Every year migrants across the globe send more than $500 billion to relatives in their home countries, and this circulation of money has important personal, cultural, and emotional implications for the immigrants and their family members alike. "Insufficient Funds" tells the story of how low-wage Vietnamese immigrants in the United States and their poor, non-migrant family members give, receive, and spend money.
Drawing on interviews and fieldwork with more than one hundred members of transnational families, Hung Cam Thai examines how and why immigrants, who largely earn low wages as hairdressers, cleaners, and other "invisible" workers, send home a substantial portion of their earnings, as well as spend lavishly on relatives during return trips. Extending beyond mere altruism, this spending is motivated by complex social obligations and the desire to gain self-worth despite their limited economic opportunities in the United States. At the same time, such remittances raise expectations for standards of living, producing a cascade effect that monetizes family relationships. "Insufficient Funds" powerfully illuminates these and other contradictions associated with money and its new meanings in an increasingly transnational world.

Every year migrants across the globe send more than $500 billion to relatives in their home countries, and this circulation of money has important personal, cultural, and emotional implications for the immigrants and their family members alike. "Insufficient Funds" tells the story of how low-wage Vietnamese immigrants in the United States and their poor, non-migrant family members give, receive, and spend money.
Drawing on interviews and fieldwork with more than one hundred members of transnational families, Hung Cam Thai examines how and why immigrants, who largely earn low wages as hairdressers, cleaners, and other "invisible" workers, send home a substantial portion of their earnings, as well as spend lavishly on relatives during return trips. Extending beyond mere altruism, this spending is motivated by complex social obligations and the desire to gain self-worth despite their limited economic opportunities in the United States. At the same time, such remittances raise expectations for standards of living, producing a cascade effect that monetizes family relationships. "Insufficient Funds" powerfully illuminates these and other contradictions associated with money and its new meanings in an increasingly transnational world.

This issue addresses how laborers within intimate industries-those who do interpersonal work that tends to the sexual, bodily, health, hygiene, or care needs of individuals-are shaping Asia's growing role in the global economy. The contributors investigate how intimate industries support relational connections for consumers while disrupting laborers' relationships, as in the case of migrants who perform intimate labor away from their families and communities of origin. The articles collected here include examinations of such trade-offs and their complex meanings and implications for the workers. The authors explore these social processes through the lens of industries that organize, enable, or delimit the trade in domestic labor, marriage migration, companionship and romance, sex work, pornographic performance, surrogate mothering and ova donation, and cosmetics sales. This issue puts people, as embodied subjects, back into narratives of economic change and offers a perspective on globalization from below. Contributors: Daniele Belanger, Hae Yeon Choo, Nicole Constable, Daisy Deomampo, Akhil Gupta, Chaitanya Lakkimsetti, Pei-Chia Lan, Purnima Mankekar, Eileen Otis, Juno Salazar Parrenas, Rhacel Parrenas, Sharmila Rudrappa, Celine Parrenas Shimizu, Rachel Silvey, Hung Cam Thai, Leslie Wang

"A tremendously important contribution to the study of gender and migration with its focus on the oft-ignored topic of masculinity." -Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, author of Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes "This book should be required reading for anyone with an interest in transnationalism, migration, cross-border marriages, or postwar Vietnamese diaspora."-Nicole Constable, author of Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and "Mail Order" Marriages "A beautifully conceptualized and fascinating book."-Barrie Thorne, University of California at Berkeley Marriage is currently the number-one reason people migrate to the United States, and women constitute the majority of newcomers joining husbands who already reside here. But little is known about these marriage and migration streams beyond the highly publicized and often sensationalized phenomena of mail-order and military brides. Less commonly known is that most international couples are immigrants of the same ethnicity. In For Better or For Worse, Hung Cam Thai takes a closer look at marriage and migration, with a specific focus on the unions between Vietnamese men living in the United States and the women who marry them. Weaving together a series of personal stories, he underscores the ironies and challenges that these unions face. He includes the voices of working-class immigrant men speaking about wanting "traditional" wives and young Vietnamese college-educated women, who express a preference for men of the same ethnicity but with a more liberal outlook on gender-men they imagine they will find in the United States. Thai captures the incompatible viewpoints of the couples who appear to be separated not only geographically but ideologically. Hung Cam Thai is an assistant professor of sociology and Asian American Studies at Pomona College.