| Summary: | This chapter provides an overview of the ethnographic research and theoretical foundations informing this study of women’s labor migration from the former Soviet Union into Turkey. Tracing three intertwined themes that animate the book—postsocialism, transnational mobility, and intimacy—the chapter highlights gendered aspiration for mobility and intimate practices like emotional labor forged within forces of global capitalism. The chapter also critically discusses global concerns with trafficking in women, showing how post-Soviet women migrants’ accounts complicate assumptions of oppression. The chapter also presents the context and methods of the research, with an analysis of “mobile” methods and field work with an infant along. The chapter closes with the book’s organizational thread, namely accounts of five key women and their families.
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