Paulo
Recent waves of migrants are establishing an increasingly visible presence in the urban landscape of São Paulo, both in its centre and its peripheries. Though a city with a rich history of immigration and diversity, the arrival of migrants in recent decades has not been accompanied by specific municipal policies for the migrant population, an absence which affects in particular, low-income migrants. Urban social movements for migration take on th…
Migration, Health and Inequality in Asia
Focusing on health, migration and inequality, this contribution examines the role of citizenship in shaping migrants' experiences of health. The idea of national citizenship has frequently dominated the framing of debates about whether states or markets should play the dominant role in health. Yet, health inequalities are embedded in transnational flows of people, capital and ideas, which are themselves a product of history. Migration is thus ess…
Gender, Work and Migration: Agency in Gendered Labour Settings
While the feminisation of transnational migrant labour is now a firmly ingrained feature of the contemporary global economy, the specific experiences and understandings of labour in a range of gendered sectors of global and regional labour markets still require comparative and ethnographic attention. This book adopts a particular focus on migrants employed in sectors of the economy that are typically regarded as marginal or precarious – domestic …
Tentative friendships among low-income migrants in São Paulo’s commercial districts
The city of São Paulo, historically important as a destination for migrants from across the world, has experienced newer waves of immigration in the past few decades. As Brazilian national legislation and municipal policies have been ill prepared to handle these recent flows, migrants find themselves without much institutional support and rely instead on other networks to find their way in the city. This article is based on ethnographic research …
Caring for Strangers: Filipino Medical Workers in Asia
Today, the Philippines has become one of the largest exporters of medical workers in the world, with nursing in particular offering many the hope of a lucrative and stable career abroad. This timely volume narrates their stories in a multi-sited ethnography that follows aspiring migrants from Manila’s vibrant nursing schools to a different reality in Singapore’s multicultural hospitals and nursing homes, and back home to a Filipino village. In so…
Domestic Economies: Women, Work, and the American Dream in Los Angeles, by Susanna Rosenbaum
The Substance of Care: Ethical Dilemmas in Migrant Medical Labour
As transnational mobilities for health in the Southeast Asian region intensify, this article investigates the everyday socialites that take shape in spaces of medical care. Told through the narratives of Filipino medical workers and caregivers in Singapore, this paper examines the socialities among migrants and locals who work together, and who care for patients in fast-paced public hospitals, as well as nursing homes on the margins of the city. …
Care
There are many universal assumptions about what care is and how it ought to be provided. Such assumptions are widely embedded in public debates, government policies, and institutional forms of support. This entry presents three areas of anthropological work on how care is practised around the world in order to challenge these assumptions and demonstrate how care varies in unexpected ways. First, the entry explores how care is structured and, in p…
Ageing bodies, precarious futures: The (Im)mobilities of 'Temporary' Migrant Domestic Workers Over Time
In both historical and contemporary studies of contract mobile labour, little attention has been granted to ageing migrant bodies from a lifecourse perspective. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with older migrant domestic workers in Singapore, this article investigates how, in the context of restrictive regimes of mobility shaping temporary labour migration, age crucially factors into the (im)mobility of migrant domestic workers. Growi…
The linear imagination, stalled: Changing Temporal Horizons in Migrant Journeys
In this article, I engage with a growing interest in questions of time in the study of migration to consider how changing temporal horizons in migrant journeys play an important role in shaping multilocal migration imaginaries. I draw on two ethnographic cases with migrant care workers from the Philippines, of different generations and at different points of their migration journeys, to examine how initially held linear imaginaries of migration b…
Doctoral Thesis Review – Anmeldelse av doktoravhandling
The Temporal Borders of Transnational Belonging: Aging Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore
Amidst public debate about the need for migrant domestic workers to assist with eldercare in Asia, we hear little about the futures of the workers themselves. This paper focuses on low-wage migrant domestic workers of different nationalities who have spent decades in Singapore, and how they imagine, prepare for, or avoid discussion of their aging futures. Singapore's immigration regime enforces mandatory retirement and return migration when domes…
Introduction: Living in the 'Here and Now': Extended Temporalities of Forced Migration
Disposable kin: Shifting registers of belonging in global care economies
As is well discussed in the literature, paid domestic workers become like kin through living with and caring for their employers. Exploring two disparate cases, aging Asian domestic workers in Singapore and African eldercare workers in the United States, the article focuses on two critical junctures when these kin relations are disavowed: the care worker's retirement and the death of a patient. We argue that the flexible registers of kinship that…
Fleeting joy, divergent expectations and reconfigured intimacies: The visits home of Filipino migrant care workers in Singapore
For Filipino migrant care workers in Singapore, visits home are highly anticipated and longed for, but only as long as they remain brief. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, this paper examines such visits as emotionally complex events that bring intense joy as migrants reunite with dispersed family members, but also reveal divergent expectations and feelings of loss and betrayal. These experiences are especially felt among migrant women …
Southern reconfigurations of the ageing-migration nexus
Encounters and Inequalities in Southeast Asia's Lucrative Wellness Industry
The White Lotus is distinctive not only in its critique of wealthy tourists in luxury resorts, but in centring the emotional labour and aspirations of resort workers – spa labourers, ‘wellness mentors’ and security personnel. Echoing this focus on the interactions between workers, consumers and local communities, this article puts forward a research agenda on the contested encounters and inequalities of Southeast Asia's multi-billion-dollar welln…
Reimagining social protection: Financialised futures among ageing migrant domestic workers in Asia
A common narrative among Filipino migrant domestic workers in Singapore and Hong Kong is that their work abroad is to guarantee a better future for their families. Migrant women frequently extend their temporary contracts, sometimes over decades to support family life projects. Yet their contracts can only be extended until retirement age, after which they must return to their countries of origin. This paper focuses on migrant women approaching t…
Sociology (18 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (15 works) · Political science (14 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Economic growth (8 works) · Economics (8 works) · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy (8 works) · Demographic economics (6 works) · Politics (6 works)