Rachel Silvey

Professor
rachel.silvey@utoronto.ca

Campus

  • Downtown Toronto (St. George)

Areas of Interest

  • Migration
  • Indonesia
  • Feminist theory
  • Critical development studies
  • Politics of transnationalism

Expertise is in the gender dimensions of migration and economic change in Indonesia. Recent research focuses on the ways in which gender politics of migration are inflected by religion.

Edited Books and Special Issues of Journals

2025. Ed Schatz and Rachel Silvey (eds.), Seeing China’s Belt and Road. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2021. Patricia Landolt, Rhacel Parrenas, Tanya Golash-Boza, Luin Goldring, and Rachel Silvey (eds.)’Mechanisms of Migrant Exclusion: Temporary Labour, Precarious Noncitizenship, and Technologies of Detention. Population, Space and Place, Special Issue. 

2019. Rachel Silvey and Daniele Belanger (eds.), ‘An Immobility Turn: An Im/Mobility Turn: Power Geometries of Care and Migration, co-edited special issue of Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 

Selected Recent Publications

2021. Parreñas, Rhacel and Rachel Silvey, ‘The governance of the Kafala system and the punitive control of migrant domestic workers,’ Population, Space and Place, 27(5), e2487.

2021. Parreñas, R., P. Landolt, L. Goldring, T. Golash‐Boza, and Rachel Silvey. ‘Mechanisms of migrant exclusion: Temporary labour, precarious noncitizenship, and technologies of detention,’ Population, Space and Place, 27(5), e2488.

2020. Rachel Silvey and Rhacel Parreñas. ‘Precarity chains: Cycles of domestic worker migration from Southeast Asia to the Middle East,’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46(16), 3457-3471. DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2019.1592398

2020. Parreñas, Rhacel & Kantachote, Krittiya & Silvey, Rachel. ‘Soft violence: migrant domestic worker precarity and the management of unfree labour in Singapore,’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 47. 1-17. 10.1080/1369183X.2020.1732614.

2019. Danièle Bélanger and Rachel Silvey. ‘An Im/mobility turn: power geometries of care and migration,’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2019.1592396

2018. Parreñas, Rhacel. S., Silvey, Rachel, Hwang, Maria C., & Choi, Carolyn A. ‘Serial Labor Migration: Precarity and Itinerancy among Filipino and Indonesian Domestic Workers,’ International Migration Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/0197918318804769