Nepali Migrant Women: Resistance and Survival in America

In this pathbreaking and timely work, Hamal Gurung gives voice to the growing
number of Nepali women who migrate to the United States to work in the informal
economy. Highlighting the experiences of thirty-five women, mostly college
educated and middle class, who take on domestic service and unskilled labor
jobs, Hamal Gurung challenges conventional portraits of Third World women
as victims forced into low-wage employment. Instead, she sheds light on Nepali
women's strategic decisions to accept downwardly mobile positions in order to
earn more income, thereby achieving greater agency in their home countries as
well as in their diasporic communities in the United States. These women are not
only investing in themselves and their families--they are building transnational
communities through formal participation in NGOs and informal networks of
migrant workers. In great detail, Hamal Gurung documents Nepali migrant
women's lives, making visible the profound and far-reaching effects of their
civic, economic, and political engagement.