Book review: Politics of the Temporary: An Ethnography of Migrant Life in Urban Malaysia

Abstract

Parthiban Muniandy’s Politics of the Temporary: An Ethnography of Migrant Life in Urban Malaysia is a book of stories – the stories of migrant workers and students he observed and interviewed as part of his Ph.D studies, and, especially, his own story of connecting with the lives of transient migrants working and living in the heart of the nation’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, and Georgetown in Penang, as well as his reflections and feelings about the labour and political practices in Malaysia. Although the book title features the term “Ethnography” and he makes liberal use of ethnographic methods, it would be difficult to designate it as such as it appears to be more a collection of narratives loosely organized into three main thematic sections rather than a focused and consolidated study of and within a community, given the diverse nature of the migrant communities in Malaysia.