| Downwardly Global: Women, Work, and Citizenship in the Pakistani Diaspora Contributor(s): Ameeriar, Lalaie (Author) |
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ISBN: 0822363011 ISBN-13: 9780822363019 Publisher: Duke University Press OUR PRICE: $97.80 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: March 2017 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social - Social Science | Emigration & Immigration - Social Science | Women's Studies |
| Dewey: 305.891 |
| LCCN: 2016033439 |
| Physical Information: 0.7" H x 6.1" W x 9.2" (1.00 lbs) 224 pages |
| Themes: - Sex & Gender - Feminine - Locality - Toronto, Ontario - Geographic Orientation - Ontario - Cultural Region - Canadian - Ethnic Orientation - Asian - Cultural Region - Asian |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In Downwardly Global Lalaie Ameeriar examines the transnational labor migration of Pakistani women to Toronto. Despite being trained professionals in fields including engineering, law, medicine, and education, they experience high levels of unemployment and poverty. Rather than addressing this downward mobility as the result of bureaucratic failures, in practice their unemployment is treated as a problem of culture and racialized bodily difference. In Toronto, a city that prides itself on multicultural inclusion, women are subjected to two distinct cultural contexts revealing that integration in Canada represents not the erasure of all differences, but the celebration of some differences and the eradication of others. Downwardly Global juxtaposes the experiences of these women in state-funded unemployment workshops, where they are instructed not to smell like Indian food or wear ethnic clothing, with their experiences at cultural festivals in which they are encouraged to promote these same differences. This form of multiculturalism, Ameeriar reveals, privileges whiteness while using race, gender, and cultural difference as a scapegoat for the failures of Canadian neoliberal policies. |