Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2022 -

Unfree provides a nuanced "ethnographic exploration of the conditions of migrant domestic work in the UAE" (p. 6). It complicates narratives that homogenize the exploitation that migrant domestic workers face, often deemed human trafficking, forced labor, or slavery. Challenging the notion of liberal freedom, which undergirds such depictions, Parrenas (Univ. of Southern California) argues that a republican understanding of freedom better accounts for migrant domestic workers' varied experiences. Such an account foregrounds societal membership (rather than individualism) and holds that freedom is achieved through the inability of some to dominate others. Unfreedom, then, is the susceptibility of some to the domination of others, even if this subjugation does not always occur. Drawing on data gathered from in-depth interviews conducted with Filipina domestic workers and various employers and participant observation conducted within state programs and institutions, Parrenas details the varieties of unfreedom that migrant domestic workers experience through their work. Locating unfreedom in the sponsorship system that gives free reign to sponsors over their employees, Unfree lays a critical foundation for future scholarly, legal, and policy interventions in migrant domestic work, both in the Arab world and beyond. Excellent for anyone working on labor and migration.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.