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Disposable Domestics | Praise
“What makes Chang's analysis so forceful isn't just the collusion she demonstrates
between immigration, welfare, and international policies.… It's also the
powerful and incontrovertible connection she draws between policies and people.…
These appear, to great effect, on almost every page of Disposable Domestics.”
—Women's Review of Books
“Chang argues persuasively that poor immigrant women—largely Third Worlders—have
become a central focus of ‘public scrutiny and media distortion, and the
main targets of immigration regulation and labor control’ in the United
States.… [A]n invaluable contribution, showing how the regulation of immigration
and labor is inextricably tied to matters of gender, as well as to those of
class, race and nationality.
—The Nation
“Grace Chang
makes an enormous contribution by showing how immigrant women workers facilitate
the operation of the global economy. These are histories at risk of invisibility.”
—Saskia Sassen, author of Guests and Aliens
“What a book
for both scholars and activists! It offers a much needed understanding of the
multi-faceted linkage between global and local issues in today’s world.
Grace Chang shows us how that linkage affects women with both clarity and passion.”
—Elizabeth Martínez, author of De Colores
Means All of Us
“Disposable
Domestics shows the underbelly of the
dot.com economic boom-that is, the women who toil behind the scenes as caretakers
and factory workers for wages that keep them mired in poverty. With great poignancy,
Grace Chang traces how austerity programs imposed by the International Monetary
Fund force poor women to emigrate to the United States, how they are vilified
and exploited in their “host“ country, and how they are fighting against
tremendous odds to secure their basic rights. It is an essential book for those
trying to connect the dots between global economic policies and women’s
labor.”
—Medea Benjamin, Founding Director, Global Exchange
“Grace Chang
presents an eye-opening and path-breaking account of how so-called welfare reform
in the United States, combined with racist anti-immigrant policies, has enabled
Americans to take advantage of the labor of immigrant women. Chang demolishes
the myth that immigrant women are “welfare queens“ and “baby
machines.” In this book, she documents the essential role that immigrant
women play in the U.S. economy as workers who clean houses, offices, and hotel
rooms and also take care of our elderly and children. Disposable Domestics
should be read by anyone wanting to understand the realities of how the U.S.
political and economic system is treating immigrant women at the beginning of
the twenty-first century.”
—Evelyn Nakano Glenn, University of California
at Berkeley
“Disposable Domestics is a compelling book that is all too rare these
days, combining academic research and theory, political conviction, and moral
outrage.”
—Kitty Calavita, University of California at Irvine
“With patience
and clarity, Grace Chang shows us that the work of immigrant women is an indispensable
feature of global capitalism. Their blood and sweat has been rewarded only by
increasing government regulation, domestic violence, and cultural commodification.
Feminists and labor organizers beware! Disposable Domestics names the
hot-button social justice issue of this decade.”
—Karin Aguilar-San Juan, editor of The State
of Asian America
“In her illuminating
book, Grace Chang shows us clearly how global capital and international policy
are linked with domestic policy to trap immigrant women in their paradoxical
position as the most valuable and the most vulnerable workers in the United
States today, whether they are domestics and nannies in their homes, farm workers
who put food on their tables, or factory workers who benefit both the U.S. and
their homeland economies. Chang’s book exposes the hypocrisy, cruelty,
and insanity of anti-immigrant policies and attitudes that persist toward those
whose labor benefits others so much more than themselves. Chang also offers
an inspiring account of how immigrant women and immigrant advocates are organizing
to fight for justice. I hope everyone will read this important book.”
—Elaine Kim, University of California at Berkeley
“Disposable
Domestics is especially timely given
the globalization of the economy and the growing number of immigrant women working
for wages in the United States. The analysis provided in this book is critical
both for understanding the plight of immigrant women workers and for designing
strategies for change.”
—Mimi Abramovitz, author of Regulating the
Lives of Women
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