Pardis Mahdavi’s Crossing the Gulf is based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Arabian Gulf that investigated immobilities and mobilities as well as familial love in the lives of migrant workers. Although her data concentrate mainly on Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), her arguments are relevant to other countries in the area with a significant presence of domestic workers. The book offers a deeply original reading of migration and intimacy. Crossing the Gulf investigates the intimate lives of migrants, particularly how bonds of love and family influence their emotional, social, and physical mobilities and immobilities. Mahdavi draws on a vast array of interviews conducted with migrant workers, activists, government officials, and the staff of international organizations in the receiving countries of Kuwait and the UAE and the sending countries of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa, and Madagascar. She met her interlocutors in cafés, jails, shelters, embassies, grassroots organizations’ offices, and private houses.Crossing the Gulf offers a rich andmultidimensional problematization of migrant journeys and the life choices of foreign workers. The scope of the book is threefold. It critically examines the complex and reciprocal relations between migration projects and intimate lives; mobilities and immobilities as “physical and emotional restrictions and opportunities” (22) in the lived experiences of migrant workers; and migration and immigration as complementary processes and forces. Mahdavi avoids dichotomous theoretical categories and conceptualizations. One strength of Mahdavi’s work is how she problematizes and deconstructs the categories of human trafficking, crime, forced labor, and im/migrations through investigation of intimacies and intimate trajectories as well as symbolic and actual borders. Employing amultidimensional perspective onmigrants’ lives, the book leads the reader to

中文翻译：

---

跨越海湾：移民生活中的爱与家庭

Pardis Mahdavi 的 Crossing the Gulf 以阿拉伯湾的民族志田野调查为基础，该调查调查了移民工人生活中的不动和流动以及家庭之爱。尽管她的数据主要集中在科威特和阿拉伯联合酋长国 (UAE)，但她的论点与该地区拥有大量家庭工人的其他国家相关。这本书提供了对移民和亲密关系的深刻原创解读。穿越海湾调查移民的亲密生活，特别是爱情和家庭的纽带如何影响他们的情感、社会和身体活动和不动。Mahdavi 借鉴了对移民工人、活动家、政府官员、科威特和阿联酋的接收国以及菲律宾、印度尼西亚、马来西亚、南非和马达加斯加的派遣国的国际组织工作人员。她在咖啡馆、监狱、收容所、大使馆、草根组织的办公室和私人住宅中遇到了她的对话者。穿越海湾为移民旅程和外国工人的生活选择提供了丰富而多维的问题化。本书的范围是三重的。它批判性地考察了移民项目与亲密生活之间复杂的相互关系；流动性和非流动性作为农民工生活经历中的“身体和情感限制和机会”(22)；以及作为补充过程和力量的移民和移民。Mahdavi 避免了二分法的理论分类和概念化。Mahdavi 的工作优势之一是她如何通过对亲密关系和亲密轨迹以及象征性和实际边界的调查来对人口贩运、犯罪、强迫劳动和移民/移民的类别进行问题化和解构。本书以多维视角看待移民生活，引导读者