Review of Caring for Strangers: Filipino Medical Workers in Asia, by Megha Amrith

Abstract

Caring for Strangers (2017) takes the reader on an interesting journey to the everyday lives of Filipino migrant nurse workers placed in Singapore. It does so focusing on the narratives and the frequent encounters that anthropologist Megha Amrith had over her fieldwork time in Singapore. The result is a rich compilation of the social, political, and economic factors that make many men and women in the Philippines undertake nursing education with the purpose of migrating to work abroad. This review of the book focuses on three aspects of the book that the present author found to be of great importance in the contemporary anthropology of economy and labour: the political economy of global capital, the marketization of care work, and the ways in which these migrant workers built their subjectivities.