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 practical problems and the cruel disappointments faced by those who take part in “guest worker” programs. New insights about the problem—or the crisis—of temporary migration, which is too often not temporary, are revealed through ethnographic research that attends to the everyday lives and stories of migrant mothers and their Hong Kong–born babies. The book’s arguments are threefold. First, temporary migrant workers are never only workers. They are people too. But the women who dare to become mothers are often deemed not only bad workers, but also ungrateful or immoral women. Second, the laws and policies designed to enforce a rotating door for workers and to prevent overstaying and illegal work, often create the opposite results. Some women overstay and become pregnant, and many overstay because they are pregnant. Third, women who return home as “single mothers” face severe stigma and economic pressures that propel them to continue in a migratory cycle of atonement: an ongoing, self-perpetuating, precarious pattern of migration. Mothers and babies thus reveal the inequalities of citizenship and belonging and the precariousness of migrant labor.