Journals

Intimate labor, “the work of tending to the sexual, bodily, health, hygiene and care needs of individuals” (Parreñas et al., 2016, p. 2), is an emergent concept in social research. Differentiated from impersonal service delivery and other forms of social relations of the workplace, intimate labor involves the provision of individualized attention, the sharing of trust and experiences between the intimate laborer and the recipient, and is enacted to enhance the well-being of, at minimum, one person in the exchange (Zelizer, 2010). Notably, the concept shifts the idea of labor away from an individualist focus to situate workers within a web of relationships and contexts. It also highlights the body as the site where global processes intersecting with multiple scales are intimately experienced (Abrahamsson & Simpson, 2011; Chang & Ling, 2000; Mountz & Hyndman, 2006).

In this special themed issue, we draw attention to recent scholarship on corporeal geographies that highlight spatial and embodied features of mobility among migrant workers (Yeoh et al., 2019). We build on this literature in order to further develop the concept of intimate labor as a critical lens with which to examine the gendered interactions between migrant workers, their families at home and their patrons, and among technologically mediated bodies. More specifically, we identify two interwoven threads of analysis—intercorporeality and body politics—in uncovering some of the ways that the bodies of intimate female migrant laborers act and are acted upon across uneven power relations between the employer (or client) and laborer. In this introduction, we first offer an overview of the broader context pertaining to migrant workers and intimate labor in Asia before introducing the two conceptual themes of intercorporeality and body politics. We then highlight the contributions of the four articles included in this collection to further our understanding of intimate labor and then round off with a brief conclusion.

From ARI Conference on “Love’s Labour’s Cost? Asian Migration, Intimate Labour and the Politics of Gender”, 3-4 December 2018.