Description
About the Author

In today’s globalized world, the story of migrant labourers is the story of our era. Award-winning photographer and essayist Sim Chi Yin tells the intimate stories of Indonesian women who work overseas as domestic helpers in a new book published by the United Nations’ International Labour Organization.

Some fall prey to sadistic bosses, while others are luckier and work for kind employers. But all suffer the loneliness and frustrations of living far from their loved ones, unsure if their sacrifices are really helping their families and especially their children escape their fate.

Told with great sensitivity and empathy, The Long Road Home is a story at once specific to Southeast Asia but universal in the migrant’s tale of loss and hope.
Sim Chi Yin is a Singaporean photographer based in Beijing. She is especially interested in social issues and is currently working on projects in China. Her work has been published in The New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Chi Yin was a journalist and foreign correspondent for Singapore's national daily The Straits Times for nine years, straddling words and pictures, before leaving at the end of 2010. She reported extensively on labour migration in Southeast Asia earlier in her career. Between 2006 and 2010, she made several trips to Java to document the stories of Indonesia migrant women workers.

In 2010, she was one of three photographers awarded a Magnum Foundation scholarship for a summer programme in 'Photography and Human Rights' at New York University, and did stints at Magnum Photos New York and the International Center of Photography.

A fourth-generation overseas Chinese, Chi Yin grew up in Singapore. She studied history and international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science on a newspaper scholarship.

Authors

The Long Road Home: Journeys of Indonesian Migrant Women Workers