Based on seventeen months of ethnographic research among Indonesian eldercare workers in Japan and Indonesia, this book is the first ethnography to research Indonesian care workers’ relationships with the cared-for elderly, their Japanese colleagues, and their employers. Through the notion of intimacy, the book brings together sociological and anthropological scholarship on the body, migration, demographic change, and eldercare in a vivid account of societal transformation. Placed against the background of mass media representations, the Indonesian workers’ experiences serve as a basis for discussion of the role of bodily experience in shaping the image of a national “other” in Japan.
Table of Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Note on Language
List of Abbreviations
Map 1. Distribution of Indonesian caregiver candidates who arrived in Japan in 2008
Map 2. Distribution of Indonesian caregiver and nurse candidates who arrived in Japan in 2008
Introduction
Chapter 1. Imagining Life and Work in Japan
Chapter 2. Working Intimacies
Chapter 3. Intimate Management
Chapter 4. National Predicaments
Conclusion: Reluctant Intimacies
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Beata Świtek is Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
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