This book examines the intersections of life and work for expatriates in Kathmandu, Nepal, and the many changes to their experience of overseas labor in the last sixty years. Western elite transnational laborers are the nominal centerpoint of Mediating, yet the text uses this base as opportunity to explore other populations and practices. Bureaucracy and audit practices constrain the work and lives of expatriates, being also their medium of exchange with many local coworkers and friends. Changes in best practices have transformed the ideologies of overseas labor as well as the lives of workers ... More

This book examines the intersections of life and work for expatriates in Kathmandu, Nepal, and the many changes to their experience of overseas labor in the last sixty years. Western elite transnational laborers are the nominal centerpoint of Mediating, yet the text uses this base as opportunity to explore other populations and practices. Bureaucracy and audit practices constrain the work and lives of expatriates, being also their medium of exchange with many local coworkers and friends. Changes in best practices have transformed the ideologies of overseas labor as well as the lives of workers themselves. New racialized and gendered labor, forms of expertise and ideas of security have altered the work of experts and their relationships to Nepalis. This book examines such diverse phenomena as global business, international politics, gendered labor practices and Nepal's own history through the lens of the world of transnational elite labor in Kathmandu.