Gender, Technology and Development current issue

Trans-local Livelihoods and Connections: Embedding a Gender Perspective into Migration Studies

Truong, T.-D., Gasper, D. — 2009-06-25

Practices of Male Labor Migration from the Hills of Nepal to India in Development Discourses: Which Pathology?

Sharma, J. R. — 2009-06-25

This article provides a critique of authoritative development discourses on the migration of men from Nepal to India. Drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork at multiple sites, I illustrate how migration is not perceived as a problem by migrants themselves but as an integral practice in people's livelihoods. Many see migration to work in India as an escape from a difficult socio-economic, cultural and familial situation and an opportunity for young men to experience a distant place, experiment with the pleasures and possibilities of consumption and earn and remit money home to fulfil their obligations as responsible men with the hope for upward socio-economic mobility of their families. The authoritative discourse is criticized for failing to comprehend the socio-cultural meanings associated with this form of human movement and for viewing ‘migration’ and ‘migrants’ as aberrant. The presence of a disjuncture between the authoritative discourses and the complex ethnographic reality raises important questions about the politics of migration in international development.

Living in Transition: How Kyrgyz Women Juggle Their Different Roles in a Multi-local Setting

Thieme, S. — 2009-06-25

The major destinations for labor migrants from rural southern Kyrgyzstan are Russia, Kazakhstan and Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. As well as searching for better income, younger men and women also migrate for educational reasons and to escape from traditions such as early marriage. Although these migration processes make both women and men vulnerable, women face particular forms of vulnerability that intersect with one another. Middle-aged migrating women do experience a devaluation of their education and struggle to handle the multiple roles and expectations of being breadwinner, mother, wife and daughter-in-law, supporting the older and young generation left behind. The youngest generation, born during this transitional period since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, faces its own challenges of trying to take advantage of economic liberalization. Using an approach, which views the multi-local settings of families from women's perspectives, this article provides insights into perceptions and experiences of migration and their consequences for different generations.

Migration Patterns and Influence of Support Networks: A Case Study of West Africans in the Netherlands

Hamer, M. C.-d. — 2009-06-25

This article explores the influence of support networks in the migration process of West African migrants to the Netherlands. Taking a case-oriented biographic approach, the article analyzes the migration stories of several West African migrants with a focus on the networks that facilitated their journey and their initial stages of integration. It highlights the role of support networks in different moments of the migratory process—pre-departure, arrival and settlement—and discusses the scope of support and the obligations that emerge from these social interactions. The article shows that respondents received different types of support, from different types of groups, at different stage of their migration, which shaped the distinctive features of their individual trajectories. An interesting aspect is the support that settled West African migrants give to West African newcomers, which suggests the existence of a regional collective identity. Limited resources, however, pose serious constraints on this type of support.

Gender, Class and Nation in a Transnational Community: Practices of Identity among Undocumented Migrant Workers from Vietnam in Bangkok

Yen, N. T. H., Truong, T.-D., Resurreccion, B. P. — 2009-06-25

This article discusses the social construction of identities in transnational migration as experienced by a community of undocumented Vietnamese service workers in Bangkok. Being of rural origins, undocumented and on a temporal, sequential and circular move without a definite time line, these migrant workers are set apart from the larger and more established overseas Vietnamese community and knowledge workers. Members of the overseas community are active in recruiting and employing them. The transmigrant workers form their own community, weaving gender practices with identities such as family and community, ethnicity and nation to ensure mutual protection and support. Conflating femininity with ethno-marking lends legitimacy to the control over transmigrant women as workers and their identity as Vietnamese. Identified also as homemakers, these women also carry responsibilities for caring and maintaining the well-being of this community. Displacing their resistance and gender conflicts takes place by way of redefining social bonds in the community as kinship relations.

Connections and Disconnections: How Afghan Refugees in the Netherlands Maintain Transnational Family Relations

Muller, P. — 2009-06-25

This article explores how Afghan refugees in the Netherlands maintained relations with family members who stayed behind in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. These transnational relations are characterized not only by a geographical distance but also by an economic, legal and cultural distance and by fundamental differences in terms of safety and security. Embedded in a world of reciprocity, remittances to stay-behinds were one visible, unidirectional feature interacting with three other features of support (bringing stay-behinds to the West, keeping in touch, and returning). The article demonstrates that connection and disconnection can be seen as different moments in a continuum with different mechanisms for relationship maintenance. Remittances not only symbolize connection to the country of origin; in cases of limited means in which sending money was prioritized over other forms of practical, social and cultural support, they could also have a disconnecting impact on transnational relations as well. In these relations, tension arising from the transformation of gender identity was observed in several cases.

Beyond Instrumentalism: Interrogating the Micro-dynamic and Gendered and Social Impacts of Remittances in Senegal

Lo, M. S. — 2009-06-25

Remittances have become orthodoxy in developing countries such as Senegal, prominently framed in development discourses, and premised on the assumptions that they are a pathway to poverty alleviation and household livelihood security. However, what eludes critical scrutiny are their micro-dynamic and gendered and social impacts in the context of a new wave of risky and deadly migration patterns in West Africa, stemming largely from the lure of an economic El Dorado in the peripheral centers of Western Europe.

This article engages in the gender dimensions and externalities of remittances by contrasting the trans-local connections (geographical, social and economic) and, their complex interplay with the instrumental paradigm of remittances. It argues that the instrumental paradigm of remittances misconstrues or ignores entrenched structural, relational and gendered dynamics that mediate such transfers. Remittances intersect with power structures that potentially reinforce dependency and economic vulnerability. The article shows the need to recast conceptually and analytically migration, trans-local connectivity and remittances in a more dynamic framework that accounts for the political economy of migration and its trans-local intersections and dynamics. The complex web of socio-economic relations, added to the ambivalent structure of remittances, merit critical inquiry to ensure that remittances translate into positive and broader socio-economic change, rather than becoming a social trap or fossilized and maladaptive circuits of dependency and subordination at the local, community and household levels.

Engaging in Trans-local Management of Households: Aspects of Livelihood and Gender Transformations among Sri Lankan Women Migrant Workers

Pinnawala, M. — 2009-06-25

Accounting for 70 percent of Sri Lankan migration to West Asia, women migrant workers in domestic services have today become the principal income earners of many households. Using data collected from a group of returned migrants in three communities in the area of Kandy in Sri Lanka, this article adds a new dimension to theorizing about migration as livelihood diversification. It shows that the spatial separation of migrants from their families has meant that issues of resources use and management are taken outside the confines of the household. This results in the separation of earner from manager, and creates spatially separated parallel power centers within the transnational family space with the manager of income as the center of power in local family/household space and earner of income (woman migrant) as the center of power in the new livelihood space. Gender and kinship are two important factors in determining the selection of the manager while the earner is away, and in shaping supportive social networks to support the basis of relative strength of the two main actors.

Remittances and 'Social Remittances': Their Impact on Livelihoods of Thai Women in the Netherlands and Non-migrants in Thailand

Suksomboon, P. — 2009-06-25

For Thai migrant women in the Netherlands, sending remittances is a crucial way to uphold their relationships with their kin and communities in Thailand. This article makes the case that the impacts of remittances on migrant women's families and their sending communities are uneven. Apart from the economic and political determinants, underscored in previous studies, this article suggests that the imagination of affluence in Europe, the cultural idea of saving face and family norms significantly influence how remittances are deployed and interpreted by the women and their natal families, and to some extent their Dutch spouses. ‘Social remittances’—ideas, identities and cultural practices—are also transmitted to the receiving country. These social remittances expose non-migrants to global cultural diffusion and cause to a degree a transformation of their social values and their life styles.

International Migration, Citizenship, Identities and Cultures: Japanese-Filipino Children (JFC) in the Philippines

Nuqui, C. G. — 2009-06-25

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) recognizes every child's right to a name and to acquire nationality. However, these rights are elusive in the case of some Japanese-Filipino Children (JFC).

The number of interracial marriages and unions in Japan is growing because of the internal conditions in Japan and as a result of globalization. The influx of Filipino women entertainers in Japan during the 1980s, which continues up to the present, resulted in the birth of about 200,000 JFC.

Initial findings from the data of the Development Action for Women Network, a Philippine NGO, show that the JFC in the Philippines would want to meet their fathers. They wish to finish their studies and want their fathers to support their education. Some want to claim their Japanese nationality. Most mothers want their children to be recognized as Japanese because they see this as a passport to go to Japan and be able to work there again.

Under Japanese law, nationality is given to children of mixed marriages and to illegitimate children only when recognition of the child by the Japanese father comes before the birth of the child.

The JFC and their mothers are fighting for the children's claim to their Japanese nationality. But is Japan ready to embrace into their fold children of mixed marriages?

Book Reviews

2009-06-25

International Migration, Multi-Local Livelihoods and Human Security: Perspectives from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America

2009-06-25

News and Events

2009-06-25