When Women Come First: Gender And Class In Transnational Migration - Softcover

Sheba Mariam George is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Assistant Professor at the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. She is coauthor of Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World (California, 2000).

"In this highly insightful and clearly written book, Sheba George gives us a portrait of immigration from two ends of the globe. She traces the experience of nurses from Kerala, India, who migrate to the United States while tracing, also, the challenges to notions of manhood faced by their follower-husbands-a challenge some resolve by elevating roles at church. She shows how notions of gender can thus ricochet from one institution to another. Original, important, and a very good read."—Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of The Commercialization of Intimate Life and co-editor, with Barbara Ehrenreich of Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy

"Beautifully written, When Women Come First sensitively exposes the emotional and psychic costs that are part and parcel of the immigrant pursuit of the American dream. It is an outstanding contribution to the burgeoning field of gender and migration."—Yen Le Espiritu, author of Home Bound: Filipino American Lives Across Cultures, Communities, and Countries

"With remarkable scope and vivid insight, Sheba George describes the daily lives of a community of Christian immigrants with continuing ties to Kerala, India. George's analysis of the immigrants' struggles around issues of gender and class links experiences at work, at home, and in the church. An important and engaging contribution to the literature on immigration, transnationalism, work, family, gender, and class."—Barrie Thorne, Professor of Sociology and Gender and Women's Studies, University of California, Berkeley

"As countries like the United States move towards post-industrial, service-based economies, immigrant women are recruited for all sorts of jobs. In this timely study, Sheba George examines the case of immigrant nurses from India. With lively ethnography and astute theoretical insights, George's book complicates our understandings of the relations between migrant women's work and earnings to autonomy and power, and to the remaking of family, community, congregation and self. This is a powerful book, sure to inspire new questions and directions for the next generation of gender and migration research."—Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, author of Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence

"In this highly insightful and clearly written book, Sheba George gives us a portrait of immigration from two ends of the globe. She traces the experience of nurses from Kerala, India, who migrate to the United States while tracing, also, the challenges to notions of manhood faced by their follower-husbands-a challenge some resolve by elevating roles at church. She shows how notions of gender can thus ricochet from one institution to another. Original, important, and a very good read." Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of The Commercialization of Intimate Life and co-editor, with Barbara Ehrenreich of Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy

"Beautifully written, When Women Come First sensitively exposes the emotional and psychic costs that are part and parcel of the immigrant pursuit of the American dream. It is an outstanding contribution to the burgeoning field of gender and migration." Yen Le Espiritu, author of Home Bound: Filipino American Lives Across Cultures, Communities, and Countries

"With remarkable scope and vivid insight, Sheba George describes the daily lives of a community of Christian immigrants with continuing ties to Kerala, India. George's analysis of the immigrants' struggles around issues of gender and class links experiences at work, at home, and in the church. An important and engaging contribution to the literature on immigration, transnationalism, work, family, gender, and class." Barrie Thorne, Professor of Sociology and Gender and Women's Studies, University of California, Berkeley

"As countries like the United States move towards post-industrial, service-based economies, immigrant women are recruited for all sorts of jobs. In this timely study, Sheba George examines the case of immigrant nurses from India. With lively ethnography and astute theoretical insights, George's book complicates our understandings of the relations between migrant women's work and earnings to autonomy and power, and to the remaking of family, community, congregation and self. This is a powerful book, sure to inspire new questions and directions for the next generation of gender and migration research." Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, author of Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence