Crossing the Border to India: Youth, Migration, and Masculinities in India by Jeevan R. Sharma is an ethnographic account of young male Nepali migrants in, and on their way to, India. It is a product of fieldwork that Sharma conducted across western Nepal and in Mumbai, India, between 2004 and 2013. Sharma frames his ethnography around the concept of livelihood, describing migration as a living strategy in which cultural, demographic, and gender factors inform economic decision-making. Some of the most evocative ethnographic analyses in the book describe in detail how migration is a complex response to changing masculinities in rapidly globalizing rural Nepal. Facing poor employment prospects at home and without the social capital necessary to obtain more lucrative jobs in the Persian Gulf, many young Nepali men leave their homes to work in Indian cities, principally as security guards, in restaurants or hotels, or as domestic workers...

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