Abstract

Providing a comprehensive treatment of a full range of migrant destinies in East Asia by scholars from both Asia and North America, this volume captures the way migrants are changing the face of Asia, especially in cities, such as Beijing, Hong Kong, Hamamatsu, Osaka, Tokyo, and Singapore. It investigates how the crossing of geographical boundaries should also be recognized as a crossing of cultural and social categories that reveals the extraordinary variation in the migrants’ origins and trajectories. These migrants span the spectrum: from Korean bar hostesses in Osaka to African entrepreneurs in Hong Kong, from Vietnamese women seeking husbands across the Chinese border to Pakistani Muslim men marrying women in Japan, from short-term business travelers in China to long-term tourists from Japan who ultimately decide to retire overseas. Illuminating the ways in which an Asian-based analysis of migration can yield new data on global migration patterns, the contributors provide important new theoretical insights for a broader understanding of global migration, and innovative methodological approaches to the spatial and temporal complexity of human migration.

“…this book is a worthy addition to migration research and Asian studies. It is warmly recommended to scholars, advanced graduate students, and anyone else interested in people on the move in Asia and beyond.” · Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute

“Wind Over Water is the most up-to-date edited compilation on migration in East Asia, successfully raises a range of theoretical and methodological issues, and shines the spotlight on new fields of inquiry that will surely spur further research.” · International Migration Review

“In sixteen substantive chapters, this collection presents a dramatic picture of the diversity of Asian mobility…all the studies are worth reading…[They offer] an introductory overview, which should whet the reader’s appetite to explore the themes further.” · The Journal of Asian Studies

“The book represents the culmination of a series of interdisciplinary conversations between East Asian and North American scholars and presents case studies that demonstrate the complexity and fluidity in contemporary migrations in East Asia, including Vietnam and Singapore…[It] will be a useful resource for academics and postgraduate students in migration and social policy.” · Ethnic and Racial Studies

“This collection of essays…should be welcomed by a broad audience, such as academics and practitioners interested in migration and ethnicity. Given its timely content and tight writing style, the editors should be commended for their enterprising entry into the important field of international migration studies, and for compiling an insightful and engaging book.” · Pacific Affairs

Keiko Yamanaka is Continuing Lecturer in the Departments of Ethnic Studies and International and Area Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work appears in a range of books and journals, including Pacific Affairs; Ethnic and Racial Studies; Diaspora; Asian and Pacific Migration Journal; and Publications of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD).

Shinji Yamashita is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tokyo and former president of the Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology, the world’s second largest national anthropology association. He is the author of Bali and Beyond: Explorations in the Anthropology of Tourism (2003).

David W. Haines is Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University. He is the author of Safe Haven? A History of Refugees in America (2010), has twice been a Fulbright scholar, and is a former president of the Society for Urban, National, and Transnational/Global Anthropology (SUNTA) and currently Co-President Elect of the Association for the Anthropology of Policy.