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Development Brokers and Translators:

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 Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 2, April 2007
Development in Practice 17 (2007).
DOI: 10.1080/09614520701197291
David Lewis and David Mosse (eds.)
Development Brokers and Translators:
the Ethnography of Aid and Agencies
Kumarian Press Inc., West Hartford, CT,
2006, ISBN:1-56549-217-X, 251 pp.
This book is for scholars, students, and prac-
titioners interested in the anthropology of
development and in understanding the pro-
blems with doing development. It should be
appreciated by this broad audience, but it
also has potential to provide policy makers
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and aid managers with an anthropological per-
spective on the relationships and interactions
(from the local to international) occurring
within development-related actions or inter-
ventions – to give the social reality of what
happens ‘on the ground’. In this sense, while
many of the accounts given are not entirely
new to those working in development, the
excellent ethnographic material used to tell
these stories provides a timely reminder that
anthropology should, and can, provide invalu-
able insights on many issues of importance to
sustainable development.
In their introduction, Mosse and Lewis
argue for focusing attention on the real-life
situations of development workers and the
communities they work with, examining
social processes and negotiations of
meaning and identity in a variety of settings.
Their concern is ‘not how actors operate and
strategize within existing arrangements of
developments (or between its institutions
and society), but how development projects –
always unforeseeable – become real through
the work of generating and translating inter-
est. . .’ (p.13). The central theme of the
book, which is skilfully situated within rel-
evant theoretical contexts, is thus the role of
brokers within development – set alongside
the concept of translation, here defined as
the mutual enrolment and interlocking inter-
ests that produce project realities. The nine
remaining contributors then place strong
emphasis on the political nature of develop-
ment and provide much lively discussion
and empirical evidence.
ISSN 0961-4524 Print=ISSN 1364-9213 Online 020307-11 # 2007 Oxfam GB
Routledge Publishing DOI: 10.1080=09614520701197291
BOOK REVIEWS
Rossi examines rural development in
Niger, exploring how ‘aid-givers’ and ‘aid-
receivers’ exploit development discourses to
suit their own needs. Development workers
promote the dominant (Western) narrative
of ‘backward’ peasants in need of change,
but they can reflect on their role as brokers
and their positioning of Niger as ‘underdeve-
loped’ to fit with globally set standards of
what ‘developed’ means. For villagers,
development workers offer the possibility of
‘development revenue’ to support their
(limited) income, so strengthening ties with
them is a major strategy: villagers play a pol-
itical game, conforming to their recipient
role. However, compartmentalising ‘givers’
and ‘receivers’ as representing different
worlds of knowledge is unhelpful: these
actors have multiple roles, and their inter-
actions should be considered more in terms
of ‘positioned strategies and perspectives’.
Doolittle describes how development
interventions in Malaysia became a mechan-
ism for extending of state power and influ-
ence. She explores the political
consequences of development programmes
that use development discourse and political
patronage to promote a Malay-Muslim
agenda over other ethnic and religious
groups. Again, Doolittle notes the adoption
of Western standards (for example,
‘modern’, ‘progressive’) to indicate the
‘backwardness’ of the current situation, so
promoting a blueprint approach for moder-
nising rural villages (while also incorporating
a nationalistic Malay Islamic message).
However, on closer examination the inter-
actions involved in ‘modernising’ efforts
also highlight areas of contentions and local
resistance. In documenting the overtly con-
trolling nature of top – down initiatives, here
masquerading as bottom –up development,
the extent to which the short-term political
objectives of the development process really
have an impact on the livelihoods and well-
being of the rural poor is questioned.
Le Meur analyses Benin’s Rural Land Plan
(PFR) as a mechanism for giving legal status
to customary land rights in Africa. Intended
307
 Book Reviews
as a participatory and neutral process
(although this stance has become transformed
when confronted with social reality), the PFR
tends to over-simplify the complexities of
flexible land use and tenure into ‘owners’
and ‘users’. Le Meur documents the contra-
dictions inherent in trying to order and
make visible the diversity of land rights
(often ‘hidden’ in informal agreements), a
process that has tended to homogenise and
lead to uniform measures. This chapter also
highlights the importance of social theory to
the understanding of land issues, including
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concepts such as territory, lineage, ownership
and property rights, consensus, and politics.
Salemink explores the inherent difficulties
of translating international development-
related notions of ‘good governance’ into a
Vietnamese context. His ethnography
describes how the influx of foreign NGOs
in the 1990s introduced new perspectives on
the development industry: civil society,
gender equality, participation. Conflicts
over differing interests, expectations, and
interpretations surrounding the concept of
civil society, the make-up and effectiveness
of NGOs, and the role of the state, meant
that introducing and translating these con-
cepts created tensions between all actors.
Moreover, while many components of the
programme were successful, attention is
also drawn to the problems of communi-
cation and accountability, as well as the con-
tradictions inherent in the ability of foreign
NGOs to encourage civil society through
the development of indigenous NGOs, when
the former occupy this space.
Leutchford’s exploration of Fair Trade
among coffee co-operatives in Costa Rica
highlights certain discordances. Balancing
commercial interests against ethical ones is
challenging and sometimes contradictory;
examples are given which suggest that partici-
pating in the commercial arena can compro-
mise the mission to assist the poorest
farmers and can lead to problems if co-operat-
ives become too commercially successful. As
previously, this study underscores the political
(and moral) nature of interactions – here,
308 Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 2, April 2007
between coffee producers and the inter-
national market.
Focusing on South Africa, Nauta’s ethno-
graphy explores one NGO and its ideological
and practical struggles within a development
programme aimed at supporting communities
facing forced removals. As well as underlin-
ing the real problems facing NGOs caught
between the demands of donor agencies, gov-
ernments, and the communities involved, it
also provides eloquent explanation of how
good ideas sometimes go awry when
implemented ‘on the ground’ – especially
when clear organisation and institutional pro-
blems remain unresolved. Thus to appreciate
more fully the dilemmas faced by NGOs and
the communities they work with, this chapter
emphasises the necessity of understanding
the historical, political, and socio-economic
background.
Desai explores the construction of identity
among agricultural extension workers in
India and the problems they face in dissemi-
nating scientific knowledge in the field,
arguing that knowledge is not a neutral
product. Her ethnography explores the politi-
cal landscape where extension workers
manoeuvre between donor agencies, agricul-
tural institutions, and local farmers. Treated
as permanent scholars by their employers,
they have to present themselves as knowl-
edgeable experts to suspicious farmers,
while also seeing their current role as a step
up the professional ladder. Her chapter also
calls for a fuller analysis of how conflicts
within organisations are sold as ‘consensus’
to the outside world.
Shrestha examines dilemmas faced by
development workers in Nepal as they
attempt to live up to the expectations of
both the NGOs that employ them and the
communities they work with. This chapter
highlights the disjuncture between the profes-
sionalisation of NGOs, where development
workers strive for a ‘professional’ and impar-
tial identity (subsuming differences in
history, gender, ethnicity, or class) and the
principle of developing relationships with
the community (where moral codes mean

that differences are important). Faced with
these dilemmas, fieldworkers ‘bracketed’
differences, claiming that ‘differences did
not make a difference’. In identifying benefi-
ciaries as ‘tradition bound’, bracketing also
helped fieldworker to legitimise their ‘pro-
gressive’ intervention, regardless of the
success of such attempts. In doing so, they
work to distinguish the world of beneficiaries
from benefactors.
Drawing on ethnographic material from
Malaysia and Brazil, Bending and Rosendo
argue against the notion that ‘beneficiaries’
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are passive victims of development,
suggesting that their discourse varies accord-
ing to the agenda of the actors whose support
they are seeking. The resistance of the Penan
of Sarawak to local logging had political con-
sequences when international environmental
groups took up the cause of forest preser-
vation, and the Penans’ long historical
relationship with logging companies was
ignored in favour of meeting the expectations
of the foreign allies. Similarly the rubber
tappers’ struggle against cattle ranchers in
the Amazon allowed a mutual alliance to
form with foreign environmental activists
whereby both groups promote their various
agendas.
This book intends to act as a bridge
between anthropology and development,
emphasising the valuable insights that ethno-
graphic research can provide to policy
makers and aid managers. Although it is cer-
tainly a welcome contribution to the debate, I
feel that the content may need to be presented
in a different format to really appeal to those
outside academia. Some knowledge of the
anthropology of development literature
would be useful for the reader but it is not
essential, as there is a range of excellent
references at the end of each chapter. If I
had one wish, it would be for a concluding
chapter by Mosse and Lewis, summing up
the relevance of the contributions to the
book’s theme.
Mariella Marzano
University of Durham, UK
Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 2, April 2007
Book Reviews
Development in Practice 17 (2007).
DOI: 10.1080/09614520701197333
UNESCO
Water: A Shared Responsibility – The
United Nations World Water Develop-
ment Report 2
UNESCO and Berghahn Books, 2006,
ISBN: 1-84545-177-5, 584pp.
With the persistence of a steadily dripping tap,
for some years now it has been gradually
becoming clear to many people that the
Earth’s water resources are getting into a
parlous state. If current trends continue, the
future for the globe’s inhabitants looks grim.
Global warming and consequent climate
change are already beginning to cause havoc
with hydrology, exacerbating arguments over
who has most rights to a resource that is
becoming increasingly scarce and precious.
Managing water effectively and equitably is
essential to safeguard the future of human civi-
lisation and the ecosystems and their non-
human inhabitants in which, ultimately, all
human life is embedded and upon which we
are more dependent than we usually realise.
Having enough water is essential for the
health and welfare of all, but even more so
for the billions of people who currently lack
access to safe drinking water. It is essential if
the world’s population is to be fed as it soars
beyond today’s 6 billion to a projected 9
billion or more. And it is essential to the
world’s mega-cities and their swelling slums.
Good governance of water is therefore
essential. The world would be much better
able to cope with the impacts of current and
projected climate changes if it were not
already so bad at managing its water supplies
properly. But as this book makes clear, there
is not enough of a sense that water is a shared
responsibility. Instead, the world does not
manage its water resources at all; each
nation manages its own, sometimes to the
detriment of its neighbours. Within each
nation, who gets water and for what is a pol-
itical competition in which, as in most things,
the poorest tend to lose out.
Water: A Shared Responsibility is the
second attempt by the UN and its numerous
309
 Book Reviews
bodies to assess the state of the world’s water
resources as part of the International Decade
‘Water for Life’ 2005 –2015. The particular
theme of the 2006 report is water governance.
It opens with a concise preface by WWAP
Co-ordinator Gordon Young that neatly
sums up the situation – and a very scary
one it is too. As Young points out, hurricanes,
floods, droughts, and the tsunami of Decem-
ber 2004 have reminded us of the terrible
effects of too much or too little water;
climate change is affecting precipitation and
evaporation everywhere; pollution is spread-
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ing; and the world’s demand for water – for
human activities alone, never mind for the
maintenance of wetlands and other ecosys-
tems – is spiralling upwards. And, as
Young says, ‘It is proving extremely difficult
for many governments to effectively confront
the many intertwined issues concerning
water’.
In its 584 packed pages, relieved by many
wonderful photographs and numerous charts,
graphs, and diagrams, the report lays out
masses of evidence about the state of the
world’s water. It covers, among other
topics, the challenges of governance, water
and human settlements, coastal and fresh-
water ecosystems, health, food, agriculture,
industry, and energy. It concludes with a
series of case studies of water resources,
and especially river basins, in various
countries or water-sharing regions such as
Ethiopia, Kenya, Lake Titicaca, Mali, La
Plata, South Africa, and Uganda.
In terms of the information provided, this
report is extremely valuable. But does it com-
municate it effectively? In the end I have to
say that for this reviewer, and with the great-
est respect for the best intentions of the
dozens of contributors who have clearly
poured their knowledge into this report, this
report does not feel like a particularly effec-
tive communicator of either the urgency of
the situation or possible solutions. This is
for a number of reasons. Partly, the sheer
length of the report and the enormous mass
of information that it contains. It means that
although every angle is covered, this is a
310 Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 2, April 2007
book to be consulted when required (helped
by a comprehensive index), but it cannot be
read at length, and even dipping into it is
problematic: the profusion of boxes, photos,
and graphs, while intended to break up the
text for easy digestion, can distract and
confuse. Every one of 24 UN bodies and hun-
dreds of experts who has ever had anything to
say about water has been asked to contribute
to the report. Every topic is covered, but –
paradoxically – not always in enough
depth, or coherently. Furthermore, the tone
is uniformly informed and reasonable.
There is nothing obviously personal or
emotional allowed. It is therefore, frankly,
often a dull recitation of committee-speak
and statistics that, in themselves, lack the
emotional power to become memorable.
One concise example is sedimentation. On
page 201 there is a fascinating graphic on the
sediment-trapping efficiency of big dams,
and the startling finding that big dams have
had a ‘substantial, rapid and unprecedented’
impact on sedimentation. In fact, big dams
(until they themselves silt up and fail) are a
disaster for deltas downstream – the most
fertile crop-growing parts of the world. This
is most interesting, and I wanted more infor-
mation. But to get more idea of the impact of
sedimentation one has to go to page 137 or to
the Japan case study on page 483, neither
very satisfactory. And because this is a UN
report, one misses any clear statement of
what seems to be an obvious conclusion:
there is no place for big dams in proper
river-basin management, and ways should
be found to decommission and remove most
big dams already built.
The target audience for this report is there-
fore somewhat unclear. It reads very much
like the UN talking to itself. In his preface,
Gordon Young indicates that an important
goal is to assist governments in developing
their national water-management plans. The
reports, over the course of the decade, will
‘lay the foundation for a continuous, global
monitoring system, pooling the unique per-
spectives and expertise of the 24 UN agencies
that comprise UN-Water, in partnership with

governments and other entities concerned
with freshwater issues’. He goes on to add:
‘We trust that you will find this Report both
informative and stimulating’. For this
reviewer, this report gets it only 50 per cent
right.
John Magrath
Programme Researcher, Oxfam GB, UK
Development in Practice 17 (2007).
DOI: 10.1080/09614520701197358
Susan A. Berger
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Guatemaltecas – The Women’s Move-
ment 1986 –2003
University of Texas Press, Austin, TX,
2006, ISBN: 0-292-70944-7, 107 pp.
Susan A. Berger examines the formation and
practice of the Guatemalan women’s move-
ment over the past 20 years. The period
from 1986 has been crucial in the construc-
tion of a women’s movement in Guatemala,
a country that has been through years of tran-
sition, the reinstatement of civilian rule and
building of democratic institutions after
decades of military rule, the signing of the
peace accords after 36 years of civil war,
and the subsequent efforts to build peace.
Berger elaborates a perceptive analysis of
how the formation and evolution of the
women’s movement has been affected by
the forces of democratisation and globalisa-
tion, and she evaluates its achievements.
The book makes worthwhile reading for
development practitioners, scholars, and acti-
vists. Guatemaltecas describes a movement
that is challenging women’s traditional roles
in society and under patriarchy through a
combination of well-informed case studies
and theoretical discussions presented with a
critical and constructive eye. Guatemaltecas
provides valuable insight into the women’s
movement, and also contributes to an under-
standing of the changing relationship
between civil-society organisations and the
state in Guatemala. What makes this book
interesting is not only the well-documented
analysis of the Guatemalan women’s
Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 2, April 2007
Book Reviews
movement, but the argument that social
movements are embedded within local,
national, and international power constructs
that limit their form and content. It thus
raises general issues about how to build a
movement in a society already divided by
class and ethnicity, as well as the effect of
neo-liberal policies and state agendas on
such movements.
These two sets of issues have presented
serious dilemmas for the Guatemalan
women’s movement. Berger’s hypothesis is
that neo-liberal democratisation has led
to the institutionalisation and ‘NGO-isation’
of the movement. This has encouraged it to
turn from protest politics to policy work
and thus become the helpmate of the state’s
pursuit of a neo-liberal agenda. The result is
a shift in tactics and structures as well as in
power relations within the movement.
Lobbying, policy making, and the implemen-
tation of ad hoc service-delivery projects
have privileged professional and technical
skills. ‘In the class and ethnically polarized
Guatemalan society, these skills privileged
mestiza upper- and middle-class urban
women’ (p. 40). Poor, rural, and often indi-
genous women were thus converted into
clients by some women’s NGOs. The discus-
sion on the influence of the funding agencies
provides input into the ongoing debate about
strategies to support civil society that would
merit more detailed analysis.
After the peace accords, civil society in
Guatemala was faced with the slogan ‘from
protest to policy proposals’ (de la protesta
a la propuesta). International aid agencies
encouraged and promoted this approach,
arguing that civil society must participate in
the building of a democratic state through
constructive lobbying, and leave confronta-
tion and protest behind.
Berger argues that the results achieved by
the women’s movement through following
this strategy have been mixed. New laws
dealing with violence, reproductive health,
and gender discrimination have been
introduced, and there are initiatives and new
structures dedicated to ‘engendering’ public
311
 Book Reviews
policy. However, in many cases the content
of these laws continues to portray women in
their traditional social roles:‘laws, agencies,
employers and political structures have
preserved the patriarchy’ (p.105). Women’s
organisations have been torn between the
wish (and active attempts) to influence state
reform and the risk of having their agenda
and their groups reshaped and co-opted.
This has also led to divisions within the
women’s movement.
The book includes a case study of the situ-
ation of women workers in the assembly
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plants or maquilas. This chapter reviews the
attempts to organise within the maquila
sector, and the sometimes strategic relation-
ships built with labour unions in other
countries. Berger’s analysis of the tensions
inherent in the role of women in this situation
gives food for thought. She argues that tra-
ditional gender norms are crucial in control-
ling the female-dominated workforce, but
also set the stage for a re-thinking of those
same gender regimes (p.75).
Berger discusses the relationship between
global and local discourse, concluding that
in spite of the global influence, local under-
standings are crucial to the political definition
of the movement. The global discourse on
feminism, sexuality, and gender equality is
interpreted through local experiences. For
instance, Berger identifies attempts by
lesbian activists to link their struggle to a
human-rights discourse and lesbian identity.
However, this does not always correspond
to the way in which Guatemalan lesbians
experience their sexuality or interpret their
reality. Lesbianism is generally defined by
Guatemalan lesbians as a form of behaviour,
and not as their identity.
An analysis of indigenous women’s struggle
could have added important elements to the
analysis of the relationship between global
and local discourse. In my opinion, the princi-
pal weakness of the book is the lack of an in-
depth analysis of the indigenous women’s
movement and of indigenous women’s views
on gender, feminism, and identity. Berger is
very well aware of the ethnic dimension in
312 Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 2, April 2007
her portrayal of these issues, but a deeper
analysis of the concerns presented by indigen-
ous women would have added to an under-
standing of the contemporary women’s
movement in Guatemala. Indigenous women
have in recent years initiated an interesting
debate about gender from the perspective of
the Maya culture, often critical of the feminist
discourse and of how women’s roles are
defined within the indigenous communities
today. Indigenous women have taken a more
prominent role, and the women’s movement
also faces the challenge of overcoming deep
ethnic divides and racism.
Looking to the future, the study highlights
the tendency within the women’s movement
to seek ‘unity with diversity’. ‘Quite
simply, Guatemaltecas are building a stra-
tegic identity founded on rights rather than
on needs or interests’ (p.107). A counter-
discourse to globalisation is slowly emer-
ging, calling for the formation of strategic
unity, based on diverse conceptions of
gender. In sum, Guatemaltecas presents a
good balance between case studies and theor-
etical reflections and makes a valuable contri-
bution to the analysis of the women’s
movement in general.
Beate Thoresen
FOKUS, Norway (formerly a development
worker in Guatemala)
Development in Practice 17 (2007).
DOI: 10.1080/09614520701197374
Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Martha
MacIntyre (eds.)
Women Miners in Developing Countries:
Pit Women and Others
Ashgate, Aldershot, 2006, ISBN: 0-7546-
4650-5, 378pp.
The appropriate role in development of the
extractive industries (usually defined as oil,
natural gas, and mining) has been one of
the most hotly debated topics among devel-
opment theorists and practitioners in recent
years. This debate has intensified as the
global prices for key extracted commodities

such as oil, gold, and copper have increased
dramatically in the past two years, spurred
by global insecurity and growing demand
from China and India. Higher prices (and
declining deposits in developed countries)
have contributed to a rising level of resource
extraction in developing countries, which has
been enabled by economic liberalisation
under the aegis of the international financial
institutions.
The rise in extractive activity in poor
countries has been accompanied by a rise in
social conflict in local communities where
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large mines and oil installations are most
often located. The communities often experi-
ence most directly the negative impacts on
human rights and the environment that
these industries can generate. At the same
time, they too often receive very little of the
economic benefits produced by oil and
mining. Such resources are often lost in cor-
ruption or diverted away from the areas
from which the resources are extracted.
Nigeria’s Niger Delta region is perhaps the
most well-known and severe example of
this phenomenon.
In 2002 – 2004, the World Bank, under
pressure from civil-society organisations
from across the globe, conducted a major
review of its policies in the sector. The Inter-
national Council on Mining and Metals
(ICMM), an association of the world’s
largest mining companies, recently produced
an analysis of mining’s contribution to econ-
omic development in Chile, Ghana, Peru, and
Tanzania.
The specific gender impact of extractive
industries is a critical part of this overall
debate, but one that has not received sufficient
attention. Analysts of extractive industries and
development generally recognise a broad
range of negative impacts that these industries
can have on women. In general, however, the
issue has not been fully incorporated into the
general analysis of extractive industries and
development. One notable exception to this
has been the work of development NGO
Oxfam Australia, which has done important
research and advocacy work on the issue.
Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 2, April 2007
Book Reviews
Women Miners in Developing Countries:
Pit Women and Others makes a solid contri-
bution to the evolving body of literature on
extractive industries and gender. Its 17 chap-
ters, contributed by a wide range of primarily
British, Australian, and Indian academics and
activists, are rich in detail on the role of
women in the mining industries in Bolivia,
India, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, Malaysia,
and Papua New Guinea. The volume also
contains a strong chapter by Jennifer
Hinton, Barbara Hinton, and Marcello
Veiga on the impacts on women of the artis-
inal mining sector in Africa. Although
perhaps containing too much detail and aca-
demic jargon for the general reader, these
chapters would be useful references for
researchers seeking to know more about the
situations described.
The book’s strongest chapter is by Ingrid
Macdonald, previously with Oxfam Australia,
and a former colleague. Macdonald lays out in
clear and direct prose a global overview of the
impacts that mining can have on women, the
discrimination that women often face in
seeking employment with mining companies,
and their exclusion from community decision-
making relating to mining projects on com-
munity land. Macdonald also notes that
women in mining areas are
. . . subjected to increased risks of sexual
and other violence, marital stress and
breakdown, and infections such as
HIV, due to the separation of families
and health risks associated with make-
shift mining communities that are more
isolated, attract an influx of male
workers, and often do not include easy
access to health and educational
resources (p.320).
She concludes her chapter with a list of sen-
sible recommendations of steps that mining
companies and governments should take to
address the gender-related impacts of
mining, including mainstreaming gender
‘into all stages of the project cycle from
planning and design to implementation,
monitoring and evaluation in the workplace’
313
 Book Reviews
(p.324). Such gender mainstreaming would
also undoubtedly include the conducting of
a gender-impact assessment prior to the com-
mencement of any mining project.
The clarity of Macdonald’s analysis and
arguments is unfortunately not matched in
the rest of the volume, which (as is frequently
the case in edited volumes of this type) lacks
a unifying ‘meta-analysis’ that ties the chap-
ters together. The editors’ introduction, while
a useful summary of traditional views of
women in mining, does not quite succeed in
demonstrating how the ‘path for consolidat-
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ing a Gender and Mining approach in devel-
oping countries’ that they hope the book will
create can actually be realised. In that sense,
readers might do well to read Macdonald’s
chapter first and then consult the other chap-
ters, depending on their areas of interest.
The book also fails to raise the question
about whether mining can or should be an
appropriate mechanism for realising gender
rights. Mining has inevitable impacts on
human rights and the environment and is, by
definition, unsustainable. Thus, for people
interested in promoting gender rights it is
fair to ask whether ‘engendering’ mining (as
the editors intend) is an appropriate aspiration,
or whether our attention and efforts would be
better directed towards helping women (and
men) to find more sustainable and gender-
supportive economic alternatives. Addressing
such questions should be part of the research
agenda on this critical topic.
Keith Slack
Senior Policy Adviser, Oxfam America, USA
Development in Practice 17 (2007).
DOI: 10.1080/09614520701197408
Anuja Agrawal (ed.)
Women and Migration in Asia: Migrant
Women and Work, Volume 4
Sage Publications, India, 2006, ISBN:
07619 3457X, 226pp.
This volume is a collection of papers written
for a panel on ‘Women Workers and
Migration’, organised by Anuja Agrawal for
314 Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 2, April 2007
a conference on women and migration in
Asia held in New Delhi in 2003. The book
includes an introduction by Agrawal, and
eight other chapters on topics including the
impact of migration on the family life and
social mobility of women migrants, the trans-
national nature of career and life strategies of
Asian women, and the dangers inherent in
contemporary debates on sex trafficking.
This volume is an important contribution to
the literature on women and migration. It
draws on an impressive volume of research,
including 286 qualitative interviews with
nurses and would-be migrants from India,
conducted by Marie Percot; 100 interviews
with young adults and their migrant
mothers in the Philippines, conducted by
Rhacel Salazar Parreňas; and important sec-
ondary research gathering scarce statistics
on medical migration and other categories
of women’s migration from Asia.
Although the editors and authors aim to
add a gendered perspective to the migration
literature, in several instances they appear
unfamiliar with much of the previous
research on gender and migration in the
fields of critical development studies; post-
colonial, trans-national studies; and geogra-
phy (see Tanh Dam 1996 and Mitchell
1997). They also attempt to frame the
issues in the wider context of global econ-
omic changes affecting Asian economies.
Overall, however, the fine-grained stories of
women migrants and their families are not
interpolated with economic processes that
limit women’s employment opportunities
and income-earning potential in their home
countries or local communities. In her intro-
duction, Agrawal confuses neo-liberal econ-
omic theories that involve both individual
rational actors and macro-economic pro-
cesses and not just micro-level analyses as
she claims. She also ignores the rich literature
in geography, for example, that has situated
women’s migration in the context of wider
neo-liberal restructuring processes, shedding
light on the ways in which the individual
decisions of migrants are shaped and con-
strained by forces at the regional, national,

and international levels. Although some
passing references are made to the debt
crisis and structural adjustment policies of
the 1980s, the specific ways in which such
processes transformed both productive and
reproductive labour in rural and urban econ-
omies (and subsequently gendered household
relations) are not well presented. This is a
necessary foundation for understanding how
transnational capital transformed the current
possibilities that exist for women workers,
migrants, and their families in Asia and
other parts of the Global South. For
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example, the ways in which transnational
corporations (TNCs) continue to draw
women workers in the South into global
markets as a source of cheap labour, or the
gendered aspects of public-sector restructur-
ing (in which many women workers lost
their jobs) must be seen as important causal
factors in increasing migratory flows. (For
examples of such analyses, see Lawson
1998; Grewal and Kaplan 1994; Silvey
2000.) That said, the merit of the volume
lies more in the close-to-the-ground descrip-
tive information about how Asian women
experience both mobility and barriers to
movement in their everyday struggles
to make a living, to care for their families,
to make the most of their lives, and to ‘get
ahead’.
Alyson Brody’s chapter considers the
motivations of Thai women to migrate from
rural areas to Bangkok. The strength of char-
acter of the Thai women interviewed in
Brody’s research provides much inspiration
and illustrates the hardships and sacrifice
that migrant women suffer in order to
become ‘successful’ migrants. However,
Brody’s chapter would have been greatly
strengthened by including an analysis of the
ways in which foreign direct investment
and export-led development strategies shat-
tered the rural economy of Thailand in the
1980s and early 1990s. The reason why
rural farmers ‘abandoned’ agricultural
production was more likely due to the appro-
priation of vast tracts of land by TNCs, and
the unsustainable large-scale industrial
Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 2, April 2007
Book Reviews
agricultural practices that they introduced —
rather than to drought alone, for example.
Rhacel Salazar Parreňas contributes the
unique perspective of the children of
migrants (both mothers and fathers) to
debates about the social costs of out-
migration, such as family disintegration.
However, Parreňas gives too much credit to
such perspectives, with claims that children
themselves construct gendered roles for
their parents or reinforce gendered occu-
pational segments, as in ‘their children do
not give them the same flexibility in their
choice of viable employment’. Such
language belies the fact that parents them-
selves are struggling both to maintain and
to transform their ‘traditional’ identities,
gender roles, and occupations in light of, or
regardless of, their children’s opinions.
Chiho Ogaya’s chapter on the social mobi-
lity of transnational migrant women takes the
case of Filipina domestic workers to illustrate
how women migrants often lose class or
social status in the course of migration.
Ogaya points out that teachers or other
Filipina professionals may end up working
as domestics in the homes of middle-class
employers in the USA or the Middle East.
Although this point has been made elsewhere
(Pratt 1997), Ogaya does provide a very
useful table, demonstrating how male
migrants tend to maintain their occupational
and class status in the course of
migration—as in the case of an engineer
migrating on a short-term contract to work
as an engineer in another country. This is
contrasted with women workers, who experi-
ence much less occupational continuity in the
course of migration.
Parvati Raghuram’s chapter on Asian
women doctors working in the UK raises the
visibility of professional women migrants
such as doctors in a body of research that is
focused much more on ‘low-skilled’ workers.
Marie Percot’s chapter on Indian nurses
makes a strong point about how young
Indian women desire to go abroad to work as
nurses, as part of a long-term strategy to gain
professional status and to reunite with family
315
 Book Reviews
members living in the USA or the UK. Thus
while other research on health-worker
migration (Van Eyck 2005) claims that the
majority of nurses from developing countries
would prefer to live and work in their home
country, Percot suggests that the ‘home’
country may in fact be two countries, occupied
by transnational families and diaspora commu-
nities. Percot’s chapter would be complemen-
ted by additional research on the domestic
employment situation for Indian nurses.
Leela Gulati’s chapter is an overview of
the international labour migration of Asian
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women workers and includes a valuable com-
pilation of statistics on women’s migration in
Asia. Gulati also provides a good description
of contemporary migratory flows involving
countries like the Philippines in the out-
migration of women workers to many other
countries, including Japan, Hong Kong,
Taiwan, and the Middle East; and the out-
migration of Sri Lankan women workers pri-
marily to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi
Arabia, and Kuwait.
Agrawal’s chapter on family, migration,
and prostitution in the Bedia community of
north India is a fascinating account of the
ways in which gendered household divisions
of labour and patriarchal, binary construc-
tions of ‘virtuous’ wives versus ‘fallen’
women are maintained—even in cases
where family life and prostitution occur in
the same vicinity (as opposed to women
who migrate and engage in prostitution
away from home). Agrawal describes
extreme ‘face-saving’ strategies employed
by the Bedia in order to justify or obscure
their ‘deviance’ and involvement in prostitu-
tion. Although this case is an important
reminder of the complexities of gendered
adaptive strategies in times of socio-econ-
omic and cultural change, what remains to
be understood are the ways in which
women in Bedia communities and elsewhere
who are engaged in prostitution can be
empowered to challenge oppressive gender
narratives and roles, while maintaining
support for their efforts to maintain cultural
and community cohesion.
316 Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 2, April 2007
In the last chapter, Sheila Jeffreys offers a
critical word of caution to those feminists and
advocates who may be keen to acknowledge
the agency of Asian women migrant workers
in order to refute the totality of their identity
as victims. She argues that in the case of traf-
ficking, however, the agency of women and
their status as victims must be held up simul-
taneously. The ‘choices’ that women may
make to migrate or to enter prostitution, she
reminds us, are often made only in the most
dire and exploitative situations. Jeffreys also
reminds readers that prostitution is extremely
exploitative and dangerous to the physical
and emotional health of women, and that
sex-trafficking is exploitative even in situ-
ations where women have exercised some
degree of agency (in initially agreeing to
migrate or to pay a trafficker, for example).
She documents the dangers in the discourse of
‘sex work’ advocates who have intervened in
policy-making arenas in order to frame sex-
trafficking as women’s ‘labour migration’,
and prostitution as merely another form of
waged work. She urges those involved in
the debates on women and migration to
keep in mind that circumstances of debt
bondage, abuse, modern day-slavery, and
fraud cannot be equated with other forms of
labour migration.
Overall, this book is an important contri-
bution to the literature on gender and
migration and should be read alongside pre-
vious research conducted over the past
several decades from other disciplines and
regions of the world.
Kim Van Eycka
California Nurses Association Institute of
Health and Socio-economic Policy, USA
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