Migration
Reconfiguring Care Relationships
Migration reconfigures care relationships as people adapt to employment entitlements and care practices in a new context. While a rich genre of analysis of “global care chains” draws attention to how disadvantaged female migrant care workers from the global South fill the “care deficit” in high-income countries these analyses tend to privilege care services and arrangements in the global North and the migrant as the provider of care. In contrast there is little research on how migrants from developing countries meet their own and their families’ care needs irrespective of whether they are paid care workers in the destination. In particular we know little about the care needs of unskilled or semi-skilled migrant workers and refugees who occupy the less privileged circuits of contemporary global mobility and who are often marginalized from state social policies that address care needs. This paper offers an analysis of the effects of migration on the care needs and relationships of Ethiopian migrant mothers and their families and their access to childcare in destination countries. Specifically it draws on empirical research on the experiences of Ethiopian migrant domestic workers who have children while in Lebanon and the experiences of Ethiopian women refugees with children who have resettled in Australia.
Neither Heroines nor Victims
Circular labour migration is frequently portrayed as a gender-neutral phenomenon. Despite the growing literature on the feminization of migration scholarly and policy literature is often gender-blind. In Nepal over the last decade the share of women migrant workers has significantly increased. The National Population Census 2011 shows that about 13 per cent of the absentee population is composed of women. Due to prevailing patriarchal norms and values and skewed policy female labour migration is traditionally stigmatized and associated with sex work or equated to trafficking. However with rising demands for cheap labour (particularly domestic work) in destination countries (for example the Persian Gulf) continued inadequacy of rural employment opportunities and changing aspirations women are increasingly migrating independently. Pourakhi an organization established by women returnees in 2003 has collected more than 1700 case studies on returnee women migrant workers in Nepal. This paper delves into 307 of these as well as a consultation with 14 returnee migrant women from 14 districts to better understand the reintegration process. Rather than focusing on a (necessary) critique of labour markets and on the high human social and financial costs of migration this study aims at giving voice to the subjectivities of migrant women in Nepal as less attention has been paid to this aspect. It unpacks their reasons for undertaking international migration and their struggle for capability to secure a livelihood in the context of globalization.