Migration, Gender and Care Economy [Hardcover ed.] 1138063673, 9781138063679

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Migration, Gender and Care Economy

This volume closely analyses women’s roles and experiences in migration (internal and international) and its interlinkages with the care economy in their functions as nurses and paid domestic workers as well as unpaid carers. Bringing together case studies from across India and other parts of the world, the essays in the volume capture the characteristics and specificities of female migration in different settings – be it for economic or associational reasons, or as left behind members. The book also looks at gender-specific discriminations and vulnerabilities along with the empowering aspects of migration. This volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of migration, gender studies, sociology, and social anthropology, as well as development studies, demography, and economics. S. Irudaya Rajan is Professor at the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. He has coordinated seven large-scale migration surveys in Kerala since 1998 (with Professor K.C. Zachariah), as well as the Goa Migration Survey 2008 and the Tamil Nadu Migration Survey 2015. He was also instrumental in conducting the Punjab Migration Survey 2009 and Gujarat Migration Survey 2011. He has published extensively in national and international journals on social, economic, demographic, and political implications on international migration, and he also acted as Chair of the Research Unit on International Migration (RUIM) from 2006–16. He is the editor of the annual series India Migration Report and editor-in-chief of Migration and Development. N. Neetha is Senior Fellow (Professor) and Deputy Director at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), New Delhi,

India. Prior to this, she was Associate Fellow and Coordinator at the Centre for Gender and Labour, V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, Noida, India. Her broad research interests include labour, employment, and migration issues of women. Her current research work focuses on the changing dimensions of women’s employment, gender statistics, and the social, political, and economic dimensions of care work (paid as well as unpaid). She has been engaged in a large-scale study on female migration and is one of the lead authors of the ‘Pluralization of Family’ chapter in the International Panel on Social Progress Report. She has published in several journals and books.

Migration, Gender and Care Economy

Edited by S. Irudaya Rajan and N. Neetha

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, S. Irudaya Rajan and N. Neetha; individual chapters, the contributors. The right of S. Irudaya Rajan and Neetha N. to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-06367-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-42670-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of illustrations Notes on contributors 1 Migration and gender landscape: labour demands, care work, and cultural pressures

vii viii

1

N . N E E TH A A N D S. IRUDAYA RAJA N

2 Women’s migration and chronic poverty: case study of Chennai slum dwellers

21

S . M AG E S WA R I AN D G. GE E TH A

3 A critical review of Keralite migrant women’s work in the Gulf region

29

M A N A S I M A H A NTY

4 Nursing labour, employment regimes, and affective spaces: experiencing migration in the city of Kolkata

47

PA N C H A L I R AY

5 Mobility, accessibility, and inclusion: spatial politics of gendered migrant domestic labour

69

B I N D H U L A K S H MI PATTA DATH

6 Women left behind: results from Kerala Migration Surveys S . I RU DAYA R AJA N A N D K.C. ZACH A RIAH

86

vi

Contents

7 International migration and impact of remittances on left behind wives: a case study of the Doaba region of Punjab

103

ATI N D E R PA L KAUR

8 An understanding of the social space of left behind females: a study of the Dogra community from the Jammu region

124

N E H A G U TK A R

9 Fractured between two worlds: narratives on the gendered experiences of two generations of immigrant Indian-Hindu women in Canada

136

S M I TA V E R M A

10 Two steps forward, one step backward: a step ahead?

161

R I M P L E M E H TA

11 Transnational migration and gendered (re)organization of eldercare

178

S R E E RU PA

12 Domestic worker mobility to mobilization: a case for closer engagement with civil society and local actors in policy and praxis

192

S . I RU DAYA R AJA N A N D JO L IN JO SE P H

Index

201

Illustrations

Figures 2.1 Linking causes and consequences of migration 6.1 WLB by age, 2013 6.2 Educational qualifications of WLBs by their age, 2013

23 93 93

Tables 1.1 Estimated numbers of labour migrants in sectors/ industries (All India, 2007–08) 1.2 Internal migrants in India by sex, based on place of residence, 2011 census (in millions) 1.3 Reasons for migration by sex, 2011 census (in per cent) 2.1 Positive and negative development of migration in poverty 6.1 WLBs’ dependence on others as revealed by the KMS 2013 (per cent) 6.2 Decisions to go places, KMS 2013 (per cent) 6.3 Problems felt by WLBs due to husband’s absence, 2013 6.4 Good and bad experiences of WLBs due to husband’s absence, 2013

5 6 6 26 97 98 98 99

Contributors

G. Geetha is an Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Queen Mary’s College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Neha Gutkar is a visiting faculty member with the Department of Human Resource Development at Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat, Gujarat, India. Jolin Joseph is a doctoral candidate, York University, Toronto, Canada. Atinder Pal Kaur is a PhD Research Scholar, Panjab University, Chandigarh, Punjab, India. S. Mageswari is working as Scientist-B (Non-Medical) in the ICMRNIE project, Chennai Tamil Nadu, India. Manasi Mahanty is a lecturer at Rayagada Autonomous College, Rayagada, Odisha, India. Neetha, N. is Senior Fellow (Professor) and Deputy Director at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), New Delhi, India. Rimple Mehta is an Assistant Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Bindhulakshmi Pattadath is an Associate Professor in the Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies, School of Development Studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Panchali Ray is Assistant Professor at the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal, India.

Contributors

ix

Sreerupa is a doctoral fellow at Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, Kerala, India. Smita Verma is Associate Professor and Head of the P.G. Department of Sociology and Women Studies, Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. S. Irudaya Rajan is Professor at the Centre for Development Studies, Kerala, India. K.C. Zachariah is Honorary Professor at Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, Kerala, India.

Chapter 1

Migration and gender landscape Labour demands, care work, and cultural pressures N. Neetha and S. Irudaya Rajan

Gender is now an accepted cross-cutting migration issue which has its bearing on all aspects of migration. Feminization of migration, a term which has been deliberated extensively in the last two decades, reveals a remarkable presence of women in migration streams. The super-visibility of women in migration streams is also an outcome of their increased presence in certain occupations which have become feminized over time. The statistical system, however, does not capture many such migrants, even when they are emigrants. It is well acknowledged that social norms prevent women from migrating, and this is true even in the case of poor and marginalized communities, meaning the data on female emigration is always underrepresented. Since policies are also in line with the social norms, women migrate largely in informal streams and many of these migrants are not part of formal employment. In the last few decades there have been major advances in gender and migration research, and because of persistent attempts by scholars and activists gender now does figure in most of the discussion on migration, though data systems are still an issue. The insights and issues of the literature around gender and migration have opened up multiple and are large areas of enquiry which were less focused in the initial years of migration studies. It is now well established that women are increasingly migrating for employment far and wide, which enhances their economic status. Studies have also shown that there are mixed experiences. Though migration benefits women in most cases, they are often subject to gender-specific discriminations and vulnerabilities. Women’s migration is often studied by disaggregating the details by men and women based on a purely economic cost-benefit analysis. Such analyses do not adequately analyse how gender relations determine or

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N. Neetha and S. Irudaya Rajan

define migration and its meanings and outcomes (IOM, 2009). As such, the study of female migration requires a more social approach which enables analysis of gender norms and practices in different contexts. A close reading of women and migration, be it for economic or associational reasons or to focus on left behind women, brings the care economy aspect to the forefront. The two prominent sectors of employment where women migrants dominate are nursing and paid domestic work. Their entry into these sectors of employment as part of the reproductive care chain at the national level or in an international context is now well documented. Even when women migrate as associational to male migration, their reproductive status as homemakers and domestic carers assume centrality. Even when women are not migrating themselves, remaining in the source areas when male members migrate, their status and gender norms are affected. While male migration is empowering to some women, giving them increased autonomy and greater financial and social control on the households, it may also lead to isolation, separation, or control by in-laws (Zachariah, Mathew and Rajan, 2001a; 2001b; 2003; Zachariah and Rajan, 2012; 2014). The decision to leave women behind is often influenced by their role as homemakers whose presence is required to undertake multiple care functions, such as care of children, old age care, or care for the sick. Gender and migration thus cannot be understood and analysed in its entirety unless care work is brought into the framework (Neetha, 2008; 2010; 2013a; 2013b).

Changing the landscape of female migration The most striking revelation of migration statistics is the increased rates of female migration between 1993 and 2007–08 in both rural and urban areas. In contrast, male migration rates have fallen in rural areas, with rates in urban areas becoming stagnant after an initial increase. Women accounted for 80 per cent of all migrants in 2007–08, in contrast to their share at 72 per cent in 1993. The increase in female migration was largely on account of marriage in both rural and urban areas. Of the total female migrants, 83.6 per cent of migrants are counted as marriage migrants, as against 1.1  per cent who have cited employment as the reason for migration. As mentioned earlier, discussions on labour migration at the macro level are largely in the context of male migration, which has

Migration and gender landscape

3

led to the neglect of female migration and analysis of related processes which are different from that of male migration. Such an approach to labour migration from a gender perspective has many issues. Firstly, there is the usual discomfort of locating all marriage migration as purely demographic mobility, separate from labour migration. There is enough evidence which shows that even in traditional village exogamy marriages, women’s labour is a critical consideration that influences marriage decisions. In such situations, though one cannot differentiate the productive and social reproductive roles of women, which overlap considerably, the productive or economic role of women is clearly critical, at least for a considerable section of the society. In the discussions on labour migration, the position that is often held is to exclude such migration of women based on the understanding that marital homes are not worksites, which in itself is a subject of enquiry and analysis. Such a position of excluding all marriage migrants from the analysis of labour migration raises issues in two contexts. Firstly, many women who have cited marriage as the reason for migration may have further migrated out of their marital homes and may be working in locations which are very typical of the idealized labour migrant. Given the limitation of the monocausal approach of migration survey and the social context, many such women would report marriage or associational migration as the reason, even when their productive labour is central to such migration. This becomes evident when one looks at the workforce participation rates of women migrants who have cited marriage as the reason for migration. About 41 per cent of women who have cited marriage are workers, and this number has distinct rural and urban differences – 46 per cent in rural areas as against 17 per cent in urban areas. However, due to the concentration of women in agricultural work, where women’s participation rates are higher, inclusion of all migrants reporting marriage may lead to over-representation of female labour migration. Given the possibility of such overestimation and the nearly impossible method of separating the two, a study at the Centre for Women Development Studies (CWDS) arrived at an aggregate picture. This was done by adding all migrants who reported employment as the reason for migration with various other categories of labour migrants, excluding those reporting marriage. Thus, apart from employment migration, all migrants who are paid workers (excluding unpaid workers/helpers in family farms and enterprises) and who have given ‘family movement’, ‘education’,

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N. Neetha and S. Irudaya Rajan

and ‘other reasons’ as the reason for migration are also included to estimate the total number of labour migrants. Based on this definition, the estimated total number of labour migrants was 66.6 million in 2007–08, of which 15 per cent (9.6 million) were females (CWDS, 2012; see also Mazumdar and Neetha, 2011). This estimation is for sure also an underestimation, but it gives a broad profile of migrants across various sectors. Table 1.1 gives the estimated numbers of labour migrants by broad industrial classification. Agriculture is the most important sector of migration, as it accounts for 34.3 per cent of the female migrant workforce. However, all services, which include trade, hotels, restaurants, and all other services, taken together surpass agriculture slightly, with 34.8 per cent of female migrants in these sectors. This is followed by industry (including mining and quarrying, manufacturing, and electricity) with 19.4 per cent, and construction (11.4 per cent). It is the relatively higher share of agriculture that differentiates the pattern of female labour migration from males. For males services and industry are dominant, with 43.6 per cent and 40.8 per cent respectively, with agriculture accounting for only 15.6 per cent of migrants. Sectors of employment do determine or influence type of migration and hence the processes associated with migration. However, the macro data on migration is particularly problematic, as it shows a very small proportion of short-term and temporary migration. In contrast to this macro picture, many empirical studies have highlighted the growing proportion of short-term and temporary migration. The CWDS study, which covered many villages and sites across the country, gives an estimate of temporary migration at 58 per cent for women migrant workers. Failure to acknowledge the growing importance of temporary migration is an issue that has restricted the understanding of female migration and its developmental or labour implication. According to the 2011 census, the number of migrants (based on the last residence definition) was 453 million, which accounted for 37.8 per cent of the total population, compared to 220 million in the 1991 census, which was 27.1 per cent of the total population. Among migrants, the proportion of females is significantly higher than males. Moreover, the number of rural migrants was 271 million, while in urban areas it was 182 million. About 64.2 per cent of the population had resided for over ten years in their place of residence, while 15.8 per cent had resided between one and four years. Additionally,

Source: CWDS Report, 2012.

Mining, manufacturing, electricity Trade, hotels, restaurants Other services (excluding trade, hotels, restaurants) Total

Agriculture, hunting, forestry, fishing Construction

Industry

2,399 (31.74) 402 (5.32) 1,575 (20.84) 474 (6.27) 2,698 (35.70) 7,556 (100.00)

44,252 (100.00)

Female

6,430 (14.53) 4,257 (9.62) 11,258 (25.44) 8,027 (18.14) 14,280 (32.27)

Male

Paid/income-earning migrant workers excluding migrants for marriage (UPR) [000s]

12,675 (100.00)

2,449 (19.32) 5,289 (41.73) 2,412 (19.03) 1,190 (9.39) 1,338 (10.56) 2,121 (100.00)

922 (43.47) 700 (33.00) 306 (14.43) 32 (1.51) 161 (7.59)

Female

56,927 (100.00)

8,879 (15.60) 9,546 (16.77) 13,670 (24.01) 9,217 (16.19) 15,618 (27.44)

Male

9,677 (100.00)

3,321 (34.31) 1,102 (11.39) 1,881 (19.44) 506 (5.23) 2,859 (29.54)

Female

[000s]

[000s] Male

Total labour migrants

Short-term migrants

Table 1.1 Estimated numbers of labour migrants in sectors/industries (All India, 2007–08)

14.53

15.47

5.20

12.09

10.35

27.22

[%]

Female share of total

6

N. Neetha and S. Irudaya Rajan

15.2 per cent had resided between five and nine years. Males generally moved for shorter periods due to economic reasons, while females moved for longer-term periods of more than ten years (Table 1.2). Among the reasons for migration, marriage accounts for 49.4 per cent of the total migrants, followed by household migration (15.4 per cent) and work/employment (10.2 per cent). Males migrating for employment constituted 27.7 per cent of the total while the corresponding figure for females was just 2.4 per cent (see Table 1.3). Female migration for marriage was at 69.7 per cent, but for males, this was just 4.3 per cent. Migrating for employment was more prominent in urban areas with 18.7 per cent. In Table 1.2 Internal migrants in India by sex, based on place of residence, 2011 census (in millions) Duration of residence

Total

Rural

Urban

Persons Male Female Persons Male Female Persons Male Female

Less than 20.7 9.3 1 year 1–4 years 71.8 25.0 5–9 years 68.9 22.4 10 years and 292.2 84.2 above All durations 453.6 141.0

11.4

11.4

4.7

6.7

9.3

4.7

4.7

46.8 46.5 208.0

38.5 9.7 28.8 38.4 8.6 29.8 182.8 34.7 148.2

33.3 15.3 18.0 30.5 13.9 16.7 109.4 49.5 59.9

312.7

271.1 57.6 213.5

182.6 83.4 99.2

Source: Compiled by the authors based on the 2011 census data on migration.

Table 1.3 Reasons for migration by sex, 2011 census (in per cent) Reasons for migration

Total

Rural

Urban

Persons Male Female Persons Male Female Persons Male Female Work/ employment Business Education Marriage Moved after birth Moved with HH Others

10.2

27.7

2.4

4.5

15.8

1.5

18.7

35.8

4.3

1.0 1.8 49.4 10.6

2.3 3.4 4.3 20.2

0.4 1.0 69.7 6.2

0.4 1.2 65.3 10.6

1.2 3.1 7.6 29.9

0.2 0.6 80.8 5.4

1.8 2.7 25.7 10.6

3.1 3.6 1.9 13.5

0.7 1.9 45.7 8.1

15.4

22.3

12.3

8.4

19.3

5.4

25.8

24.4

26.9

11.7 19.8 8.1 9.7 23.0 6.1 14.8 17.6 12.4 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Source: Compiled by the authors based on the 2011 census data on migration.

Migration and gender landscape

7

rural areas, the corresponding figure was just 4.5 per cent. Among females, migration after marriage in rural areas among females was 80.8 per cent, but in urban areas, this percentage accounted for just 46 per cent. These figures are significantly lower for men. By contrast, migration after birth or moving with households was more significant among males than females.

Gendered labour requirements and impacts on migration patterns Over the last many years, the increased mobility of individuals has become an acknowledged fact, with the number of internal and international migrants increasing steadily in the country. Marriagerelated movement of women, an outcome of social and cultural practice among various communities, is almost universal after marriage. However, there is a virtual impossibility of disentangling labour migration by women from marriage migration. Only a single cause reason for migration is captured in migration surveys, be it NSS or census, which records an overwhelming majority of women citing marriage as the reason for migration. Because of the overwhelming nature of marriage migration, labour migration of women has remained under the radar. As a result, gender issues did not gather much interest or space in the larger literature on labour migration which centred on development discourses. Though women contribute especially to agricultural production and social reproduction through informal marriage-related movements, marriage migration rarely finds mention in labour-related migration literature. The statistical system is yet to wake up to the issue with migration surveys going ahead with a monocausal approach to the reason for migration. Further, official data sets provide very limited understanding of the process of migration and its dynamics, which does not allow for any gendered analysis (Rajan, 2015). The picture of internal employment/labour migration that emerges from Table 1.1 indicates that agriculture is the single largest employer of female labour migrants, followed by other services (i.e. transport/storage/communications, finance/real estate/business services, and community/social/personal services). In other services, most women are employed in community/social/personal services. Among the range of informal services that women migrate to perform, domestic work is the most documented sector of female migration, though official statistics on the sector is also problematic.

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As international migration became popular, migration of unskilled or semi-skilled workers to Gulf countries and migration of whitecollar workers to different regions, especially to the developed world, redefined some of the earlier understanding on migration. Though women were also active agents of this migration, either as migrants themselves or as those left behind, their migration experiences were largely ignored or sidelined. Many women who were documented in migration statistics migrated to take up nursing work, though many others migrated unrecorded. However, since the 1990s there has been a special interest in the study of gendered migration, which could be located in the increased movement of women to take up domestic work or work in the entertainment industries. Labour movements became clearly gender segregated, with male migration largely for construction or trade, commerce, and communication-related service sector employment and female migration for care work. An offshoot of general migration studies which has spilled over to gender issues is the separation and distinction in the understanding/ treatment of the two streams of migration – internal and international migration. Not only are these streams treated as different areas altogether, but internal migration has received less attention and is given a step motherly treatment, though the quantum of internal migrants, especially women, is enormous. There could be some merit in the separation of the analysis, given the economic, political, and legal specificities of countries that may contribute to significant differences in the context of international migration. However, many issues need to be located equally or within the larger rubric of cultural and social relations. This is particularly important in the context of female migration or for a gendered understanding of any migration. It is in this context that this book assumes importance. Though the ideal outcome would have been studies that integrate the two streams, none of the chapters have attempted any assimilation. However, by discussing the two segments in parallel, the book provides some framework for analysing gender issues beyond economic policies which are largely social or political. The volume, based on insights from the field, explores some of the contemporary features, characteristics, and specificities of female migration alongside capturing the experiences of women who are left behind. The chapters in this volume not only capture the characteristics and specificities of female migration in different settings but also discuss the care

Migration and gender landscape

9

dimensions of this migration process. While in some chapters the care aspect is the central focus of entry and analysis, in a few others it is embedded in the larger discussions around women’s experiences either as migrants or as left behind women.

Female migration and informal economy There is enough literature on migration that substantiates largescale movement of women favoured by segregation of labour markets. As discussed, occupations where care work is involved, such as paid domestic work and nursing, are now largely feminized (see Oda, Tsujita and Rajan, 2018; Percot and Rajan, 2007; Margaret and Rajan, 2013). This is not only in the context of international migration captured under global care chains but also in countries which are marked by large-scale internal migration. Poor women are documented moving to urban areas and cities from rural pockets in search of employment because of poverty. Informal sector jobs that are available to them in the cities, though providing for meeting everyday subsistence, do not help them to move upward either economically or socially. The concentration of women migrants in certain sectors/occupations, given the prevalence of a gendersegregated labour market, is not surprising. But the evolution of such labour markets through the flow of migrants and the changing dynamics of employment relations and its intersection with state policy are issues that need careful analysis. The chapter by Mageswari and Geetha, which is based on a study of slums in Chennai, highlights the need to look beyond the direct economic aspect of migration, especially when women’s migration is analysed. The chapter highlights how chronic poverty is an important factor in decisions to migrate or not and explores the diverse ways in which migration enables or disables the change of social, economic, and livelihood conditions for women migrants in two urban slums of Chennai city. The chapter finds that the lack of basic provisions such as sanitation, water, and health services in the slums exerts pressure on women, as they are accountable for social reproduction. These responsibilities define both their interactions and experiences in the city and differentiate them from those of men. Their choice of employment and preference for regular work, which, though poorly paid, has less risk of employment loss, is an outcome of their compulsion to feed children and other members of the family without long breaks. Women’s relationships with members of

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their immediate and extended societies and communities are also governed by such notions of interdependencies. The fact that many domestic workers continue to keep personal relationships with the employers, even with formal employment relationships, also needs to be understood from this backdrop. The chapter also suggests the role of social networks in the understanding of migration and women’s employment choices. Given the complicated relationship that women have with development in general, it is important to integrate female migration with its cultural, economic, and social specificities into policy interventions. Poor women who migrate to the cities or towns to take up informal sector work have to negotiate with larger public and civic amenities and services. The chapter also draws attention to the interlinkages between migration and the informal economy, exploring the process of inclusion and assimilation in the destination areas and resultant social benefits of migration to women. Alongside nuanced exportation of the various impulses and restrictions that circumvent female migration, the chapter offers a better understanding of women migrants’ survival in the cities and their everyday issues. The vulnerability of migrant women, especially when they are employed as domestic workers, and the related issue of women migrant workers’ rights are also dealt with in the analysis.

Migration and care work Recent feminist scholarship has focused on the ‘new international division of reproductive labour’ and ‘global care chain’, to foreground the gradual but steady marketization and commodification of migrant women’s reproductive labour. Though there has been a steady increase in care workers, leading to feminization of migration in a few occupations, the larger picture remains the same, with politics of exclusion and inclusion determining the flow. Whereas there is an increase in demand for temporary ‘skilled’ migrant workers for a few professions at the higher end, nurses and software professionals are increasingly being absorbed as part of the politics of informalization, even when they are part of international migration. Restrictions and regulations mark the movements of unskilled workers, be it domestic work or any other manual work (Rajan, Varghese and Jayakumar, 2011). The chapters in this volume not only capture the characteristics and specificities of female migration for care work in different

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settings but also discuss the care dimensions of different types of migration, even when it is male migration. The article by Manasi provides both theoretical and empirical insights on gender and migration. The theoretical framework, developed with a feminist perspective, lays down the larger structural political economy context, which is important in locating and exploring the gendered and occupationally segmented global care economy. It also explores how gender roles and relations are reinforced and how the notion of masculinity and patriarchy is reconstructed after feminization of migration through the expansion of the care economy. The analysis of emigration based on existing literature from Kerala to Gulf regions and its gender dimensions shows clearly the importance and implications of state policy and social norms on sex-based occupational specializations and the related conditions of work (Zachariah and Rajan, 2016; Rajan and Joseph, 2016). Panchali’s chapter explores the issues of women migrant nurses in Kolkata who are sourced from other states since there is a shortage of trained nurses in the state. International immigration of nurses to the West has created not only a scarcity of trained professionals internally but also huge turnover, with experience becoming a hallmark for emigration. Private medical establishments respond to the scarcity of nursing labour by casualizing the workforce and employing untrained nurses and attendants to do the major share of care work. To maintain registration, establishments casually employ young migrant women with GNM diplomas to work temporarily in the hospitals. Foregrounding the migrant woman’s experience of the city/ workplace, the chapter demonstrates how women are located in the hierarchies of a fragmented labour market. Narratives of women migrants from Odisha, Jharkhand, and Manipur show how hospitality towards them is conditional on their acceptance and assimilation into Bengali culture. Being a mobile group of workers, it is easier for them to resist such politics of assimilation. The chapter argues that both internal and international migrations have made sharply evident the complex relationships between labour mobility, gendered labour, and employment regimes, in which state policies and practices remain counterproductive. The chapter by Bindhulakshmi is situated in the context of transnational migration for care work and focuses on the varied experiences and negotiations of emigrant domestic workers in the  Gulf

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(Bindhulakshmi, 2010). The nature and the specificity of paid domestic work and the larger state policies that determine and govern their status and conditions of work are critical in understanding women’s experiences as transnational migrants. The chapter explores the everyday lives and negotiations of these women through the lens of il/legality, one of the most important defining features in the lives of emigrant domestic workers (Varghese and Rajan, 2011; Kodoth, 2015). The chapter finds that the emigrant domestic workers’ status, their interactions with public spaces, and the exclusionary dimensions of their experiences are the result of the nature of the work and the regulatory framework that governs their emigration and status at destination. Though public spaces are spots for state scrutiny, control and repression are often differentially experienced by women workers. These sites are also often sites of social identity creations and assertions, as they are absent in the normative dominant social spaces.

Remittances and ‘empowered’ left behind women Gender specificities and relations influence migration decisions and processes and there have been many studies that have documented and analysed specificities in different contexts. The migration of both men and women do have gendered impacts. Migration defines and redefines gender relations with respect to not only those who are associated with migration directly but also people who are associated with it indirectly. Male migration affects gender relations differently when compared to female migration. In the context of male migration, household dynamics and gender power relations could change, which affects women’s status in the household. The literature around women who are left behind by their husbands, though it is a late addition to the literature on migration, suggests both positive and negative impacts on women. Though many women seem to have gained greater economic autonomy or have some role in the day-to-day running of the households, the social and family controls on women are found to be strong, sometimes outweighing the positive changes in gender relations. Newer layers and forms of control may also arise and sometimes the negative impacts outweigh the economic aspects, making it difficult for women to negotiate. Further, the possibility of material short-term gains outweighing loss due to long-term emotional breakups is also an issue that the chapter highlights. One also needs to take into account the impacts and the

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contradictions that may occur. Gender relations may get redefined in the short run, but this situation may not be sustainable when male children take control of the household once they are ready. Though women may not be directly involved in the migration process, they become key stakeholders in migration-related gender dynamics. Male migration has been documented and analysed since migration issues have gained importance, but female migration has been a relatively new area of engagement. Not only are women absent from the literature around labour migration, but their role has not been accounted for as it deserves. The state of Kerala is well known for its male migration, especially to the Gulf, and the issue of left behind women has been taken up by many scholars. The chapter by Rajan and Zachariah, based on a large survey of households in Kerala, adds on to the earlier studies outlining some of the characteristics of left behind women in the state: largely young Muslim women who are better educated. The layered and somewhat contradictory evidence is captured in the chapter: on the one hand, women are found exercising control over income in terms of the everyday household expenses, but on the other hand, women’s property ownership remains an issue, with very few women having property in their own name. The chapter argues that the preference, expressed by left behind women, for sons-in-law who are non-emigrants points to the nature of the unsettled lives of these women who are overburdened by their responsibilities of household management as well as care demands. Atinder’s chapter on left behind wives in Punjab reiterates some of the existing understanding on women left behind. Though each case brings out varied experiences of women, being left behind is found to bring changes to women’s lives, especially with respect to making decisions related to their own lives and family matters. Thus, even in a highly patriarchal community, the study argues that migration of the male family member and the related exposure contributes to redefining gender relations, which empowers women. Thus there is a clear-cut shift of power from male to female in families of those who migrated. However, the extent or degree of empowerment depends on two factors: the structure of the family and who controls the remittances. In a nuclear family, with male migration the wife becomes the household head, and even in families where husbands are reluctant to give up decision-making authority, with the passage of time women were found occupying critical roles. Women become more independent, autonomous, and confident in both public and

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private spheres. However, in joint families, women’s situations were different, and not much change in gender relations was noted in families where wives had no access or control over remittances. The duration of male migration is also found to be significant, such that the long-term absence of men encourages women to take on all the major roles in managing the household. However, in some cases women are also found to be overburdened due to extra responsibilities. Some women thus remained at a higher level of strain and stress due to the steady increase in their responsibilities with additional tasks that they are not used to attending to. Even with additional responsibilities and associated stress, the chapter argues positive changes in gender power relations. The chapter by Neha analyses the impact of long distance migration of men on women by focusing on left behind women among the Dogra community of the Jammu region. The study argues that male migration does not bring about any change in the social position of females; rather, they get disadvantaged, as their responsibilities as a single mother as well as a female increases in their respective households in the absence of their husbands. Further, the study analyses the impact of father’s migration on the children. The paper shows that the absence of a father sometimes leads to confrontations between a mother and child. Also, husband’s absence leaves a noticeable mark on emotional as well as physical abilities of women. Irrespective of whether the husband stays with his wife or not, female freedom and autonomy are matters of concern as left behind women continue patriarchal legacies even when they are staying alone or with the extended families in their husband’s absence.

Impact on gender roles and care work Migration is an important factor that can redefine traditional gendered roles. However, the impact of these shifts may not always be unilateral. A number of studies have shown that migration for employment leads to a redefinition of economic roles in households, especially when women are in paid employment, in which they may sometimes earn more than what men earn. At the same time, women are forced to take up employment under poor conditions if men do not find jobs that are worthy of their social or economic status. Literature which has come up on migration to urban areas does provide evidence of women taking up the economic burden of the survival of families. Such experiences call for a critical understanding

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of the empowerment aspect of migration, even though women may have greater or changed decision-making roles. With male migration, especially when husbands migrate, female spouses’ role in decision-making is bound to change often with increased power. Here again, one needs to weigh the material or economic aspects against women’s larger experiences of everyday life. Smita’s and Rimple’s chapters are based on two different sets of women, and they show how practices that involve women and their bodies are projected as symbolically representing a community or a nation. Women are seen as bearers of social values and the compulsion to preserve them falls on women heavily whenever there are threats to the ability to hold the community together. Smita’s chapter, which attempts to explore the social construction and practice of gender relations as ‘Hindu’ and as ‘Canadian’ from the lived experience of first-generation and second-generation migrant Indian-Hindu women, takes up yet another gender dimension of migration. With migration, women are often confronted and caught between the ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ values of life. Women make negotiations to build bridges between two polarized worlds, one of native values and cultures and the other of the countries where they reside. Women are important pillars in the negotiations around the social and cultural meaning of family and marriage, which are both preservators of ‘the traditional’ and in which gender roles are critical, while at the same time ensuring minimum conflicts with the larger social setup that they are part of. Rimple’s chapter exposes the relationship between women and the nation, which is underlined by the danger of exclusion and the pressures to conform to national cultures and values. While transgression of borders is considered an ‘unnatural’ act, for a woman this would mean transgressing the normative limits of mobility and behaviour as prescribed by her family or community as well as the state. Therefore, mobility of women across borders is often a muchcontested issue because the women are perceived as transgressing not only the political nation which they seemingly embody and represent but also social norms and codes of conduct. Through their mobility, women challenge the notion of rootedness. They challenge the male centric notion of settlement, guided and established by the male breadwinner, by going back and forth across the border and by pursuing their aspirations and desires through this mobility. Through everyday negotiations associated with cross-border migration and their struggle for survival and mobility, women migrants

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also pose a challenge to the gendered space created for women by men. In this context, this chapter explores the experiences and negotiations made by the Bangladeshi women in two correctional homes in Kolkata who were charged under section 14 of the Foreigners Act, 1946, in the process of moving across national and sociocultural spaces. This discussion centres on the concept of ‘honour’ and how that interplays in the national and socio-cultural spaces that they traverse. Narratives of the Bangladeshi women revolve around the border – there are stories of acceptance, rejection, abjection, threat, fear, honour, and hope for the future of their children. The narratives bring out the implications of political borders on the everyday lived experience of women who transgress these borders. Their narratives also highlight the choices they need to make in varying situations of vulnerability. They negotiated with the codes of honour that were imposed on them by various institutions of the state and society at large. The narratives throw light on the role that the institution of honour played in their life and the way they played roles within and beyond fixed notions of what brings ‘honour’ and what brings ‘shame’. They feared a loss of identity and their social position if they defied codes of honour. The discussions around left behind members are often centred largely on women and children, though rightly so. In the context of increased longevity of the elderly, transnational migration is sure to intersect with the contents and arrangements for elderly care as well. There is a huge gap in the literature around migration and elderly care, and the chapter by Sreerupa is particularly important in this context. The chapter, through an analysis of the provisioning of eldercare in one of the pockets of transnational migration in Kerala, gives a vivid account of the reorganization of elderly care consequent on gendered migration. In the absence of the family and state institutions, the market – the world of paid carers – has to take over. The market is also shaped and influenced by the culturally defined gender norms and roles, be they specific care arrangements/ practices or the worker, the specific work, and conditions of work. The chapter emphasizes the intersectionality of gender, class, ethnicity, and caste, against the backdrop of gendered transnational migration, by showing how multiple aspects of differentiation alongside gender influence the organization of elderly care. The contestations, tensions, and negotiations around transactional migration, its gendering, and its relation with gendered care arrangements help give a nuanced understanding of migration and its gendering.

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State policies and programmes to protect vulnerable migrant women workers are of critical importance and set the base for many initiatives, including civil society responses. The absence of dedicated state policies that address the specific needs of poor emigrant women workers such as domestic workers has been a challenge. The paternalistic and restrictive approach of the state to female migration underlines gender-based migration control that defines contemporary policy. Age restrictions for female domestic workers has been an issue that is often highlighted in the discussions on state policies for emigrant women. The illegality/informality that defines the lives of emigrant domestic workers is clearly one of the outcomes of the restrictive approach of the state. The chapter by Rajan and Joseph, which draws from ethnographic research and field observations in India and Saudi Arabia, reiterates the critical role of gender-discriminatory policies such as age restrictions. These are identified as instrumental in producing precariat conditions across the migration cycle, as many women migrants frequently have to flout age- and gender-based controls. The chapter argues that placing controls on women’s mobility neither leads to effective protection for migrants nor adequately addresses the social and systemic factors that frame these movements. In the absence of the state, sub-agents and civil society actors are the critical links to overseas opportunities, often indispensable in actualizing the migration of prospective migrants. Given this context, the chapter suggests that bringing non-state actors into the formal migration apparatus may be an effective way to help frame informed and responsive policies, improved outcomes, and the advancement of rights.

Way forward The chapters in the volume highlight the importance of looking at gender relations in migration to better understand the social dimensions of migration. The differential experiences of women either as migrants or as left behind captured in the chapters show that there is no one direction in the understanding of the effects of migration on gender relations. In fact, there is a need to nuance and uncover the accepted or assumed outcome, and differentiate and decompose it to understand the possibility of multiple or opposing realities existing side by side. Whatever women’s status in migration and its processes, women are implicated in many ways. While some are commonly acknowledged, especially those relating to the economic

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aspects, a whole range of social issues go unnoticed which have larger gender implications. In this context, social and public policy interventions are important to ensure women migrants’ rights. As mentioned above, though there are now some attempts to understand the economic dimensions of migration, the resultant multiple and overlapping impacts are difficult to comprehend and hence this is still an underexplored area. Not only are there changes in the everyday life of the migrant, but there are also profound changes in family structure and gender relations. However, there are no concrete policies to support migrant women or to provide crucial services and support to migrants and their families. The uncertainty that surrounds employment and the related poor conditions of work are issues that are common to many women migrants. Added to this is the poor public provisioning of basic services, which makes migrant workers particularly vulnerable. Women migrants are extremely vulnerable in their destination areas, with no or little support in negotiating their economic as well as social vulnerability. When left behind, they are faced with another set of issues, which can range from taking on the responsibility of survival of the left behind family members to issues of economic and social dependence of these women on other family members, which negatively affects their power relations in the family. Thus, to affect gender relations and bring positive changes in the lives of women, countering the enormous social costs, there is a need for long-term social policy planning. Social welfare programmes need to be designed which should go beyond migrationrelated issues to cover other social dimensions that ensure women’s rights and gender equality. An area which requires immediate attention and intervention is gender-based violence in the process of migration or as a consequence of migration. Interventions at the local level are vital to deal with such gender-based violence, but political issues and interests mostly override them, making it difficult for women to survive or negotiate such violence. This is an area that needs further research and analysis in the context of both internal and international migration. Though there are many studies that provide insights into the gender negotiations of housework with migration, little is known on what happens to relations between women and housework mediations, when one woman migrates and the gendered division of housework remains intact. For women migrants who can afford

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to support the hiring of paid domestic workers to fill their gap in housework, the issues are different. Here housework, including care work, is shifted to a section of women drawn from socially and economically disadvantaged groups, including migrants. However, for poor women, hiring paid workers to fill in for their absence from housework is not an option. In general, in such situations, the burden of their housework falls on young girls, leading to increased dropout rates and poor performance of girls in education. Unless interventions and policies are designed to address this, the vicious circle of female migration and gender inequality will continue, and female empowerment may become a distant dream.

References Bindhulakshmi, Pattadath. 2010. Gender Mobility and State Response: Indian Domestic Workers in the UAE. Pp. 163–181 in S. Irudaya Rajan (ed.). India Migration Report 2010: Governance and Labour Migration. Routledge, New Delhi. CWDS. 2012. Gender and Migration: Negotiating Rights: A Women’s Movement Perspective. Unpublished Research Report. Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi. IOM. 2009. Gender and Labour Migration in Asia. International Organization for Migration, Geneva. Kodoth, P. 2015. Stepping into the Man’s Shoes: Emigrant Domestic Workers as Breadwinners and the Gender Norm in Kerala. Chapter 3, Pp. 26–44 in S. Irudaya Rajan (ed.). India Migration Report 2015: Gender and Migration. Routledge, New Delhi. Margaret, W.-R. and S.I. Rajan. 2013. Nurse Emigration from Kerala: ‘Brain Circulation’ or ‘Trap’. Chapter 13, Pp. 206–223 in S. Irudaya Rajan (ed.). Global Financial Crisis, Migration and Remittances: India Migration Report 2013. Routledge, New Delhi. Mazumdar, I. and N. Neetha. 2011. Gender Dimensions: Employment Trends in India, 1993–94 to 2009–10. Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 65, No.43, Pp. 118–126. Neetha, N. 2008. Regulating Domestic Work. Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 43, No.37, Pp. 26–28. Neetha, N. 2010. Estimating Unpaid Care Work: Methodological Issues in Time Use Surveys. Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 45, No.44, Pp. 73–80. Neetha, N. 2013a. Minimum Wages for Domestic Work: Mirroring Devalued Housework. Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 48, No.43, Pp. 77–84. Neetha, N. 2013b. Paid Domestic Work: Making Sense of the Jigsaw Puzzle. Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 48, No.43, Pp. 35–38.

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Oda, H., Y. Tsujita and S.I. Rajan. 2018. An Analysis of Factors Influencing the International Migration of Indian Nurses. Journal of International Migration and Integration, Volume 19, No.3, Pp. 607–624. Percot, M. and S.I. Rajan. 2007. Female Emigration from India: Case Study of Nurses. Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 42, No.4. Rajan, S.I. 2015. India Migration Report: Gender and Migration. Routledge, New Delhi. Rajan, S.I. and J. Joseph. 2016. Gulf Migration in Times of Regulation: Do Migration Controls and Labour Market Restrictions in Saudi Arabia Produces Irregularity? Chapter 12, Pp. 162–183 in S. Irudaya Rajan (ed.). India Migration Report 2016: Gulf Migration. Routledge, Abingdon, UK. Rajan, S.I., V.J. Varghese and M.S. Jayakumar. 2011. Dreaming Mobility and Buying Vulnerability: Overseas Recruitment Practices and Its Discontents in India. Routledge, Abingdon, UK. Varghese, V.J. and S.I. Rajan. 2011. Governmentality, Social Stigma and Quasi-Citizenship: Gender Negotiations of Migrant Women Domestic Workers from Kerala. Chapter 7, Pp. 224–250 in S. Irudaya Rajan and Marie Percot (eds.). Dynamics of Indian Migration: Historical and Current Perspectives. Routledge, New Delhi. Zachariah, K.C., E.T. Mathew and S.I. Rajan. 2001a. Impact of Migration on Kerala’s Economy and Society. International Migration, Volume 39, No.1, Pp. 63–88. Zachariah, K.C., E.T. Mathew and S.I. Rajan. 2001b. Social, Economic and Demographic Consequences of Migration in Kerala. International Migration, Volume 39, No.2, Pp. 43–72. Zachariah, K.C., E.T. Mathew and S.I. Rajan. 2003. Dynamics of Migration in Kerala: Determinants, Differentials and Consequences. Orient Longman Private Limited. Zachariah, K.C. and S.I. Rajan. 2012. A Decade of Kerala’s Gulf Connection. Orient Blackswan, New Delhi. Zachariah, K.C. and S.I. Rajan. 2014. Researching International Migration: Lessons from the Kerala Experience. Routledge, New Delhi. Zachariah, K.C. and S.I. Rajan. 2016. Kerala Migration Study 2014. Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 51, No.6, Pp. 66–71.

Chapter 2

Women’s migration and chronic poverty Case study of Chennai slum dwellers S. Mageswari and G. Geetha

Migration is a central livelihood strategy for many poor households, which in common with other livelihood strategies is ‘facilitated or constrained by relations within and between the institutions of household, community, state and market’ (Hulme, Moore and Shepherd, 2001). Migration is by no means a predictable or homogeneous form of action and thus it occurs in response to a wide range of factors which affect people differently and to which they do not necessarily respond in identical ways. Thus, people’s responses to even apparently similar circumstances may be quite different to each movement and each is, to some extent, unique. The reasons for their heterogeneity include differential levels of access to and control over resources, the specificities of the economic and socialrelational context, and the particularities of the forms of exclusion and vulnerabilities that make up their lives and experiences. These in part shape the range and type of choices and livelihood strategies available to them, the decisions they are able to take, and the actions they can follow. While much of the migration literature suggests that migration is ‘development-induced’ (De Haan, 2000) and reflects uneven development (Kothari, 2002), it is clear that there are different levels of motivation which shape the decision to migrate from both internal and external factors to the household. Even when many motivational factors are identified, a continuing preoccupation within much migration and development research has been the notion that because of uneven development and the increase in inequalities between regions, and within them, most of the movement is from deprived areas to those that are perceived to offer greater economic opportunities.

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Increasing numbers of poor migrants in search of employment, income-related economic well-being, and security contribute to the rising levels of urban poverty in cities. Chronic poverty is not limited to economic deprivation; it sustains over many years, often being transferred from one generation to the next. This poverty remains and continues to take a toll in the slums, which are perpetuated by a number of forces. The immigrant slum dwellers have largely moved from the countryside to the cities voluntarily, in order to exploit actual or perceived economic opportunities. Migrants living in poor urban slums suffer from the lack of basic public provisions such as sanitation, water, and health services. Moreover, it is not enough that migration brings migrants to a place where they can avail good services; the question is whether their changed social and economic conditions enable them to take advantage of such services (Kundu and Sarangi, 2007). In gender terms, women experience migration differently from men and their economic roles of change, and their relationships with members of their immediate and extended societies are different as well (Wright, 1995). Shifts in their work, physical, and social environments are the most important migration-related factors to have a profound impact on the health and survival of their families (Unnithan Kumar et al., 2008). Most poor women in slums are working on a regular basis and this movement has both negative and positive consequences for their livelihood strategies. According to Papastergiadis, ‘there is a need to shift our discourse on migration from merely an explanation of either the external cause or the attribution of motivation to an examination of the complex relationships and perceptual shifts that are being formed through the experience of movement’ (Papastergiadis, 2000). Hence, seeing migration as the primary economic survival strategy for those immediately involved does not allow for a detailed analysis of migration and the chronically poor. A study of migration and the chronically poor requires an understanding of the processes by which the poor become chronically poor as result of their own decision to migrate. Migration is thus best understood as both a cause and a consequence of chronic poverty for those who stay put and for those who move. Hence, this chapter highlights how chronic poverty is a causal factor in decisions to migrate or not and paradoxically can also be a situation that is created or reinforced through the process of movement, both for those who move and for those who remain.

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Thus, the objective of the study is to look into the positive and negative roles of migration for the survival prospects of women in slums. This chapter brings out the diverse ways in which mobility enables or disables the change of social, economic, and livelihood conditions for women migrants, based on work carried out in two urban slums in Chennai city. This chapter is an outcome of the primary survey conducted in Chennai slums using convenient sampling. The sample slums taken for study are Aathuma Nagar and Nochikuppam in Chennai city. Aathuma Nagar is a slum located near Adyar River, and it has more than 1,500 households. Nochikuppam is located near Marina Beach of Chennai city and has more than 700 households. In both the slums, dwellers are living in a poor environment with no proper shelter or basic facilities like sanitation and water, which makes their lives more miserable. To get a sense of everyday life and in-depth concerns among the migrated women in these selected slums, in-depth interviews were carried out directly with six migrant women. These women were selected because they bring together some of the key issues in the relation between migration, gender, and poverty in urban slums.

Exploring migration decisions Poor people’s lives were shaped by the particular set of vulnerabilities that they experience, and thus the repertoire of decisions, choices, and options that they can pursue are similarly diverse. Although migration remains central to many households’ livelihood strategies, it represents one response to conditions of poverty for some and nothing for many. Sometimes migration plays as both a cause and consequences of chronic poverty both for those who stay put and for those who move. We developed an analytical framework to examine the link between both causes and consequences of migration (see Figure 2.1). CHRONIC POVERTY • Lack of access to resources • Weak or absent capitals • Discrimination

STAY PUT

STAY POOR

MIGRATE

MOVE OUT OF

Figure 2.1 Linking causes and consequences of migration Source: Developed by the authors with reference to (Kothari, 2002).

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Individuals and groups may remain chronically poor by adopting migration as a livelihood strategy or, alternatively, may benefit from migration and move out of chronic poverty. The different levels of decision-making from macro to micro level include the particular stock of capital, assets, and resources available to individual and groups amongst the chronically poor, as well as the types of structural and everyday discrimination, injustice, and marginalization from and extent of demand for labour and various other government policies. These are some of the characteristics which make poor people decide whether to move or stay put. Many of the women migrants viewed their migration to urban slums in a positive light for the income, employment, and raise to their living standards. One of the respondents from the Nochikuppam shared: In my previous living place my husband was not having any proper job, so we shifted here. Now my husband got good job, I have put my children in school and we are living happily. However, not every woman was able to meet their wishes of improving their economic standard and those may now feel hopeless. At the same time, poverty and the urban slums have provided many women an unhealthy and poor place to live, which is directly responsible for illness and disease. The slums are plagued with open defecation, open sewers, lack of clear drinking water, infestation by flies, rats, and mosquitoes, and open dumped garbage. Many women of slums regretted their decision to move, as it worsened their situation in life. One of the respondents who migrated six years before from a village to the Aathuma Nagar reported her present condition of life: Before migrating here my family was struggling to meet the daily needs of food only but now along with this we are struggling hardly to get other facilities like water and sanitation. We thought we will make our life better by migrating to Chennai city but we have worsened our situation. As I have sold my small house in village, I cannot go there back. So our life is surrounded here with problems and unhealthy environment in this poor slum. Many women who thought the decision to migrate would give them a better life regretted it after their quality of life went down

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from what they had before. So the decision of migration not only moves them from poverty, sometimes it also worsens their situation. Another woman who migrated to improve her economic conditions said, I regret daily for my decision on moving. In this new place I have no enough opportunities of job and I lost the money what I had saved before and now in huge debt. Sometimes the decision to migrate will not give both development and underdevelopment; it gives the same life as in the old place. One of the respondents of Nochikuppam who migrated to the city from a village reported: I was born and married in the village of Kancheepuram district. I have lived in different situational environment of the village for so many years without any development in our living conditions. So we moved to city. But, here due to cost of living we were forced to live in this area, which is no different from our past living environment. Our decision has given nothing except physical and mental exhaustion of movement. For these women, migration did not favour better life, but instead gave poor social support and unsteady economic conditions. Most of the women migrants regretted their decision and wished to fix it. The migration has given them both positive and negative developments, and Table 2.1 reveals the different impacts and their resulting factors of chronic poverty or moving out of poverty. Thus, the decision of moving or staying put has both positive and negative impacts on the livelihood of women slum dwellers. It is difficult and not particularly useful to try to separate causes of the migrations from their consequences since migrations are not only the consequences of an unequal development, which could in itself be the result of natural causes, such as the different natural potential of different regions. Migration is also in itself a part of the unequal development, as it serves to reproduce the conditions that aggravate these. Thus, people may migrate out of poverty in order to improve their livelihoods and/or migrate into situations that are more vulnerable and thus become further impoverished through their movement.

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Table 2.1 Positive and negative development of migration in poverty Migration

Chronic poverty

Moving out of poverty

Impact of migration on women

• Increase in female-headed households; feminization of poverty • Dependent on irregular and insufficient remittances • Loss of social and other support networks • Limited political participation

Impact of migration on family

• The families are likely to be more dependent on each other and community networks, which may decline through the outmigration of others. • Increased dependence on government services and social welfare mechanisms. • Social security systems undermined. • Children socialized into a culture of migration • Loss of educational opportunities for children migrating with adult family members

• May be empowering as women gain control over certain types of daily decision-making (Chant and Radcliffe, 1992; Gulati, 1993) • Gender relations reconstituted and transformed within and outside the household (Chant and Radcliffe 1992; Gulati, 1993) • Receive improved social services

Impact of migration on children

• Investing in better education for the future • Increase in income, resulting in increase in nutritional levels

Source: Developed by the authors.

Poverty and migration linkages and challenges The increase in the scale of migration presents a paradox. For many, migration does not necessarily make migrants better off; indeed, some become further impoverished by moving from one place to another (Kothari, 2002). This change can be in part due to migration pressure, which is the result of an excess supply of people willing to migrate relative to the demand for people in a potential destination (Skeldon, 1997). While mobility of individuals from one place to another for work can be considered as a livelihood strategy out of poverty, there is no guarantee that the strategy will be successful. The hope that migration will find appropriate employment and enjoy a better standard of living does not always materialize,

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and subsequently, those who are poor and migrate can end up in the category of the chronically poor. Some migrants may benefit from long-established networks of information, contact, and being aware of opportunities and difficulties. Some move with little knowledge of what to expect and few social contacts while others leave with high expectations only to be disillusioned when faced with the realities of being a migrant. New migrants may be unable to find adequate employment or housing and may suffer from the loss of familiar support networks through their movement away from one environment into another. They become increasingly vulnerable to economical as well as political, cultural, and social factors, and migration may be the result of substituting one set of vulnerabilities and difficulties with another. Within the poor are groups of people who are at the extreme margins of exclusion (Hulme et al., 2001). They are unable, unless forced, to choose migration as a way of mediating their excessive marginality. Those who live in non-migrating conditions may become further marginalized and dislocated from their immediate environment, which is changing economically and socially as others migrate (Naved et al., 2001). The negative effects of out-migration on those who stay behind may be economically and socially acute. Those who are left behind in households from which others have moved may become further vulnerable through lack of regular and sufficient remittances and other forms of support from those upon whom they are dependent in various ways but who have moved away. For example, a male leaves his family and moves in search of employment, leaving the female of the home to take up the responsibility of the family. Under such circumstances, women are exposed to the risk of staying without support in times of economic crisis and security. Staying put can also be a positive decision and strategy that results in improved living standards. This is particularly the case when the local economic environment changes due to direct or indirect national investment and development policies. Thus, movers and stayers alike are deeply embedded in specific economic and socialrelational contexts (McDowell and De Haan, 1997).

Conclusion The focus of this chapter is on the role of migration in creating, sustaining, or moving out of chronic poverty among poor women in slums, and to understand the varied process of exclusion and

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the inequalities that they reflect and that are reproduced through them. These processes shape the extent and form of the linkages between chronic or long-term poverty and migration. Most importantly, then, migration needs to be understood as a diverse process embedded in social relations. After weighing the gains and losses, the study concludes that migration has helped migrant households avoid hunger, starvation, and death, though it has failed to improve the economic well-being of families. To alleviate poverty, the government’s attention should be directed towards combating population movement via rural development and improving the living conditions of those who have already moved.

References Chant, C. and Radcliffe, S.A. (1992). ‘Migration and Development: The Importance of Gender’, Gender and Migration in Developing Countries, London: Belhaven. De Haan, A. (2000). ‘Migrants, Livelihoods and Rights: The Relevance of Migration in Development Policies’. Social Development Working Pager No. 4, London. Gulati, L. (1993). In the Absence of Their Men: The Impact of Male Migration on Women, London: Sage Publications. Hulme, D., Moore, K. and Shepherd, A. (2001). ‘Chronic Poverty: Meanings and Analytical Frameworks’. CPRC Working Paper 2, IDPM: University of Manchester. Kothari, U. (2002). ‘Migration and Chronic Poverty’. Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester, Working Paper No. 16. Kundu, A. and Sarangi, N. (2007). ‘Migration, employment status and poverty: An analysis across urban centers’. Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 42, No.4, Pp. 299–306. McDowell, C. and De Haan, A. (1997). ‘Migration and Sustainable Livelihoods: A Critical Review of the Literature’. IDS Working Paper No. 65. Naved, R., Newby, M. and Amin, S. (2001). ‘The effects of migration and work on marriage of female garment workers in Bangladesh’. International Journal of Population Geography, Volume 7, No.2, Pp. 91–104. Papastergiadis, N. (2000). The Turbulence of Migration, Cambridge: Polity Press. Skeldon, R. (1997). Migration and Development: A Global Perspective, Harlow Longman. Unnithan Kumar, M., et al. (2008). Women’s Migration, Urban Poverty and Child Health in Rajasthan, Brighton: Development Research Centre, University of Sussex. Wright, C. (1995). ‘Gender awareness in migration theory: Synthesizing actor and structure in Southern Africa’. Development and Change, Volume 26.

Chapter 3

A critical review of Keralite migrant women’s work in the Gulf region Manasi Mahanty

There has been a major shift in the migration trends of India towards Gulf regions since the 1970s. The first oil crisis of 1973 persuaded the major oil-producing countries of the Persian Gulf to deal with development plans constrained by labour shortages. The emerging labour market during this period has drawn attention to both skilled and unskilled workers from the South Asian countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh and also South East Asian countries. In India, the southern state of Kerala has been recognized as a major labour-sending state due to its high number of emigrants to the Gulf countries. The major destinations are UAE and Saudi Arabia, which together account for more than two-thirds of all emigrants to the Gulf (Zachariah and Rajan, 2004). The oil boom led to the beginning of the large-scale migration of domestic workers to Gulf regions. The Gulf people increasingly started hiring women for housekeeping and housecleaning, as well as for care for their children and the elderly. The demand for domestic workers was met by the recruitment of women from the Indian subcontinent, South East Asia, and more recently East Africa (Ahmad, 2010). These women migrated to the Gulf because of the worsening economic conditions of their origin countries. From India, Kerala state witnessed an increasing number of female migrants accompanied by the movement of domestic workers and professional nurses for employment in the Gulf. At the same time, India has taken some enforcement measures for controlling and regulating labour migration, particularly domestic migrant workers due to the reports of ill treatment and abuses across the Gulf countries. As a result, migrant domestic workers find themselves in a particularly vexing position with respect to the legal systems (Pattadath and Moors, 2012). In this context, the

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present article explores the patterns and characteristics of female emigration of Kerala and its related issues.

Destinations of Keralite migrants and women’s share in the Gulf Kerala has a long history of international migration, especially emigration to the Gulf regions. There are over four million migrants from India working in the Gulf, almost half of which belong to Kerala (Percot and Rajan, 2007). In the year of 1999, around 95 per cent of Keralite emigrants moved to the Gulf countries, and the other 5 per cent migrated mainly to the United States and Africa.1 By 2004, the proportion of Kerala emigrants in the Gulf had declined to nearly 90 per cent, and that in nations beyond the Gulf region has increased up to 10 per cent.2 In 2007, the share of Kerala emigrants who went to the Gulf region decreased further to 89 per cent (Zachariah and Rajan, 2007). Significant diversifications are observed in the emigrants’ distribution within the Gulf region(Zachariah, Mathew and Rajan, 2003).3 Saudi Arabia had been the foremost destination country for migrants. The highest proportion of emigrant flows of both men and women were to Saudi Arabia. However, the share of female emigrants was smaller: only 21.5 per cent for females compared to 39.1 per cent for males. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) occupies the second position to Saudi Arabia as a major destination for migrants: the share of female emigrants was 29.7, whereas the share of male emigrants was 31.2. Dubai had a slightly higher proportion of female emigrants with 13.8 per cent compared to 12.7 per cent males. The other destinations in UAE are Sharjah (8.2 per cent women and 8.7 per cent men) and Abu Dhabi (7.7  per cent females compared to 9.8 per cent males). Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain together accounted for the largest proportion of female migrants, with 31.8 per cent compared to 24.8 males. Among them, Kuwait is one of the Gulf destinations that overwhelmingly represented females, at 9.2 per cent compared to 4.6 per cent male emigrants. The share of female migrants in most of the Gulf countries is smaller compared to males, but their proportion is substantial and important to an understanding of the mobility of female emigrants. These countries continue to attract an increasing share of female migrants from Kerala. It is significant to discuss migration from a

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gender perspective in order to develop a deeper understanding of women migrants, who previously often have been examined in the same context as male migrants. Such a discussion explores the issue of female migration by analysing migration from socio-cultural and economic perspectives. International migration from Kerala has been a predominantly male phenomenon. However, there is also a stream of women emigrants and many of them are health workers or domestic servants in private homes (Vandsemb, 2014). Nearly 10 per cent of the international migrants from Kerala are females seeking work abroad.4 According to the South Asian Migration Survey of 2004, there were 15.29 lakh male emigrants compared to 3.09 lakh female emigrants, and females constituted 16.8 per cent of the total (Percot and Rajan, 2007). The number of male emigrants has increased up to 2.94 lakhs and the number of female emigrants up to 1.82 lakhs from 1999 to 2004. The evidence shows that the growth was 124 per cent among females compared to just 24 per cent among males.5 Thus, this trend shows that Keralite female emigration has been accelerating in recent years. Several studies on migration to the Gulf regions have mainly highlighted the prerogative of male migration (Prakash, 1978, 1998, 2000; Zachariah et al. 2002, 2004). For male migrants, movement to the Gulf regions not only signifies an escape from unemployment but is also mobility towards full adulthood, defined as a stage of transition through combinations of marriage, fatherhood, and showing one’s ability to be a provider (Osella and Osella, 2000).6 The studies based on female migration are mostly limited to those in the position of ‘Gulf wives’, the women whose husbands migrated to the Gulf regions (Gulati, 1993; Zachariah and Rajan, 2001; Zachariah et al., 2003). Many studies have been made on the impact of migration on the status and position of Gulf wives with regard to their husbands’ migration. Such studies provide important observation about the processes shaping women’s lives and manifest both the constraints and the opportunities for Keralite women in the context of male migration. The consequences of migration on these women are indicative of the levels of women’s empowerment and autonomy. These studies investigate the problems faced by women and children left behind in the absence of their husbands. Moreover, unlike in Sri Lanka and the Philippines, studies are rare that address the impact of female migration on the family and children left behind after the

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mobility of Malayali women employed as domestic workers and nurses to Gulf regions. Researchers fail to address how traditional gender roles and relations are transformed and how masculinity and patriarchy are challenged after female migration from Kerala to the Gulf. Only rarely do surveys raise questions about the problems faced by children and husbands due to the emigration of women workers. Indeed, studies do not precisely investigate the issue relating to responsibility of the care of family left behind taken up by either female members of an extended family or male members of the household when only wives migrate abroad for employment in the context of Kerala emigration.

Marital status of female migrants The proportion of unmarried male emigrants was particularly high with 60 per cent, whereas among females, nearly three-fourths were married and only 25 per cent were unmarried (Percot and Rajan, 2007). There was a considerable increase in the number of unmarried emigrants from1999 to 2000, by 51 per cent among males and 254 per cent among females.7 This large increase in the number of Malayali unmarried women migrating to foreign countries in search of employment is an interesting phenomenon. However, the literature fails to address the reasons behind the growth of mobility of unmarried women. The women being recruited are selected mainly among good-looking widows and unmarried women hailing from financially and educationally backward families (Radhakrishnan, 2004). It is important to understand that the Gulf employers have given preference to unmarried women migrants as a cheap labour force. This has led to more exploitation and denial of basic labour rights of workers. There is state restriction on the mobility of unskilled women migrants. Special security measures within a framework of protectionism determine marriage as the principal means of protecting women and their movement. However, the present growth rate of unmarried women in the migration process brings into question the restrictive enforcement taken by the state for women migrants’ interests. In turn, it can be argued that it encourages the illegal/ informal channel for the mobility of unmarried women migrants to foreign countries like those in the Gulf. Finally, the decision of unmarried women to migrate abroad for employment also shows their compulsive need for work.

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Educational attainment of female migrants Female migrants are better educated than their male counterparts. Around 45 per cent of the female emigrants are degree holders whereas only 15 per cent among the male emigrants are (Percot and Rajan, 2007). Around 80 per cent of female emigrants have completed a secondary-level education or higher, while the corresponding percentage among male emigrants is only 45 per cent.8 This study shows a very significant trend of educational attainment of female emigrants from Kerala. The women migrant workers are highly educated, not only when aligned with the general population of the state but also concerning emigrants from the other sex category.9 Despite these higher qualifications, female migrants are being crowded into informal activities such as care services, paid domestic work, and nursing (Ghosh, 2016). The huge gender gap favouring women in terms of educational qualifications has not translated into higher levels of employment (Kodoth and Varghese, 2011).

Nursing for emigration In India, the poor status of nursing continues to be a major push factor in the international migration of nurses. The fact is that the opening of labour markets outside India driven by the process of globalization has brought opportunities for nurses to work abroad and earn considerably more than possible in India (Nair, 2012). The working conditions are also better in the technologically superior hospitals in rich countries. International migration, therefore, is seen as the solution both to unemployment in Kerala and to the lack of satisfactory working conditions in the hospitals of India. An anthropological study of the emigration of nurses from Kerala (Percot and Rajan, 2007) shows that the profession of most Keralite women encountered in Gulf countries is nursing. Indeed, the study estimates some interesting figures through informal sources: the number of Indian nurses in the Gulf is between 40,000 to 50,000, and 90 per cent of them belong to Kerala. It also assumes that nearly one-third of the female emigrants from Kerala to the Gulf are nurses. The study also points out that a nursing diploma in Kerala is now considered to be an actual passport for emigration, where ‘nursing for emigration’ is common.10 Large numbers of nurses who were born in and received their early education in Kerala travelled to other Indian states to obtain their professional

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degrees, after which they emigrated all over the world (DiciccoBloom, 2004). Nurses from Kerala form one of the largest groups of migrant women workers in the international service sector along with Filipinos and Sri Lankans (Nair, 2012). Over the last decade, the new generation of nurses has been seen in the context of the enormous Keralite emigration from Kerala to the Gulf countries. While highlighting the specificity of the migration of Keralite nurses, Percot and Rajan (2007) argue that 90 per cent of the nurses interviewed in the Gulf are Keralites and they belong to the Christian religion. The basic reason behind the predominance of Christian Keralites in the Gulf is that the job of nursing is being defined against the backdrop of colonization. There is a preconceived notion that Christian nuns are basically engaged in charitable works. As far as the emigration of nurses of other communities is concerned, in Hinduism, nursing still carries a stigma and is seen as a very impure job that involves touching dirty, sick, and wounded bodies. In the Islamic community, women’s education or work outside the family context is not well considered. Subsequently, Christians in Kerala dominate nursing jobs, as they have a different approach to study and to women working. From a feminist perspective, it can be pointed out that religion inherently reflects and perpetuates patriarchal and misogynistic notions, obstructing women’s choice to work and legitimizing female subordination. Most of the nurses (more than 90 per cent of the informants of a study) belonged to families from the petty rural middle class (Percot, 2006; Percot and Rajan, 2007). Nursing is considered as a family survival strategy for these young Keralite girls and women who move to Gulf countries for jobs. Therefore, it would be an exaggeration to regard them as economically self-sufficient (Percot and Rajan, 2007). It is largely unlikely that it is the decision of young girls alone to enter the workforce, but families do not find it extremely difficult to accept their decision as long as it is in the interest of the whole family to have a member emigrate. The point here is that both domestic workers and nurses precisely legitimize their movement in terms of higher social aspirations, embodied in earning for their families and in investing in cultural capital by paying dowries for their emigrant daughters at the time of socially approved patriarchal marriages (Kodoth and Varghese, 2011). Emigration to the Gulf countries does not necessarily mean a ‘dream life’ for the Keralite nurses (Percot and Rajan, 2007). They strongly feel racism from the local people. They have no contact with the

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native population of the Gulf. The social life of Keralite nurses is mainly limited to their emigrant fellow citizens. However, they confront the indifference that native people particularly show for the South Asian migrants.11 Nursing is not free from social stigma, as it is generally linked to the low-status menial nature of work performed by women. It mainly signifies proximity to men or physical contact with them, which establishes a bad reputation for nurses. Cultural prejudice is used to portray young emigrant nurses ‘who live alone abroad’ as ‘easy women’ (Percot, 2006). They used to be treated as no more than servants. Perceiving this, nurses shun many of the tasks of cleaning associated with care work (Nair and Healey, 2006). Better prospects have reduced the stigma of emigration, and nursing remains an option for economic mobility.

Issue of female return migrants The number of female return emigrants is estimated to be nearly 81,000, which is around 11 per cent of the total number of return emigrants (Zachariah et al., 2003). The number of return female out-migrants was about 280,000 and constituted 29.2 per cent of the total return out-migrants.12 Hence, the volume of return out-migration was much larger compared to the streams of other migration. It was 2.2 times the number of female emigrants, 1.7 times the number of out-migrants, and 3.5 times the number of return emigrants.13 The difference between the numbers of female out-migrants and the numbers of female return out-migrants is informative. The flow of female return emigration is much sharper compared to return male emigration and return male and female out-migration. The numbers of female return emigrants increased by 9.6  times from 1983–87 to 1993–97 while female return out-migrants increased only 2.5 times(Zachariah et al., 2003).14 Whereas the growth of female return emigrants was much higher than that of male return emigrants, the reverse is the case with the return out-migrants: the number of males increased 2.7 times while the number of females increased only 2.5 times.15 Studies on Keralite return emigration have attempted to investigate to assist the formulation of policies for reabsorbing and rehabilitating return emigrants and utilizing their investment potential and skills for the development of Kerala. In the case of the ‘return

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migrant’, a category characterized as needing ‘rehabilitation’ as they represent a potential drain on the economy, the broader strain of the narrative is of a trouble-free migration experience, the returnees having only themselves to blame for having squandered the gains from the process through intemperate lifestyles (Nair, 1999, cited by Kodoth and Varghese, 2011: 9). Special studies on return emigrants include the problems faced by them in the Gulf and in Kerala after returning, such as investment opportunities and work experience of return emigrants and policy evaluation taken by the state in these matters. However, the near total absence of females in studies of return emigrants signifies apathy with the very nature of female emigration (Nair, 1998, 1999; Zachariah et al., 2006; Kodoth and Varghese, 2011). The total absence of women in the sample of return migrants presents a significant reason: ‘Women from Kerala in employment in the Arab countries – mostly as nurses and other paramedical personnel  – are quite a few in number and have yet to be repatriated’ (Nair, 1991). However, the same author stated in a later study with a sample from Trivandrum alone that one out of six return emigrants were women and that most of them were engaged in menial tasks (Nair, 1999, cited by Kodoth and Varghese, 2011). Due to the heavily male-dominated migration process, the choice of high-intensity migration areas fails to address the migration of female domestic workers who hail largely from the povertystricken areas of the state (Pattadath, 2008; Saradamoni, 1994; Kodoth and Varghese, 2011). In most Gulf countries, migrant workers are not provided family visas unless they earn a certain level of income fixed by respective governments (Vandsemb, 2014). Women who migrate for domestic work do not earn a huge amount of money to bring along with their families; they have to leave their children and husbands in Kerala (ibid). Thus, these women have to face the dilemma of feeling guilty for leaving their children behind, although in doing so they are driven by a strong desire to contribute a better future for their children. This guilty feeling may force women to come back home earlier than planned. Some success stories of return emigrant women show improvement of the livelihood of their families, especially for widows. However, some stories of returned women migrants reveal that the livelihoods of women may have become worse after migration because of indebtedness, lack of savings, and abandonment (Reshmi and Unisa, 2013, cited by Vandsemb, 2014).

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Complex network in female emigration state policy and gender politics The process of female emigration from the state of Kerala to the Gulf regions is embedded in a complex network. A restriction made by the Government of India on female migration in ‘unskilled’ categories, particularly domestic work, is a warranted measure to protect women from abuses and exploitation. However, this type of state imposition in the name of special protective measures for this category of migrant women workers curtails their access to mobility and the advantage of employment opportunities. Most of the women domestic workers prefer migration as a livelihood option due to their imperative need for work with relatively higher returns than at home (Kodoth and Varghese, 2011). Such prohibition on the movement of women domestic workers to the Gulf countries with reference to extremely precarious working conditions is framed with an intention to control their freedom of movement. Reportedly, over 60 per cent of women domestic workers in the Middle East have faced sexual abuse.16 Stories of harassment and ill treatment of female domestic workers have certainly contributed to such an attitude, with some favouring a complete ban (Pattadath and Moors, 2012). However, this does not mean that a total ban on the movement of women domestic workers in the name of sexual exploitation would give females sexual security and maintain their chastity and morality. It is the politics of gender framed by the state around the mobility of women workers which has prevented them from crossing the border for a job. When migrant domestic workers are presented as powerless victims of their Gulf employers or of unscrupulous men who try to traffic them into the sex trade, these women are considered as a category ‘at risk’ (Pattadath, 2014). Subsequently, the rumours and doubts about the sexual morality of these migrant domestic workers circulate more widely in their own social circles and affect their family relationships (Pattadath and Moors, 2012). It is important to understand how women’s mobility operates at the core of patriarchy in the state (Kodoth and Varghese, 2011).

Growth of informal/illegal processes In their work, Kodoth and Varghese described that restriction measures for protecting migrant women’s interests have directed potential migrants to the use of informal/illegal processes in collusion

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with state agencies.17 If there is no ban on the migration of domestic workers within India, why should the state impose restrictions on those workers who seek work abroad? It is clear that the ban on these grounds provides more economic benefits to the intermediaries including recruitment agents and government officials at source, transit, and destination countries using informal/illegal channels by prospective international migrants.18 Hence, they have an interest in rendering these more effective than formal processes established by the state. These restrictions also indicate the state’s failure to address issues concerning vulnerability and exploitation of women migrants working at destination countries like those in the Gulf and the problem of illegal/irregular emigration in general. Eventually, it enables the recruitment agencies to provide a conducive atmosphere for the growth of informal or illegal networks. In the process of illegal migration, intermediaries may be the most important cause of the greater vulnerability and exposure of migrant women. These women, in general, are likely to be less educated and have poor access to information. They tend to use recruiting agencies and labour contractors through informal or illegal ways in enabling migration for employment. As noted by Ghosh (2009), the intermediaries often charge exorbitant fees, and the patterns of dependence may create a series of exploitative practices. As a result, women migrant workers are more apt to be burdened with large down payments, resulting in the accumulation of substantial personal debt and periodic payments out of wages, as well as greater dependence upon the intermediaries even when they arrive at destinations for work. For example, the agents in the Gulf countries charge money for taking care of passport, airfare, and other expenses of Malayali women, while the sub-agents charge them Rs.10,000 to Rs. 50,000 (Radhakrishnan, 2004). Many women pushed into the flesh trade do not reveal anything to their relatives, taking into account the poor financial situation of their homes at source areas and threats from the recruitment agents and their sub-agents. The form of a shadow institutional space and a powerful parallel economy with an extensive network across India and the Middle East for producing documents goes by the appellation the ‘Kasaragod embassy’, after a region notorious for the generation of fake documents (Kodoth and Varghese, 2011). The unauthorized agents are proactive in organizing and mobilizing their clients for emigration clearance, where the applicant may not have the required qualifications. They associate with state officials at

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airports in pushing women workers through without the requisite clearance.19 The unauthorized agents also help women domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who lost their passports for replacements and thereby to deter them from approaching formal channels such as Indian Embassy (Pattadath, 2008). Kasaragod embassy agents obtain passports from authentic passport holders either by stealing or buying from poorer migrants who are desperate for money, paying anywhere from Rs. 65,000 to Rs. 70,000.20 The greater faith of Keralite emigrant women domestic workers in the informal networks rather than in the government mechanism entails controlled informality for poor emigrant workers. However, the recruiting agents, with some reputation at stake, tend to avoid recruiting unskilled women for overseas jobs; they consider it as an ‘indecent’ segment that is touched only ‘at the cost of our reputation’(Rajan, Varghese and Jayakumar, 2009, cited by Kodoth and Varghese, 2012).21 The controlled informality set up for workers to cross borders overcomes prohibition measures but accumulates their financial costs and threatens their security. The dominance of informal activities in care sectors makes migrant women less able to take advantage of the legal protectionist measures for workers that would otherwise be available at the destination. Such types of work, especially domestic work, are often excluded from legally enforceable work contracts which protect the workers, and this forces them to work in exploitative conditions. For instance, the experiences of Keralite women migrants in Gulf destinations have revealed the truth of their dismal conditions and the absence of legal rights and protection. A large number of migrant women of Kerala who have been recruited illegally to Gulf countries as housemaids and forced into immoral activities are reportedly trapped in these countries without passports or other travel documents to enable them to return home (Radhakrishnan, 2004). There are hundreds of women migrants trapped in the airports of the United Arab Emirates in places such as Dubai, Kuwait, Bahrain, Muscat, Oman, and Qatar. Some women are openly sent to be housemaids with the required ‘clearance’ when fake emigration seals are affixed on their passports. This underscores the obvious fact that irregular emigration status exacerbates the risk of exploitation of women migrant workers, who are likely to accept very adverse conditions because of fear of being exposed and deported. Migration policies in the sending and receiving countries are often formulated to place women at the margins and reproduce existing

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gender stereotypes: women as victims of all sorts of violations and as incapable of deciding on cross-border migration (Thimothy and Sasikumar, 2012). The state’s migration policies constructing women as ‘victims’ delegitimizes women’s movement in search of work (Kapur, 2005). The state’s intervention to protect women’s interests ostensibly curtails their rights to make their own decisions to earn a decent living. In addition, having no option, they are forced to depend on informal and often illegal agents, thereby increasing the probability of ending up in trafficked networks. Their illegal immigration status in receiving countries means they are not recognized due to their unauthorized entrance, and their activities in domestic work and care are not defined as regular jobs. Ghosh (2009) and Pattadath (2014) describe such prohibition as a ‘symbolic regulation’ that presents an impression that the state is concerned about the interests of migrant workers. However, such enforcement measures for unskilled workers are vulnerable in a number of ways and clearly deny the basic labour rights available to these migrant workers. In short, there is a thin dividing line between migration for domestic work, illegal recruitment, and trafficking, an issue that has served to mobilize opinion in favour of restrictions (Kodoth and Varghese, 2011:5). The Emigration Act, which deals with the emigration of Indian workers for overseas employment on a contractual basis, seeks to safeguard emigrants’ interests and ensure their welfare. The Protector General of Emigrants (PGE) is the statutory authority responsible for administering the act through eight field offices across the country under a Protector of Emigrants (POE), which regulates overseas recruitment practices and grants emigration clearance. The Act divides the status of citizenship into Emigration Check Required (ECR) and Emigration Check Not Required (ECNR). The ECR rule applies to men and women alike, but the age restriction for domestic work aspirants applies only to women. Nor are there any restrictions that apply only to men. Hence, it reflects gender discrimination based on the right to work. The act mandates female migrants who have not completed matriculation and are below 30 years of age to get emigration clearance from the POE prior to migration for overseas employment. It invokes marital and educational protectionism by prohibiting women below 30 years and who have not completed matriculation from working as housemaids/domestic workers in foreign countries. The point assumes that under 30 years women are more prone to material and especially sexual exploitation than women over 30 years or men

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of the same age group (Kodoth and Varghese, 2011).22 There is a misconception that age and marital status are considerable factors in protecting women against violence. Feminist writers and scholars have criticized these types of misconceptions over the years. The above-mentioned factors do not guarantee safety and security to women workers. There is a fallacy that elderly or aged women are free from exploitation, sexual violence, or sexual desire. Women over 30 years of age and even married and educated women have been subjected to physical, sexual, psychological, and marital violence. Even a husband may force his wife to give sexual favours to employers for job security. Even employers may put pressure upon women migrants or blackmail them to fulfil their sexual pleasure for the sake of their husbands’ and children’s lives. Women migrant workers have been continuously victimized due to gender stereotypes and masculine ideas underpinning patriarchal social norms and the nature of informal or unregulated work conditions. In the context of India, women, in many cases, are not married at 30 years or above because of a financial crisis in the home, poverty, dowry, or some other reason. Marriage is someone’s personal choice. It does not make sense that women should be married and over 30 years of age to get an emigration clearance certificate for seeking a job abroad as a domestic worker. The Constitution of India in its Fundamental Rights and the Directive of State Policy prohibits child labour below the age of 14 years in any factory or mine or castle or engagement in any other hazardous employment. The major national legislative measures also prohibit the employment of children below the age of 14 years in hazardous occupations or below 18 years of age in a mine. It intends that young unmarried women 18 years and older may migrate abroad to seek livelihood security and decent employment. In this context, the article argues that though the act was initiated with the objective to protect the rights of workers, informal evidence indicates that the provision not only restricts the right of women to work but also promotes unregulated, illegal, and irregular migration, where female workers end up in more vulnerable and risky conditions.

Conclusion The literature on feminization has highlighted the preference for young girls and women in certain sectors of employment like nursing and paid domestic work for their perceived suitability due to their

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‘nimble figures’. In short, the recent trend of feminization of labour migration is increasingly in the supply of cheap and flexible labour in the global care chain economy. There are many international laws and conventions like the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families that provide some protection to migrant women. Despite the existence of well-established international standards operating in this area, the challenge lies in the implementation of protection at the national level, particularly in regard to migrant women in irregular situations. In many parts of the developing world, in particular, the existing labour law and social protection regimes have traditionally been unable to provide effective responses to the present situation. In fact, it may be argued that there is a need for an integrated, holistic, gender-sensitive approach to the various challenges faced by migrant workers (specifically women migrants).

Notes 1 Zachariah, Mathew and Rajan, 2002. 2 Ibid. 3 The figures of sex-wise distribution of emigrants by Gulf destination is collected from table no. 9.5. K.C. Zachariah. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 The author examines migration, masculinity, and male trajectories through the life cycle in Kerala state with a long history of high migration, most lately to the Persian Gulf states. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., 317. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., 5. 17 Ibid., 4. 18 Cross-border (international) migration is only one of the important forms of economic migration. It provides more profits to the intermediaries and recruiting agents compared to internal migration. In the process, sending source countries, receiving destination countries, and transit nations are involved in making money through informal/illegal ways. 19 A recent incidence of illegal migration from Kerala to Israel reported the mode of avoidance of an emigration check. The Israeli police

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arrested one group and imprisoned them as illegal immigrants. Several members of the group were still hiding their identity as illegal emigrants in Israel, seeking the help of the Indian agent’s lawyer in Haifa to prolong their stay in the country. The group paid the agent through the bank account of a woman in Puthenthope. The agent won their trust by fraudulently claiming to represent a religious charity. Deportee said, ‘A woman emigration officer at the Chennai airport had initially refused to clear them for travel. However, the agent who was with [the] group had then spoken to two other officers who ushered the woman away and gave them emigration clearance’. The Kerala police ordered an investigation into the suspected visa racket in which at least 24 persons from coastal Thiruvananthapuram, including two women, ended up in Israeli jails. In G. Anand “Visa racket: Kerala police order investigation.” The Hindu, October 16, 2010. www.thehindu.com/news/cities/ Thiruvananthapuram/visa-racket-kerala-police-order-investigation/ article832736.ece. 20 Because of the use of hi-tech QDX or ultraviolet lamps that can detect tampering, there has been an increasing seizure of counterfeit passports. According to official sources, 42 cases were detected between May and June 2010 alone and around 100 people get caught every year at Kerala’s international airports. In M.G. Radhakrishnan “Kerala: The Republic of Kasaragod.” India Today, June 11, 2010. http:// indiatoday.intoday.in/story/kerala-republic-of-kasargod/1/101181. html. 21 In a recent survey, the recruiting agents in India admitted 4.7 per cent of housemaids recruited for overseas employment. 22 Ibid., 22.

References Ahmad, Attiya 2010. “Migrant Workers in Kuwait: The Role of State Institutions.” In Migration and the Gulf, 27–29, Viewpoints of Special Edition, February 27–29. Washington, DC: The Middle East Institute. www. voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Migration_and_the_Gulf.pdf Anand, Girish 2010. “Visa Racket: Kerala Police Order Investigation.” The Hindu, October 16. www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Thiruvanantha puram/visa-racket-kerala-police-order-investigation/article832736.ece Dicicco-Bloom, Barbara 2004. “The Racial and Gendered Experiences of Immigrant Nurses from Kerala, India.” Journal of Transcultural Nursing, Vol. 15, no. 1: 26. Ghosh, Jayati 2009. “Migration and Gender Empowerment: Recent Trends and Emerging Issues.” Human Development Reports Research Paper 2009/4. United Nations Development Programme. www.networkideas. org/featart/mar2009/Migration.pdf Ghosh, Jayati 2016. “Migration and Gender Empowerment.” In India Migration Reader, 52. Edited by S. Irudaya Rajan. London and New York: Routledge.

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Gulati, Leela 1993. In the Absence of Their Men: The Impact of Male Migration on Women. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Kapur, Ratna 2005. “Travel Plans: Border Crossings and the Rights of Transnational Migrants.” Harvard Human Rights Journal, Vol. 18: 107–138. Kodoth, Praveena and V.J. Varghese 2011. “Emigration of Women Domestic Workers from Kerala: Gender, State Policy and the Politics of Movement.” Working Paper 445. Trivandrum: Centre for Development Studies. http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/123456789/3174/ wp445.pdf?sequence=1 Kodoth, Praveena and V.J. Varghese 2012. “Emigration of Women Domestic Workers from Kerala: Gender, State Policy and the Politics of Movement.” In Transnational Flows and Permissive Polities: Ethnographies of Human Mobilities in Asia, 169–188. Edited by B. Kalir and M. Sur. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Nair, P.R. Gopinathan 1991. “Asian Migration to the Arab World: Kerala (India).” In Migration to the Arab World: Experience of Returning Migrants, 19–55. Edited by Godfrey Gunatilleke. United Nations, University Press. Nair, P.R. Gopinathan 1998. “Dynamics of Emigration from Kerala: Factors, Trends, Patterns.” In Emigration Dynamics in Developing Countries, Volume II: South Asia, 257–291. Edited by Reginald Appleyard. Aldershot: Ashgate. Nair, P.R. Gopinathan 1999. “Return of Overseas Contract Workers and the Rehabilitation and Development in Kerala (India): A Critical Account of Policies, Performance and Prospects.” International Migration, Vol. 37, no. 1: 209–242. Nair, Sreelekha 2012. Moving with the Times: Gender, Status and Migration of Nurses in India. New Delhi: Routledge. Nair, Sreelekha and Madelaine Healey 2006. “A Profession on the Margins: Status Issues in Indian Nursing.” Occasional Paper. New Delhi: Centre for Women’s Development Studies. Osella, Fillipo and Carolline Osella 2000. “Migration, Money and Masculinity in Kerala.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 6, no. 1: 117–133. Pattadath, Bindhulakshmi 2008. “Making Sense of Illegality and Strategies of Survival under Regulative Regimes: The Case of Women Domestic Workers from Kerala in the UAE.” Paper presented at the Workshop on Illegal But Licit: Transnational Flows and Permissive Polities in Asia, at the Centre for Development. Pattadath, Bindhulakshmi 2014. “Negotiating the Intimate Space Home and Sense of Belonging among Migrant Women Domestic Workers.” In The e Social Sciences Jobs and Livelihoods Mapping the Landscape, 66–80. 13th June. Mumbai: IKF (IRIS Knowledge Foundation). www.

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esocialsciences.org/eSS_essay/Employment/Negotiating%20the%20Inti mate%20Space_Bindhulakshmi%20Pattadath.pdf Pattadath, Bindhulakshmi and Annelies Moors 2012. “Moving between Kerala and Dubai: Women Domestic Workers and State Actors and the Misrecognition of Problems.” In Transnational Flows and Permissive Polities: Ethnographies of Human Mobilities in Asia, 156. Edited by B. Kalir and M. Sur. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Percot, Marie 2006. “Indian Nurses in the Gulf: From Job Opportunity to Life Strategy.” In Migrant Women and Work, 155–176. Edited by Anuja Agrawal. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Percot, Marie and S. Irudaya Rajan 2007. “Female Emigration from India Case Study of Nurses.” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 42, no. 4: 322. Prakash, B.A. 1978. “Impact of Foreign Remittances: A Case Study of Chavakkad Village in Kerala.” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 13, no. 27: 1107–1111. Prakash, B.A. 1998. “Gulf Migration and Its Economic Impact: The Kerala Experience.” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 33, no. 50: 3209–3213. Prakash, B.A. 2000. “Exodus of Gulf Emigrants: Return Emigrants of Varkala Town in Kerala.” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 35, no. 51: 4534–4550. Radhakrishnan, M.G. 2010. “Kerala: The Republic of Kasaragod.” India Today, June 11. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/kerala-republic-ofkasargod/1/101181.html Radhakrishnan, S. Anil 2004. “Large Number of Women Trapped in Gulf Countries.” The Hindu, September 27. www.thehindu.com/2004/09/27/ stories/2004092702750500.htm Rajan, S.I., V.J. Varghese, and M.S. Jayakumar 2009. Beyond the Existing Structures: Revamping Overseas Recruitment System in India. Report submitted to the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi. Reshmi, R.S. and Sayed Unisa 2013. “Economic Impact of Migration on the Family: The Case of International Female Labour Migration.” In Indian Migration Report 2013: Social Costs of Migration, 105–122. Edited by S. Irudaya Rajan. New York: Routledge. Reshmi, R.S. and Sayed Unisa cited in Berit Helene Vandsemb 2014. “Gender, Work and Social Change: Return Migration to Kerala.” in Women, Gender and Everyday Social Transformation in India, 83–84. Edited by Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Anne Waldrop. New York: Anthem Press. Saradamoni, K. 1994. “Women. Kerala and Some Development Issues.” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 29, No. 9: 501–509. Thimothy, Rakkee and S.K. Sasikumar 2012. Migration of Women Workers from South Asia to the Gulf, 40. Noida: V.V. Giri National Labour Institute and New Delhi: UN Women South Asia Sub Regional Office.

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www.ucis.pitt.edu/global/sites/www.ucis.pitt.edu.global/files/migration_ women_southasia_gulf.pdf Vandsemb, Berit Helene 2014. “Gender, Work and Social Change: Return Migration to Kerala.” In Women, Gender and Everyday Social Transformation in India, 75–88. Edited by Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Anne Waldrop. New York: Anthem Press. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien, E.T. Mathew and S. Irudaya Rajan 2002. “Social, Economic and Demographic Consequences of Migration on Kerala.” International Migration, Vol. 39, no. 2: 43–71. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien, E.T. Mathew and S. Irudaya Rajan 2003. Dynamics of Migration in Kerala: Dimensions, Differentials, and Consequences. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien, P.R. Gopinathan Nair and S. Irudaya Rajan 2006. Return Emigrants in Kerala: Welfare, Rehabilitation and Development. New Delhi: Manohar Publications. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien, B.A. Prakash and S. Irudaya Rajan 2004. “Indian Workers in UAE Employment, Wages and Working Conditions.” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 39, no. 22: 2227–2234. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien and S. Irudaya Rajan 2001. “Gender Dimensions of Migration in Kerala: Macro and Micro Evidences.” Asia Pacific Population Journal, Vol. 16, no. 3: 47–50. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien and S. Irudaya Rajan 2004. “Gulf Revisited: Economic Consequences of Emigration from Kerala, Emigration and Unemployment.” Working Paper No. 363. Trivandrum: Centre for Development Studies. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien and S. Irudaya Rajan 2007. “Migration, Remittances and Employment: Short-Term Trends and Long-Term Implications.” Working Paper No. 395. Thiruvananthapuram: Centre for Development Studies.

Chapter 4

Nursing labour, employment regimes, and affective spaces Experiencing migration in the city of Kolkata Panchali Ray

The last few decades have witnessed a surge in scholarship on the intersections of migration and labour that insists on the centrality of the categories of race/ethnicity, class, and most importantly, gender in the discourses around transnational migration.1 In particular, feminist scholarship has focused on the ‘new international division of reproductive labour’2 and the ‘global care chain’3 to foreground the gradual but steady marketization and commodification of migrant women’s reproductive labour from the Global South. It is argued that this commodification is informed and constituted by a transnational political economy of care which is based on historical inequalities of race, class, and gender.4 This phenomenon of women’s migration from Third World countries to take care of the reproductive needs of Anglo-American and West Asian countries has led to what has been termed as a ‘care crisis’ or ‘care deficit’, as it deeply affects the provisions of ‘care’ in the host countries.5 In this chapter, questions are addressed on the nature of contemporary capital restructuring of the nursing labour market and its relationship with migration. In doing so, the chapter explores how employment regimes and labour movements intersect within a largely globalized, patriarchal, capitalist economy with complex outcomes in the context of exploitation and cheapening of labour. Given the nature of large-scale emigration of trained nurses, hospitals and nursing homes in India are facing an acute shortage of nursing personnel. The research presented here, conducted in three medical institutions in Kolkata, highlights that both the public and private health sectors are increasingly dependent on unregistered  nurses, nursing aides, and attendants to meet the shortage of trained personnel.6 However, while the public sector still employs registered nurses,

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the private sector runs on the badly paid, unrecognized labour of nursing aides and attendants. To maintain registration, private sector hospitals need to comply with state regulations of having a certain number of registered nurses on their roll, thus recruiting young freshly graduated women from other states who are seeking interim employment as they prepare to leave for foreign countries. Thus, it explores, through a close reading of the narratives of migrant women who seek temporary employment in Kolkata as they wait to migrate abroad, how they negotiate norms, culture, and discourses that objectify them as the foreign ‘other’. This chapter examines the affective spaces a migrant body occupies, its implications, and the gestures of engagements. What are the affective dimensions that gives meaning to ‘being at home’ and what constitutes the feelings of (not) belonging? This chapter explores how the notion of hospitality or welcome becomes a threshold through which the guest/migrant is assimilated within host cultures. Hospitality becomes an apparatus by which thresholds are policed.7 Welcoming someone – a guest or maybe a visitor – is not a benign and uncontaminated act but almost always takes into account nationalities, ethnicities, race, class, caste, and sexualities: Who is welcome and who is not, and on what terms? In this chapter, attention is drawn to the narratives of young migrant women working as nurses in private hospitals and their experiences of being (un)welcomed in Kolkata.

Setting the context: situating Indian nurses in the ‘global care chain’ It has been estimated that in 2005, among 191 million migrants worldwide, half were women. The total amount of accounted remittance sent home by migrant workers internationally amounted to 232 billion US dollars. Approximately 167 billion US dollars is remitted to developing countries. Remittance is considered the second most important source of external funding for developing countries, after foreign direct investments and overseas development assistance. In 2004, the top five remittance-receiving countries were India, China, Mexico, France, and the Philippines.8 Migration and movements across borders cannot be studied in isolation from the forces of globalization. On the one hand, globalization is celebrated as an increasing opening up of borders, and on the other hand it has also led to the politics of exclusion. Scholars have noted this double bind: neo-liberalism is not just about free-market philosophy, but it

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also includes conservatism and nation-building. In fact, globalization has the effect of permeable borders, as well as, forces of exclusion.9 If we try and locate these politics of exclusion and inclusion within larger trends of the global economy, there appears to be a clear divide between groups of people who are ‘allowed’ to migrate and those who are not. Clearly, ‘unskilled’ labour and displaced people fleeing persecutions (political, personal, or environmental) find borders closed to them, whereas people who are grouped as ‘skilled’ labour find themselves welcome; although this welcome is policed, regulated, and even grudged. The intensification of mobility of labour, in the context of an increased demand for temporary ‘skilled’ migrant workers in developed economies, with attractive employment opportunities as doctors, nurses, and software professionals, has contributed to the politics of informalization within employment regimes in host countries. Transnational corporations have shifted production units to the developing world to reduce labour costs and provide employment, albeit in unregulated and undesirable working conditions.10 Recent interventions in migration studies have brought to attention the ‘international division of care labour’, where the focus has been on unskilled care workers such as nannies, maids, and sex workers.11 However, the ‘global care chain’ has been further expanded to include skilled care work such as nursing in institutional settings at one end of its continuum.12 Though reproductive labour of all sorts has been commodified, leading to a large-scale immigration of those who deliver it, it is the migration of nurses that has had serious consequences for source countries. In 2004–05, India was the top country along with the Philippines, Australia, and South Africa which sent nurses to the United Kingdom (UK).13 While governments, nursing administrators, and international bodies have officially shown concern for this ‘brain drain’ or ‘skill drain’, they have also facilitated and encouraged it. The migration of nurses is not a new phenomenon. Even in the colonial period, British nurses were actively recruited by the colonial government to serve in India as elite nursing corps in the army or as administrators/ teachers in civilian hospitals. Consequently, Indian nurses were recruited in posts that were less prestigious in terms of pay, power, status, and autonomy.14 Even after India’s independence, the Rockefeller Foundation brought trained nurses from the United States to advise the Indian government, train local nurses, and occupy wellpaid administrative positions.15

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However, with reforms and cost-cutting, there has been a huge shortfall of nurses in the USA, UK, and Ireland, which has reversed migration trends.16 The cost-cutting in US hospitals has resulted in a decline in white, middle-class women choosing nursing as career. Both Canada and the USA encourage immigration of nurses, under terms that severely limit their bargaining power and mobility. In 2002, more than 7,500 nurses entered the USA as temporary workers.17 Ireland’s aggressive drive launched in 2000, to attract immigrant nurses, was set off by its internal policy of underinvestment in the nursing workforce, and more importantly, a change in the status of nursing students from that of employee to supernumerary. This resulted in a demand for nurses to cover duties that were traditionally done by nursing students.18 The benefit for the source country is in economic remittance, while the costs are borne by the health system. In 2001, the UK, under international pressure, issued a code of conduct for ethical recruitment of nurses which had as its goal the prevention of a ‘brain drain’. In 2004, the Department of Health thus issued a list of developing countries that should not be targeted for international recruitment. The code did not include the private sector and thus could not prevent nurses individually moving to UK to seek employment.19 In addition, this code did not include India, the Philippines, and China, which resulted in almost 60 per cent of nurses working in the UK to migrate from these countries.20 In countries like the Philippines, which has gained international acclaim as ‘nurse exporters’, the government is actively involved in the process. In India, the government encourages private corporations to recruit nurses for emigration. Some state governments such as Tamil Nadu have created entities like the ‘Overseas Manpower Corporation Limited’ to facilitate the international migration of nurses.21 Health entrepreneurs, both in India and abroad, recognize the great economic benefit of placing nurses internationally, which has led to the expansion of what hospitals call ‘business process outsourcing’, that is, educating nurses for emigration. The Government of India’s attempt to compete with ‘nurse exporting’ countries such as the Philippines has facilitated the upgrading of infrastructure of private nursing schools and colleges to meet international standards.22 Indian recruiting agencies have been mushrooming in Delhi since 2003 with a focus on the US market. Agencies in Cochin and Bangalore have been focusing on other countries such as the Gulf, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore,

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Ireland, and the UK. Thus, while in the 1990s, India was ranked sixth in terms of registered nurses migrating to the USA, by 2003, India ranked second.23 Immigration does not change hierarchies; on the contrary, certain inequalities are recomposed and newer hierarchies are created. For example, in the international labour market, caste matters less, and hierarchies are based on race, ethnicity, and nationalities. The monolithic 'Third World woman’ once valourized for her ‘nimble fingers’24 is now the ‘care giver’ par excellence. An article in Express India dated May 11, 2005, quotes a nursing school principal who suggests that the key reason for the high demand for Indian nurses abroad is that: they are considered more patient and kind compared to their own nurses and can spend eight long hours sitting close to a patient’s bed. The kind of manual job . . . like tending to a patient . . . is comparatively less in demand among nurses of foreign countries. They want to focus more on administrative jobs.25 New migrants who arrive at the destination countries find themselves in a labour market that is deeply hierarchical and structured. Migrant nurses have often found themselves working in less prestigious hospitals for low pay and exploitative working conditions. Intersecting inequalities constituted equally by race, gender, and class place migrant nurses at the lower end of the nursing hierarchy. Not unlike colonial India, it is the middle-class, white nurses who fill up administrative positions, and the working-class, coloured (migrant/minority) nurses form the rank and file. For instance, nursing in America is disproportionately represented by women belonging to immigrant and racial minorities at the lower end, while white middle-class women occupy the top echelons that mostly include administrative and supervisory tasks.26 With international recruitment, immigrant women who have higher qualifications than their UK peers often find themselves at a more disadvantageous position.27 Overseas recruitment of nurses also has the added advantage of not having to bear the cost of training nurses. As observed, ‘The nurses are trained elsewhere, at someone else’s expense, and can be recruited and working in the UK within a few months [. . . ] not the four years it would take to commission and train a UK educated nurse’.28

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While for women trained as nurses, immigration opens up new opportunities, social mobility, status, and economic stability, scholars have also highlighted that nurses who migrate are seen as ‘dirty’, ‘loose’, and ‘spoilt’ women in the communities that they leave behind.29 There is considerable sexual immorality associated with women who migrate abroad. Men who have married nurses and have followed their spouses to the West are labelled derogatorily as ‘nurse husband’.30 Scholars have pointed out, that in poorer countries, nurses usually have lower income than other white-collared workers, such as clerks and bank tellers, thus low pay scale is one of the key factors in pushing nurses to migrate.31 However, research on migrating nurses has pointed out that apart from the wages, nurses feel immense dissatisfaction over dismal working and living conditions, lack of job prospects, and low status of the profession, which gives them the incentive to migrate. The decision to migrate, to a greater extent, is more acute amongst ill-paid nurses in private hospitals than those with secure jobs in government hospitals.32

Nursing labour, employment regimes, and labour mobility The focus on the ‘international division of reproductive labour’ obscures how the intersection of care work, labour mobility, and employment regimes raises concerns of ‘care demands and deficits’ in out-migration countries. It also obliterates the policies and politics of labour which facilitate migration. Though there has been significant scholarly and policy interest in ‘care deficit’, much of the discussion has been focused on the social consequences of care migration for individuals, families, and communities.33 Little attention has been paid to the restructured labour market that struggles to meet this ‘care deficiency’ in sending countries. In recent decades, despite claims of growth, there has been a decline in female labour force participation rates (particularly after 2004–05 in both urban and rural India.34 It has been widely accepted that women have been successfully pushed out of the formal sector and are increasingly facing discrimination and marginalization in the informal sector as well.35 It is the menial, low-end, badly paid sub-sectors in the heterogeneous service economy that still employ women.36 In the face of large-scale migration of trained nurses, medical establishments use myriad policies and strategies, which deploy historically and synchronically produced inequalities of class, caste, and

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gender to meet the lack of labour supply. This successfully prevents nursing labour from becoming a scarce commodity. In an emerging economy such as India, processes of informalization and flight of trained workers to developed economies of the West have served to restructure the nursing profession. In contemporary West Bengal, the nursing profession operates as a three-tier pyramidal structure with increasing numbers but descending status, scales of pay, security, and regularity of employment as you move down from the apex. Registered nurses (with GNM diplomas), unregistered nurses (with unrecognized ANM training), private sisters (with minimum literacy and unrecognized ANM training), and attendants who have no training37 occupy positions that correspond more or less with understandings of skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled labour.38 The increase in nursing employment, what there has been of it, has been at the lower end of the labour market. This has helped trained nurses push forth their agenda of professionalization, leading to greater participation in supervisory and managerial roles. However, this has not been accompanied by significant improvements in wages and working conditions. Trained nurses work in highly exploitative conditions and the nurses who comprise the bottom two layers work in even more exploitative conditions – with low wages, long hours, and heavy physical and manual labour associated with ‘dirty’ work, and no social security or collective bargaining power. Though trained nurses at the top tier of the profession are highly skilled and required to meet demands of critical decision-making, they continue to share the devaluation suffered by attendants and private sisters. These variations complicate the market for nursing labour, providing employers opportunity to enforce more or less casualization and hierarchies of status and wages/salaries along the pyramid. Government hospitals who still offer formal employment, gradepay, leave, and other benefits to trained nurses find some takers, whereas private establishments whose trained nurses are offered informal employment are unable to fill up their posts. While handson nursing care is generally given by casually employed unregistered nurses, nursing aides, and attendants, a minimum number of registered nurses are required to maintain registration. These establishments depend on young, unmarried migrant women who have freshly graduated from private nursing colleges from other states to fill up the required minimum numbers of posts. Most of these women are preparing to migrate abroad and agree to work for low

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wages to gain much-needed experience, especially since employment in government hospitals takes time. Hospitals based in Kolkata do recruit from private nursing colleges within West Bengal but mostly prefer other states. As the managing director of one of the hospitals says, ‘Migrant women are easier to manage, as they will not get involved with local unions. They keep to themselves and do not mix with the Bengali nurses and attendants. Also it is difficult to get local GNM nurses at such low wages. They [migrant nurses] may quit but they will not break discipline in the hospital’.39 The lack of social capital of young women in a new city is harnessed by capitalist establishments to keep wages down. The lack of bargaining power or collective spaces, and the hostile behaviour of local staff, thus makes for a perfect docile nurse.

Migration and mobility: (un)settling relations between stigmatized labour and marginalized identities In the last few decades, debates on ‘care work’, especially in the West, have focused on the cultural and economic devaluation of commodified reproductive labour.40 Even after use-value labour is brought into the labour market as exchange-value, this does not necessarily alter the meanings attached to it. On the contrary, associations with femininity continue to place such forms of labour at a disadvantage in the labour market. The economic and cultural value given to the registered nurse located at the top of the pyramid as opposed to the unregistered nurse or attendant located at the bottom is an example of how the signifying system functions when it comes to women’s work. Reproductive labour, marked by menial, feminine servility is constituted in such a manner that gender, class, and caste mediate an understanding of the respectability of the work. Nursing, particularly, is fraught with such tensions.41 Historical associations of medical women, particularly in Bengal, with working-class, lower-caste dais (hereditary midwives) marked nursing as a profession, out of bounds, for respectable women.42 These trends, however, were not unique to colonial India. Even in the West, nursing had been perceived, both as morally suspect, as well as menial labour.43 From the nineteenth century, nursing leaders have unsuccessfully tried to establish nursing as a skilled profession, but even in contemporary times, it continues to be associated with feminine, caste-based servile labour.44 On the one hand, certain

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caste-based occupations continue to survive changing economies, and on the other hand, a general association of lower castes with menial work persists. The menial tasks that are usually associated with taking care of the sick, for instance dealing with blood, body fluids, and its detritus, sweeping the wards, cleaning, and changing dirty bandages, became a reason for not taking up nursing. Along with caste and gender, class also constitutes menial work as lowly. Historically, in Bengal, middle-class, upper-caste women maintained seclusion and did not engage in any form of labour outside the home. By the nineteenth century, the grafting of the construction of the bhadramahila (respectable Bengali woman) on a society already marked by a caste-based division of labour included, amongst other things, not having to do menial labour, even within the household. Thus upper-caste, middle-class women have always hired domestic workers, and this ability to be able to hire servants became a crucial marker of family status.45 The employment of domestic workers who completed menial tasks within the household resulted in a gradation of domestic work along caste and class lines; so while seba (to serve, care, and nurse) ideologically was an expression of respectable feminine virtue, the actual menial tasks were delegated to working-class, lower-caste men and women who worked as domestic servants. Middle-class respectability partially depends on not doing any task that is menial in nature, both for men and women. Shirsha, a young registered nurse from Odisha who migrated to Kolkata to work in the private hospital, narrates an incident when an elderly woman under her care was ill-treating her. Out of frustration, she complained: ‘We are like your grandchildren, why do you behave like this with us? The patient replied that ‘we can never be equal to her granddaughter as we take money for our work’. The implication is that as long as service is seba (done for love or as a duty by female kin) within the private realm, it is respected, maybe even revered. But when the same labour is brought into the public realm as an exchange-value commodity, it is denigrated and devalued. What historically counts as unpaid reproductive labour (use-value labour) by women within the household, when commodified and brought into the labour market as exchange-value, is not recognized as ‘skilled labour’ that deserves economic and cultural recognition, as well as respect. Seba can be done by respectable women only within domestic confines, that too of kith and kin. A woman loses respectability and become objectified as a menial

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labourer the moment she commodifies her labour and enters the service economy. Remuneration empties seba of its spiritual, affective charge that bestows respect and recognition and valourizes femininity legitimized by class and caste. In contemporary Kolkata, the relation between nursing and stigma is not so clearly defined, particularly with migrant nurses. Scarcity of employment, opportunities to migrate abroad, and the changing role of the nurse mitigates shame attached to stigmatized labour. Young migrant women coming from Jharkhand, Manipur, and Odisha who work as trained nurses in private hospitals are from Scheduled Tribe communities, who have converted to Christianity and have studied nursing with institutional support from their families, state, and churches. Historically, nurses were recruited from missionary constituencies of low-caste Christian converts; however, even amongst them, nursing was ranked lower than other feminine professions such as teaching. Colonial records demonstrate that even among the lower castes and tribal and Christian communities, nursing had few takers: only those women who had reached the end of their means would take to nursing.46 However, in contemporary times, nursing seems to be emerging as a popular profession for young, unmarried women. Meera, from Jharkhand, employed as a trained nurse, in a private hospital, states that in almost all villages in Jharkhand, young women are becoming nurses. It is, by far, the most popular profession for women: In Jharkhand nurses are respected. Before Hindu families would not allow their women to take up the profession, now even they encourage their daughters to become nurses. As a nurse it is easy to get employment. In Jharkhand almost every woman is employed as a nurse. Today nursing does not have the kind of stigma like before. The loosening of the connection between nursing and stigmatized labour could also be partly due to the changing role of the nurse. From a provider of hands-on bodily care, the nurse has increasingly become the expert consultant-administrator, whose supervisory functions put her somewhere between the cure/care binary. She is neither totally responsible for cure (the doctor’s domain), nor does she offer care (bodily care to patients), which has now become the responsibility of untrained nurses and attendants. The triple-tiered labour market has allowed the expulsion of menial labour from

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nursing, which in turn has helped to project it as a respectable profession.47 Feminist economists have argued that in India, the family controls women’s labour. A woman’s decision to enter the labour force is usually not an autonomous one. Women’s migration in search for employment may be a reflection of individual needs and aspirations but may also coincide with familial necessities and societal structures.48 The quick social and economic mobility of international immigration as well as the growing demand of nurses in the marriage market reflect on both women’s decisions to become nurses and families’ control over women’s mobility. As Shirsha says, ‘My earning is important because my brother’s education is my responsibility. I could do it in a government hospital as well but I do not want to do a government job. I want to go to Saudi’. The possibility of social and economic mobility has led to an increase in women choosing nursing as a profession. Kamya, coming from Kerala, did not want to become a nurse. Having an aversion to blood and fluids, she wanted to be a teacher. However, realizing the possibilities of mobility (spatial, social, and economic) that a nursing profession allows made her choose the former over the latter. ‘My mother insisted that I become a nurse. I took my training in nursing in a private college. I took a bank loan of 200,000 INR and my parents paid the rest of the money (200,000 INR). I will go to work in Dubai, as soon as I gain enough experience and pay back the entire loan. I am looking forward to leaving the country and living in a foreign land and my parents are also banking on me to look after them’. For her, the economic viability of being a nurse in a foreign country far outweighed the honour of belonging to a traditionally respectable feminine profession, such as teaching.

Does ‘hospitality’ objectify us? Identity politics and affective spaces 49 How do young migrant women experience their workplace, which is predominantly composed of a ‘different’ culture? How do they negotiate and/or resist workplace hierarchies? What are their experiences of hospitality/hostility? Participation or inclusion in hospitality is almost always conditional: the ethical charge of hospitality is that hosts have duties and responsibilities to ensure the well-being, comfort, and ease of their guests. In fact, in most South Asian countries, particularly India, guests are seen as ‘God’. The implication is that no matter whom the guest, it is the duty of the host to serve.

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Guests too have obligations: to respect the rules of the host and to reciprocate accordingly. Thus, both are subjugated to the hospitality transaction and to the creation of a hospitable space. The offering and acceptance of hospitality specifies a threshold which is then crossed, and in doing so, reinforces roles, identities, and distinctions between the host, and the guest. The question that this section raises and tries to answer is whether the very notion of ‘hospitality’ functions as an apparatus to objectify young migrant women. Jacques Derrida theorizes hospitality as ‘[. . .] he who receives, who is master in his house, in his household, in his state, in his nation, in his city, in his town [. . .]who defines the conditions of hospitality or welcome; where consequently there can be no unconditional welcome, no unconditional passage’.50 Hospitality then becomes an apparatus to police the threshold: who is welcome and who is not? And on what terms? Here the very notion of welcome is problematic and contested. Does it mean unconditional acceptance or are there limitations imposed on it? The foreign ‘other’ is greeted as a friend on the condition that the patron/host remains the authority in his own home/nation/city. The terms ‘welcome’ and ‘acceptance’ which are at the heart of the discourse on hospitality is a contradiction: one can only ‘welcome’ – that is, approve and accept – when one is master of his/her own home. Thus, for the foreign ‘other’ to be made welcome is to be folded within the internal law of the host. The ‘other’ is appropriated by the ‘self’, as the law of hospitality demands that one has to be a master in one’s house and only then can s/he make others welcome. These were some concerns that were foregrounded when I listened to women’s narratives of working in a foreign environment.51 The triple-tier labour market that is operative in medical establishments deploys notions of ‘skill’ in a manner that is constituted by hierarchies based on gender, caste, and class. Though social identities are not grafted onto occupational hierarchies without rupture, there remain certain continuities. In contrast to unregistered nurses, registered nurses are offered higher pay scale, leave, and other benefits. In private establishments, these differences are made sharper when we consider the demographic profile of the nurses. Most registered nurses are young migrant women who have freshly graduated from nursing colleges and have little/no experience, whereas most unregistered nurses have accumulated experience over the years and are yet paid less. If we take the base of the pyramid in consideration – where private sisters and attendants have been working since the

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inception of the hospital and despite performing most of the nursing care are represented as ‘unskilled’ workers with minimum wages, tiring shifts, and no leave or benefits – the differences are even more startling. These hierarchies often lead to conflicts between groups of workers who deploy notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ to critique power relations because of superiority in the hierarchy based on supposedly greater knowledge or skill. Built within this critique is the ‘foreignness’ of workers who are located at the top of the hierarchy. Jhumur, who works as an unregistered nurse in the private hospital, says, ‘These women who come from outside with GNM training have no knowledge and experience. Despite being an unregistered nurse I have to teach them everything. And yet they get more salary’. It is not just the competence of the nurse that is being questioned here; there is also a scathing critique of the hierarchy, where ‘incompetent’ nurses are being paid more, while ‘competent’ workers, are located at the bottom. This sense of injustice is reflected in everyday practices of labour in the wards. Even Bengali nurses in equal ranks openly discriminate against migrant women. Language becomes an important site of contestation. The knowledge of Bangla becomes a condition for being ‘made welcome’. The Bengali nurse remains the authority in her own city/workplace; indeed, if the foreign ‘other’ wants to be accepted, she too needs to learn the language. Failure to learn Bangla becomes a marker of ‘otherness’, where there is clear demarcation between the host and the guest. Anjelina from Jharkhand talks of the routine humiliation that migrant nurses face, from both Bengali nurses, as well as the doctors: Everyone makes mistakes, so do we. While Bengali nurses are reprimanded separately, we are scolded in front of the whole ward. The Group D staff stops respecting us. Patients lose confidence in us and will not want us to touch them. We are told that if we want to be respected we need to speak Bangla, so that everyone can understand us. Even the doctors sometime find it difficult to understand our language. They get impatient with us. The discourse on skills, which lies at the heart of politics arising out of the stratification of the labour market, is set aside when it comes to closing ranks against migrant women. Nurses and attendants, traditionally pitted against each other, enter into a relation of power sharing when it comes to expressing hostility towards

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migrant nurses. Sabrina from Manipur observes that ‘attendants say that these new girls [migrant nurses] know nothing, and yet they claim to have GNM training. They will go and tell the Bengali nurses about us and they will sit together in the wards and laugh at us. They think they rule this place’. The privileged position of the host/patron is exploited to create newer hierarchies. Strictly speaking, nurses are ranked higher than attendants; in fact they have a supervisory role in managing and directing attendants and ward boys. While Bengali nurses are able to maintain this power equation, migrant nurses often find their authority questioned on the basis of being an ‘outsider’. Attendants refuse to take orders from them, preferring to work only for Bengali nurses. Taking advantage of strained relations between nurses based on ethnic strife, attendants sometimes make migrant nurses work outside their prescribed duties. Historically, migration studies have focused on men migrating for employment and women migrating as dependents. Recent scholarship on gender and migration has been focusing on women migrating singly in search of work.52 The implication of migrant women being primary earners and sustaining families and communities has been explored in the context of changing gender relations, agency, and autonomy.53 An interesting aspect of research on women and migration is the notion of space and women’s mobility in the context of transgressing social, physical, and moral spaces. Seemanthini Niranjana argues that women’s use of space is deeply gendered. The delineation of certain spaces, such as the home/village/neighbourhood, as safe spaces, the transgression of which invites social censure, has had an impact on women’s mobility and work patterns.54 As Giddens argues, women are largely divided into two types: the ‘loose’ and the ‘virtuous’; while the ‘loose’ women have lived in the margins of respectable society, ‘virtuous’ women have been defined as those who do not succumb to sexual temptations. The possibility of the latter has been fortified by institutional protections, such as chaperoning, courting, etc.55 Single women living alone, outside the panoptic gaze of the family, is deeply threatening to gender norms and the stability of the patriarchal order, what Spivak calls ‘reproductive hetero-normativity’.56 Sexuality is a locus of control, not only between men and women, but across ethnic, class, caste, and national divides. The social construction of a migrant woman as the ‘immoral outsider,’ corrupting the cultural ethos of the host, is predominant among local respondents. Most of the nurses live in

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hostels provided by the hospitals, while some have chosen to take up independent residences, sometimes alone, and sometimes in a group. As Anuradha, a Bengali nurse, puts it, These women who come from other states live by themselves in rented apartments. They do whatever they want, they have no character. One day they will roam the city with this man, the next day they will be with someone else. They invite men to their rooms. They get married to different men. Sometimes they stay with other women’s husbands. Our Bengali culture does not allow this. These are tribal women, some of them are Christians. They do not understand our values. They could stay in the hostels but they prefer to live alone. Traditionally, patriarchy has always been concerned with women’s unbridled sexuality. Single women (whether unmarried, widowed, or deserted) have been simultaneously feared and hated. Indeed, various ideological and material practices that control, subjugate, and coerce single women into docile, chaste beings have been perpetuated over centuries. The construction of the single migrant woman who has transgressed ‘safe’ and ‘legitimate’ spaces and is ‘free’ to do what she wants is linked to the threat she poses to the stability of the reproductive, hetero-normative, monogamous family. Thus, they do not just take away jobs but also ‘snatch’ husbands. Coupled with her singleness is her ethnic and community identity: the Christian and the tribal ‘other’ have historically been represented as promiscuous and sexually available. In India, sexuality cannot be just divided into the male/female opposition, where aggressive, uncontrollable male sexuality is not tied down to social institutions of marriage and monogamy and passive female sexuality is confined within the institution of marriage that is rigidly defined and controlled by norms, that insist on the maintenance of virginity before marriage and fidelity after marriage. Female sexuality is complicated and additionally constituted by caste, class, ethnic, and community markers: the middle-class, upper-caste Hindu female body is at the apex of this tension, while the tribal/Dalit/ Christian female body is the promiscuous ‘other’, and the Muslim woman is the oppressed, ‘baby-producing machine’ residing at the fringes of society. Thus the hostility faced by migrant women in the city/workplace is deeply sexual, casteist, and racial in nature. Local women complain about migrant women congregating in common

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spaces on their time-off; they accuse them of loitering, littering, gambling, flirting, and even prostitution. The ‘virgin/whore’ dichotomy, for example, is more problematic for some groups of women than others. In this case, for young, unmarried, tribal women who have migrated singly, it operates in the contexts of a wider set of relations of power, where labels of promiscuity serve to reinforce ethnic, class, caste or national divides. The discourse on sexuality, as Foucault succinctly argued, is defined and deployed by powerful groups to mark, stigmatize, and constitute some bodies as deviant, thus allowing social control.57 Those women living in hostels also have to negotiate politics, but of a different nature. While those living alone face gossip and rumours, those living in hostels come in direct conflict with women of other ethnic groups, particularly Bengali women. Whether it is shared spaces, entertainment, or consumption of food, there is a clear demarcation between the host and the guest. As Meera continues: Everyone has their own groups: the Manipuri, the Malayali and girls from Jharkhand. Usually we talk to each other but the Bengali nurses will not talk to us. They look down upon us. We usually have conflicts over watching television. They will insist on watching Bengali serials and will keep the remote to themselves. And if we try to argue they will say, it is Bengal and you have to watch what we watch. The question of the assimilation of the migrant within the body politic of the host country/city has been raised in migration studies, where a strong case has been made in favour of ‘ethnic pluralism’ as against assimilation.58 However, the gender component of this debate has fallen short. Is the question of assimilation for women rendered more acute if they settle down and marry into the community of the host city/country? What are the implications of assimilation/rejection particularly in the context of temporary migration? How does the complex relation between skills, labour mobility, and gender produce resistance to the politics of assimilation? What is the specificity of the nursing profession, as against other kinds of women’s employment, which shape these politics? The large-scale emigration of trained nurses to Western countries has created a vacuum in the local labour market. Unlike domestic and sex work, where migrant women are concentrated, nursing is considered skilled labour. The discourse on skills is central to

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understanding the triple-tiered labour market as discussed earlier. Government hospitals are thus increasingly facing a scarcity of trained nursing personnel. On the one hand, the scarcity emerges from the non-availability of trained nurses. On the other hand, the government’s policy of substituting skilled labour with semi/ unskilled labour has also led to an incremental scarcity of trained nursing personnel. Nurses with GNM diplomas are also essential for private establishments to maintain registration. The intersection of labour mobility and employment regimes provide a complex set of outcomes, particularly in private establishments. Unable to recruit local GNM trained nurses due to competitive salaries, private hospitals depend on the labour of young migrant nurses, from other states looking for work experience, before migrating to the west. Their relative inexperience justifies their low salaries. On their part, temporary employment, even with low salaries, both gives migrant nurses work experience and allows them to buy much-needed time for preparation to immigrate abroad. Therefore, the work in Kolkata is essentially temporary. The skilled nature of their jobs, the supply crunch in the labour market, and the easiness of emigration give them a platform to resist hegemonic norms. As Christina from Manipur argues: Why should I try to be like them [Bengali nurses]? They do not try and learn our language or socialize with us. Anyway we will not stay here for long, so why bother? If they behave too badly, I will leave, like so many of my friends and seniors have left the city. To register their protest to routine humiliation faced in the hands of Bengali nurses and doctors, migrant nurses often quit their jobs without any prior notice. As one of the directors of the private hospital confided to me, ‘While their work and training is good, they often have trouble with the local nurses and suddenly batches of them will leave without giving notice. Then we get into a lot of trouble, because without GNM trained nurses, the hospital will lose registration and it is difficult to get local GNM trained nurses to work in private organizations’. If not the whole batch, sometimes a small group of two or three or even a single nurse may leave without giving notice. Young women with registered diplomas who are ready to work for minimum pay in the private sector are hard to come by. Private hospitals and nursing homes are dependent on

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the migrant population who come in as student interns or seeking work experience. However, retaining them becomes difficult. Their experiences, qualifications, and the demand for trained nurses in the private sector protect them from becoming a vulnerable section of workforce, devoid of any bargaining power.

Concluding Remarks This chapter argues that within the nursing profession, there are two types of migration patterns that are at work which complicate the nursing labour market: the international immigration of trained nurses to the West, which has created a scarcity of nursing labour in the host country, and internal migration of trained nurses seeking temporary employment before migrating abroad. Both these trends present an opportunity to study the politics of gender, labour, and informalization and its relation to migration. The differentiations within the nursing profession can be seen in the context of larger labour processes associated with the liberalization of the Indian economy. Informalization within the formal economy has seen certain sections of the workforce getting casualized, while certain sections remain privileged and protected. The large-scale migration of trained nurses has not boosted the status of nursing labour in the country. On the contrary, private medical establishments respond to the scarcity of nursing labour by casualizing the workforce and employing unregistered nurses, nursing aides, and attendants to do the major share of nursing labour. Stressing migrant women’s experience of the city/workplace, I demonstrate how women are located in the hierarchies of a fragmented labour market. I argue that the notion of hospitality that is extended by the local workers to migrant workers is not unconditional. Along with the resentment that the local population feels towards migrant workers, who are located hierarchically at the top of the labour market, class, caste, ethnicity, community, and gender construction of the single migrating woman becomes the rationale for exclusion. Hospitality towards the foreign ‘other’ is not unconditional: the very notion of welcome reinforces the subject positions of both the host and the guest. The one who offers hospitality, then, is the master/mistress of his/her own house and must be assured of his/her sovereignty, while the guest takes the subject position of the excluded ‘other’. Women who have migrated from Odisha, Jharkhand, and Manipur narrated incidents of how hospitality towards them is conditional on their

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acceptance and assimilation into Bengali culture. Being a mobile group of workers, however, makes it easier for them to resist such politics of assimilation. Both internal and international migrations have made sharply evident the complex relations between labour mobility, gendered labour, and employment regimes.

Notes 1 Aihwa Ong, ‘On the Edge of Empires: Flexible Citizenship among Chinese in Diaspora’, Positions, 1, 3, 1993: 745–78. Mary Beth Mills, ‘Contesting the Margins of Modernity: Women, Migration, and Consumption in Thailand’, American Ethnologist, 24, 1, 1997: 37–61. 2 Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, ‘Migrant Filipina Domestic Workers and the International Division of Reproductive Labor’, Gender and Society, 14, 4, 2000: 560-580 3 Arlie Russell Hochschild, ‘Global Care Chains and Emotional Surplus Value’, in Will Hutton and Anthony Giddens (eds.), On the Edge: Living With Global Capitalism, Jonathan Cape, London, 2001: 130–146. 4 Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (eds.), Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy, Holt Paperback, New York, 2002. 5 James Buchan, ‘International Recruitment of Nurses: Policy and Practices in the United Kingdom’, Health Services Research, 42, 3, 2007: 1321–1335. Rhacel Salazar Parrenas The Force of Domesticity: Filipina Migrants and Globalization, New York University Press, New York, 2008. 6 The research was conducted in three medical establishments: a government hospital situated in the heart of Kolkata, a private hospital located at the urban fringes, and a private nursing home in a more suburban neighbourhood. All three were formal establishments. My respondents consisted of four categories of workers: registered nurses, unregistered nurses, private sisters, and attendants. I interviewed 100 women over three years (2009 to 2012). To maintain confidentiality I have changed the names of the respondents. 7 Jacques Derrida, ‘Hospitality’, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 5, 3, 2000:3–18. 8 International Center of Nurse Migration, Fact Sheet 2007, International Council of Nurses. Downloaded from www.intlnursemigration. org/assets/pdfs/Nurse%20Migration%20Remit%20fact%20sheet% 20A4.pdf 9 Jaime Peck, ‘Geography and Public Policy: Constructions of Neo Liberalism’, Progress in Human Geography, 28(3): 392–405 and Angela Mitropoulos, ‘Habeas Corpus’, Arena Magazine, 55, 2001: 52–54. 10 Dianne Elson and Ruth Pearson, ‘"Nimble Fingers Make Cheap Workers": An Analysis of Women’s Employment in Third World Export Manufacturing’, Feminist Review, 7, 1, 1981: 87–107.

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11 Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (eds.), Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy, Holt Paperback, New York, 2002. 12 Nicola Yeats, ‘Production for Export: The Role of the State in the Development and Operation of Global Care Chains’, Population, Space and Place, 15, 2, 2009: 175–187. 13 James Buchan, ‘International Recruitment of Nurses: Policy and Practices in the United Kingdom’, Health Services Research, 42, 3, 2007: 1321–1335. 14 Madelaine Healey, ‘“Regarded, Paid and Housed as Menials”: Nursing in Colonial India, 1900–1948’, South Asian History and Culture, 2, 1, 2010: 55–75. 15 Madelaine Healey, ‘“Seeds That May Have Been Planted May Take Root”: International Aid Nurses and Projects of Professionalism in Post-Independence India, 1947–65’, Nursing History Review, 16, 1, 2008: 58–90. 16 Pam Smith and Maureen Mackintosh, ‘Profession, Market and Class: Nurse Migration and Remaking of Division and Disadvantage’, Journal of Clinical Nursing, 16, 12, 2007: 2213–2220. 17 Nancy Folbre, ‘Nursebots to the Rescue? Immigration, Automation, and Care’, Globalizations, 3, 3, 2006: 349–360. 18 Paul H. Troy, Laura A. Wyness and Eilish McAuliffe, ‘Nurses’ Experience of Recruitment and Migration from Developing Countries: A Phenomenological Approach’, Human Resources for Health, 5, 15, 2007. 19 Alvaro Alonso-Garbayo and Jill Maben, ‘Internationally Recruited Nurses from India and the Philippines in the United Kingdom: The Decision to Emigrate’, Human Resources for Health, 7, 37, 2009. 20 Ayaka Matsuno, ‘Nurse Migration: The Asian Perspective’, Technical Note ILO/EU Asian Programme on the Governance of Labour Migration Technical Note, 2011. Accessed and Available at http://www.ilo. org/asia/publications/WCMS_160629/lang-en/index.htm 21 Binod Khadria, ‘International Nurse Recruitment in India’, Health Service Research, 42, 3, 2007: 1429–1436. 22 Marie Percot, ‘Indian Nurses in the Gulf: Two Generations of Female Migration’, South Asia Research, 26, 1, 2006: 41–62. 23 Ayaka Matsuno, Nurse Migration: The Asian Perspective, Technical Note ILO/EU Asian Programme on the Governance of Labour Migration Technical Note, 2011. Accessed and Available at http://www.ilo. org/asia/publications/WCMS_160629/lang-en/index.htm 24 Dianne Elson and Ruth Pearson, ‘"Nimble Fingers Make Cheap Workers": An Analysis of Women’s Employment in Third World Export Manufacturing’, Feminist Review, 7, 1, 1981: 87–107. 25 On Nurses Day, Profession Sees More Young Faces, ‘More Demands Abroad’, Express India, May 11, 2005. 26 Mignon Duffy, Making Care Count: A Century of Gender, Race and Paid Care Work, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ and London, 2011. 27 Pam Smith, and Maureen Mackintosh, ‘Profession, Market and Class: Nurse Migration and Remaking of Division and Disadvantage’, Journal of Clinical Nursing, 16, 12, 2007: 2213–2220.

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28 Niamh Humphries, Ruairi Brugha and Hannah McGee ‘Overseas Nurse Recruitment: Ireland as an Illustration of the Dynamic Nature of Nurse Migration’, Health Policy, 87, 2, 2008: 264-72. 29 Sheba George, ‘“Dirty Nurses” and “Men who Play”: Gender and Class in Transnational Migration’, in Michael Burawoy et al. (ed.), Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections and Imaginations in a Post Modern World, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2000 :144–174 Sumangala Damodaran and Krishna Menon, Migrant Women and Wage Employment: Exploring Issues of Work and Identity among Health Care Professionals, NL Research Studies (073)V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, Noida, 2007. 30 Sheba George, ‘“Dirty Nurses” and “Men Who Play”: Gender and Class in Transnational Migration’, in Michael Burawoy et al. (ed.), Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections and Imaginations in a Post Modern World, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2000: 144–174. 31 Alfonso Mejia, Helena Pizurki and Erica Royston, Physician and Nurse Migration: Analysis and Policy Implications, World Health Organization, Geneva, 1979. 32 Philomina Thomas, ‘The International Migration of Indian Nurses’, International Nursing Review, 53, 4, 2006: 277–283. 33 Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2005. 34 Indrani Mazumdar, Women Workers and Globalization, Stree, Kolkata, 2007. 35 Jayati Ghosh, Never Done and Poorly Paid: Women’s Work in Globalizing India, Women Unlimited, New Delhi, 2009. 36 Indrani Mazumdar, Women Workers and Globalization, Stree, Kolkata, 2007. 37 GNM (General Nursing and Midwifery): a nursing diploma awarded after training of three years and six months. Unregistered ANM (Auxiliary Nursing and Midwifery): six months to one year of training completed in unlicensed private centres. Women graduating from these courses do not receive a registration number and their qualification is not recognized by the market. Thus, they are hired as unregistered nurses, often performing the same tasks as a registered nurse ( GNM), but their lack of qualifications is used to discriminate against them in terms of wages and other benefits. Private sisters: women who have completed the same courses as the ANM but have been hired directly and privately by clients on a daily-wage basis rather than a regular worker of the hospital. 38 For a detailed analysis on the differentiated workforce, the division of labour, and the classification of skills see Panchali Ray, ‘Care (Un) skilled: Fragmented Markets and Nursing Labour, Contemporary Kolkata’, in Bina Fernandez, Meena Gopal and Oralnda Ruthven (eds.), Land, Labour and Livelihoods: Indian Women’s Perspectives, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 239–260. 39 Personal Interview on 17 December 2009. 40 Paula England and Nancy Folbre, ‘The Cost of Caring’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 56, 1, 1999: 39–51.

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41 Panchali Ray, ‘“Is This Even Work?” Nursing Care and Stigmatised Labor’, Economic and Political Weekly, 47, 2, 2016: 60–69. 42 Dagmar Engels, Beyond Purdah? Women in Bengal: 1890–1930, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1996. 43 Abel-Smith Brian, A History of the Nursing Profession, Heinemann, London, 1960. 44 Geeta Somjee, ‘Social Changes in the Nursing Profession in India’, in Pat Holden and Jenny Littlewood (eds.), Anthropology and Nursing, Routledge, New York, 1991: 31–55 45 Swapna M. Banerjee, Men, Women and Domestics: Articulating MiddleClass Identity in Colonial Bengal, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2004. 46 Sreelekha Nair and Madelaine Healey, A Profession on the Margins: Status Issues in Indian Nursing, Occasional Paper, Center for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi, 2009. 47 Panchali Ray, ‘Care (Un)skilled: Fragmented Markets and Nursing Labour, Contemporary Kolkata’, in Bina Fernandez, Meena Gopal and Oralnda Ruthven (eds.), Land, Labour and Livelihoods: Indian Women’s Perspectives, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 239–260. 48 Devaki Jain and Nirmala Banerjee (eds.), Tyranny of the Household: Investigative Essays on Women’s Work, Shakti Books, New Delhi, 1985. 49 I use the term ‘objectify’ to underline the politics that discipline the self/other into narrowly congealed identities, which forecloses any possibilities of (an)other subjectivity. 50 Jacques Derrida, ‘Hospitality’, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 5, 3, 2000: 3–18. 51 The category ‘hospitality’ is used in the chapter both as an empirical and as an abstract category in the Derridean sense. When I am using the category ‘hospitality’ in its Indian context to understand the everyday experiences of migrant women, I am using it as an empirical category. But my conceptualization in philosophical abstraction draws mainly from the Derridean corpus and in this chapter I retain both connotations of ‘hospitality’ without reducing it to either. 52 Anuja Agarwal Agrawal (ed.), Migrant Women and Work, Women and Migration in Asia, vol. 4, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2006. 53 Sreelekha Nair, Moving with the Times: Gender, Status and Migration of Nurses in India, Routledge, New Delhi, 2012; George Sheba, When Women Come First: Gender and Class in Transnational Migration, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2005. 54 Seemanthini Niranjana, Gender and Space: Femininity, Sexualization and the Female Body, Sage Publication, New Delhi, 2001. 55 Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1992. 56 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011. 57 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. 1 vol. (Translated R Hurley). New York: Vintage Books, 1978 (1990). 58 Richard Alba and Victor Nee, ‘Rethinking Assimilation Theory for a New Era of Immigration’, The International Migration Review, 31, 4, 1997: 826–874.

Chapter 5

Mobility, accessibility, and inclusion Spatial politics of gendered migrant domestic labour 1 Bindhulakshmi Pattadath

Based on an ethnographic fieldwork conducted in United Arab Emirates (UAE), this chapter tries to foreground the experiences and engagements of women as migrant domestic workers in the state and non-state activities that are embedded in transnational migration. Their travel trajectories are marked by various events, and women domestic workers engage with different levels of legal systems during their journeys. The dominant discourses available to us usually consider women transnational subjects, domestic workers in particular, as vulnerable victims or the dangerous other. Travelling through the grey areas of their labour trajectories, this chapter attempts to understand the particular gendered subject position women migrant domestic workers inhabit. By mapping the spatial stratification of migrant women domestic workers in two emirates in UAE (Dubai and Sharjah), I try to understand the spatial location of migrant women domestics that transforms into social and cultural categories which include and exclude certain identities. Here the emphasis is to understand the context in which women move into different locations and the possibilities that produces in terms of freedom, accessibility, and mobility. Any discussions about space, spatial practices, and spatial politics in the context of migrant domestic labour give a vantage point from which to study the multiple dimensions of (il)legality and (il)licitness in transnational migration. The everyday spaces – both spatially and temporarily located – in which women migrant domestic workers engage their day-to-day lives do not act as a fixity, but rather work in profound ways and produce interesting meanings. Space in this context occupies this location where fluctuated

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identities are moulded according to the nature of the lives occupying that space. This chapter tries to focus on the specificities of the space(s) that women domestic workers occupy and to understand the way these spaces contribute to the visibility and invisibility, inclusion and exclusion of migrant women domestic workers. While attempting to do so, this chapter also looks at the way migrant women view the city spaces and various negotiations they make, which often challenge the normative understanding of women’s lives as migrant labourers. Through this chapter, I hope a conversation can be opened up to move away from the overproduction of trafficking narratives and other victims’ narratives, instead seeing women domestic workers as significant agents in shaping the way a city space has been viewed. It is hoped that this chapter will contribute to the ongoing scholarship on women migrant domestic workers (Yeoh and Huang, 1998; Pattadath and Moors, 2012; De Regt, 2010; Zachariah and Rajan, 2001) and to the discussion on the everydayness of women’s labour mobility. Space in this context adheres to the realm where quotidian activities are practiced and where individuals live their everyday lives. It is also a site of negotiations between different identities where power and hierarchies are practiced, maintained, and reproduced. The specificity of migrant domestic labour produces that quotidian space, where the hierarchy and power are reproduced and maintained in a larger scale. Hence it becomes a space for everyday tactics (De Certeau, Jameson, and Lovitt, 1980; Scheper-Hughes, 1993) of survival for women domestic workers. In the discussion on spatial stratification, I elaborate on space(s) as a material entity and try to show how that materially fixed space transforms into a discursive space, and the possibilities that produces in terms of freedom, accessibility, and mobility. Here the focus will be to look at the living arrangements made by women domestic workers and the choice of the living spaces and their implications in their everyday lives. The ideology of public and private often comes into conflict in the case of paid domestic labour. Domestic work is often carried out in the private sphere of somebody else, where women domestic workers need to move out to get some sort of privacy in their personal lives. That is one of the reasons accessibility is much more important in the case of women domestic workers. Women domestic workers often seek privacy in that apparently public sphere. Connected to this discussion, I further elaborate on the way women access the ‘public spaces’ in a city like Dubai. A city known

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for its skyscrapers provides an ideal imagination of a global city, where lives of domestic workers will be an interesting example of the conflation of the global and the local. For a migrant domestic worker, accessing the public spaces means passing through multiple negotiations. Domestic work, particularly when gendered, does not often provide a unilinear narrative for this accessibility. For many women, accessing public space is not only a break from the routine gendered domestic work; it is also a strategizing move for multiple levels of organizing. UAE, with its socio-political contexts, does not often offer the possibility for workers to unite. In an uncaring state like UAE (Kathiravelu, 2012), any possibility of collective resistance, organizing, or trade unionism is not possible. Towards the end, this chapter offers a discussion on the ‘politics of presence’ (Moors et al., 2012; Pattadath, forthcoming). Mapping the changing nature of the city and the way women negotiate the city space, I focus on the multiple negotiations women take while voyaging through the city space and also through their personalized workspace. The nature of the domestic work as being done in the intimate spheres of someone else invokes questions and credibility on women’s everyday lives.

Spatial stratification of migrant domestic workers in UAE I visited Karama Park in Dubai for the first time on a Friday morning in February 2007. I did subsequent intensive ethnographic fieldwork in Karama Park along with several other locations in Dubai and Sharjah. Susan, my gatekeeper to the world of domestics in UAE, who became a key informant later, had instructed me to be there on that Friday. She had informed me that there I could meet many other domestic workers. Susan was busy with her Friday prayer meeting and asked me to wait in the park until she got there. The park seemed to be relatively empty that morning except a few scattered visitors here and there. All the visitors were visibly Asians, South Asians, and South East Asians, and among them many were Indians, mostly Malayalees.2 I heard Malayalam, the native language of Kerala, from all corners and it did not feel like a ‘foreign’ country. The language gave the place a sense of familiarity. Susan arrived and she introduced me to the group. Al Karama or karama is one of the highly populated residential districts in Dubai. Almost all residents in Karama are expatriates and

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the majority of them are middle-income group and lower-income group South Asian expatriates. Most of the low-rising apartments in the neighbourhood consisted of one- or two-bedroom flats. This feature of low-rise apartments was in stark contrast to other parts of Dubai, where booming construction has given rise to multi-storied apartments. Though slowly, the construction epidemic has started spreading into this middle-class neighbourhood as well. There are many public parks and open spaces in UAE, and Karama Park, a relatively smaller one, is popular among the expatriates. Entry into other parks was usually restricted with a small fee or there was selective entry such as ‘only women and kids’ or ‘only family’ entry. This ghettoization also forced lower-income workers to choose Karama Park as their destination to spend holidays and non-working hours. Karama Park is located in the middle of a bustling expatriate residential neighbourhood. It is located opposite to Lulu Supermarket, a prominent shopping chain in UAE owned by a Malayali businessman and frequented by Indian expatriates. The other side of the park is home to a chain of Indian restaurants, mostly South Indian. Adjacent to Lulu centre is another big shopping centre. Karama centres housed many retail shoppers selling groceries, clothes, jewellery, watches, and so on. Most of the salespersons were Malayalees and many customers also turned out to be Malayali expatriates. When a study by the Dubai Chamber of Commerce hit newspaper headlines (‘Domestic workers form 5% of UAE’s population’, Gulf News, 12–11–2007), there was an emotional uproar among the nationals and the residents. The report was perceived as a warning signal to the ‘already diluted’ national population. Expatriates perceived that as a ‘necessary evil’ (personal conversation). Most of the discussions I conducted with other expatriates (exclusive of domestic workers) revolved around the sentiments of adverse effects of domestic workers on their children: ‘Children will be spoiled under these domestic workers’; ‘family value will get disintegrated’ (personal conversations with middle-class Malayali women residents who do not have domestic workers). I place these arguments within the context of UAE and try to understand the location of women domestic workers among these sentiments that emerge from many residents. Most of the migrant domestic workers in UAE are women from countries in South Asia and South East Asia such as India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The inequality on a

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global scale also reverberates in the lives of women when they adopt the job of domestic worker in the host country. Hence the presence of migrant women domestic workers contributes to a ‘place making project’, a place occupied with unequal relations, hierarchy, and power. For instance, 82 per cent of Dubai’s population are foreign nationals, and within that 67 per cent are from India and Pakistan. This migrant population is actively engaged in shaping and modifying the city (Elsheshtawy, 2008). UAE, a relatively young country in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), hosts 85 per cent of the expatriate population. Half of this 85 per cent are Indians and among them the most predominant population are Malayalees. In this section I try to understand the space occupied by women domestic workers within the large diaspora of Malayali expatriates. The second subsection deals with the living arrangements of migrant women domestic workers. I try to unravel a few questions throughout this chapter. How are women domestic workers spatially stratified in UAE? How does the presence of migrant domestic workers change the cultural and social landscape of Dubai? Does the presence of a large number of Indian expatriates help women domestic workers assimilate into the expatriate population or do they maintain their own identity?

Location of migrant domestic workers in UAE As a person who grew up in Kerala in the ’80s and ’90s, the image of Dubai always came with the smell of ‘foreign goods’ we received as children when the neighbourhood dubaikkaran/gulfkaran3 uncle visited Kerala. Later many of my own family members embarked on that rollercoaster ride of Gulf migration. For many men in my Hindu middle- and lower-middle-class neighbourhood, migration was an escape from unemployability, and also an embarkment to full masculine adulthood (Osella and Osella, 2000) and marriage prospects. By contrast, for many women it was a narrative of marriage migration, thus towards an upward mobility.4 The large number of women migrating as domestic workers and nurses were unfamiliar to me in that middle-class Hindu neighbourhood. I grew up experiencing Dubai through the material culture and also through the stories of family members’ annual visits to Kerala. With this image I have built over the years of experiencing Dubai through family and neighbours, I finally landed in that ‘oasis of free enterprise’ (Davis, 2006) on a February morning in 2007. The tall building

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and skyscrapers invited me to a world of new modernity. The unfamiliar skyscrapers did not assure me of any possibility of meeting women domestic workers from Kerala. Initially I tried to get contact information of women domestic workers using the middle-class Malayalee contacts I had. That was in vain. Many employers were suspicious about doing research among the domestics. Meeting Susan was a turning point. Using a snowballing technique, I could contact a significant number of women domestic workers over a period of time. Migrant domestic workers constitute 5 per cent of the total population of UAE, and among the expatriates, 20 per cent are migrant women domestic workers. The presence of a large number of Indian expatriates is visible not only in terms of numbers but also through various organizations and associations they represent. There are many associations for Indian expatriates which have branched out into various forms based on the specificity of region, community, and other particularities, catering to diverse needs and interests of the expatriate Indians. The Art of Living Foundation (AoL)5 also has a very strong base in UAE. My first contact with Susan was through the Art of Living Foundation, as she had attended a workshop conducted by them. Many organizations include low-income workers in various programmes. Most of these inclusions are mostly based on charity rather than considering them as an active members of the organizations. This charity approach or vulnerability approach makes the presence of many low-income migrant workers visible on the fringes of these associations. Far from the lives of construction workers, which have been documented by various scholars (Buckley, 2013; Elsheshtawy, 2008), the everyday lives of domestic workers, particularly the one live-out is much more connected to the city. For many migrant domestic workers the city is not a distant place of imagination. They negotiate with the city space in their everyday lives. This image of migrant domestic work and their relationship with the city space makes this study significant. Susan, my first contact, was an active member in a faith-based group and was involved in the weekly prayer meeting. She was working for an Indo-European family in an affluent neighbourhood in Dubai. She had a separate living arrangement attached to her employers’ house which gave her enough privacy and freedom of mobility. Susan got every Friday off, which she used for organizing prayer groups and church-related activities. Among her network

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of friends, Susan was highly respected as one having ‘high morals’. This discussion on the ‘moral standard’ often came up in our conversations and Susan was constantly compared to other domestic workers who did not utilize their weekly holidays for religious activities, rather ‘wasting’ their time in the parks. This discussion on moral standards came up during one of my discussions with a group of middle-class Malayalee women in the prayer meeting: ‘Susan is not like them .  .  .’ This category ‘them’ was self-explanatory for ‘loose morals’. The location of Susan among the larger group of expatriate Malayalee women in UAE and the construction of ‘us’ and ‘them’ requires further exploration. The grand narratives of trafficking of poor, vulnerable women and other victim narratives coexist with this labelling of good and bad. Caught between these binaries of good and bad within the larger narratives of trafficking, it seems there is a compulsion for many women domestic workers to show off the ideal womanhood, which many other women migrants who migrate with their spouses will easily ‘pass off’. What I am trying to argue here is that the multiple hierarchies which intersect to construct identities are not only gendered but are also mediated by various other social categories. Critiquing the universalizing ‘women as a category of analysis’, Mohanty (2003) writes: ‘What is problematic about this kind of use of ‘women’ as a group, a stable category of analysis, is that it assumes an ahistorical, universal unity between women based on a generalized notion of their subordination. Instead of analytically demonstrating the production of women as socioeconomic political groups within particular local contexts, this analytical move limits the definition of the female subjects to gender identity, completely bypassing social class and ethic identities’ (Mohanty, 2003). The regulative moralistic framework within which the categories good and bad get constructed within the social space of UAE is yet another reminder of these intersecting categories such as social class, ethnic identity, and regional identities. Away from the prayer group, while in the park with other domestic workers, Susan was at ease, the ease of escaping the regulative boundaries of the moralistic frame. The compulsion to be in the rigid boundaries of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ seems to be a weakened one here. At the park where they gather, the shared similarities of the gendered labour brings them together. This invisible presence of informal networks provides other possibilities of community gathering where women can vent their emotions against abusive employers. Even

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though they do not carry out any kind of unionized activities in the park, that space provides them with a sense of community feeling and helps them better understand the various inequalities they experience. Thus this informal network provides them a political agency (Pattadath, forthcoming). A public park like Karama provides the possibility to share similar life events. Many women felt that coming together in the public park and meeting other domestic workers helped them to understand the structure of inequality they face at work. Public parks also give a sense of privacy and less surveillance to women domestic workers. Given the gendered nature of domestic work, where the workspace is also an intimate space for someone else, moving into a public space for some privacy is important for them. This is the particularity of domestic work as well. Their use of the public park came to a temporary halt when UAE declared general amnesty in June 2007. Many women domestic workers stopped going to the public park due to the fear of police raids. As Suja, one of the domestic workers I interviewed, puts it: ‘I do not go the park, these days. Raids are very strict and it would take a few months to settle’. The fear of raids made many women undocumented workers refrain from using the visible public park. Thus, the meaning of visibility and surveillance shifted significantly before and after the declaration of general amnesty. This self-regulation of visibility is fundamentally linked to governmentality and control. Take the case of Janaki, a 55-year-old domestic worker who never got access to the public park even though her employers lived in the same neighbourhood. After Janaki employed much persuasion and many tactics, she finally got access to the park, with many conditions put forth by her employers. According to Janaki: ‘I know why they are not allowing me to go out of their house, I would come to know about the rules and regulations about my work. They are paying me less which I came to know only after I met other women domestic workers in the park’. This informal network is very crucial for women domestic workers. As domestic work is specifically gendered and perceived as a normative feminine duty, this makes it difficult for many women domestic workers to keep the distinction between the paid labour and assumed gendered role. Many domestic workers recognize these hierarchies and inherent power dynamics and make minute tactics to negotiate with their workspace. Forming the informal network is one part of those survival tactics. As precarious workers in the

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global market, where there is no possibility of collective resistance, these tactics are important. Similar narratives of negotiating tactics emerged from other women domestic workers as well. Suja has been a constant visitor in the park on Thursday evenings and Fridays. Working as a live-in domestic for a middle-class Malayalee family in Dubai, Suja gets a day off from work on every Thursday evening and Friday. This is the time her employers are at home. ‘I don’t have a place to go on Thursdays and Fridays. That’s why I come here [the park] when I get a day off. This park is my home’, Suja says. When I asked her about the living arrangement at the workplace, Suja said, ‘I can stay there if I want to. But I can’t stay idle when I see my madam works in the kitchen. So if I stay back at there, I wouldn’t get any rest from work’. The recognition of not having one’s own space, and at the same time the internalization of feminized domestic chores, make Suja’s narratives complex. Suja is forced to be visible in the ‘public’ due to this absence of ‘one’s own space’. Suja spends that time in the city, watching movies, going window shopping, and visiting internet caffès to connect with her daughter back in Kerala. This possibility of freedom to explore the city without the surveillance of the employer is due to the specificity of Suja’s precarious status. Suja’s narratives also show that women’s mobility and transnational migration is about new aspirations and desires, not only about seeking livelihood opportunities. In a city like Dubai where the cost of living is particularly expensive, women domestic workers who live outside their employers’ houses (live-out) seek accommodation in lower-class migrant neighbourhoods where they live in shared bed spaces. Certain spaces like Al-Satwa, Naif road, and so on are characterized by their specific ethnic and racial population. This spatial stratification based on class, ethnicity, and race brings in discursive meanings that those spatial locations produce. Old villas where lower-class migrants stay in bed spaces are another spatial location. Many women domestic workers find them to be relatively cheaper accommodations. ‘This is difficult for families to walk near these villas. There are liquor dealers and also a lot of “bad” women in this area’: another conversation often thrown at me to remind me of my middle-class status. Migrant domestic workers are broadly classified into two categories, live-in and live-out, based on their living arrangements. These

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two categories are further divided based on various other criteria such as sponsorship, legal status, and the nature of the work. In the case of live-in domestic workers, the availability of physical space varies based on various factors. For example, in most Indian middle-class households, where there is already a space crunch, most domestic workers get limited private space. In Dubai, one of the most expensive cities in the world, many middle-class Indians stay in small flats. This limited physical space often contributes to internal conflicts among the employers and domestic workers. Most employers prefer giving a weekly day off to their live-in domestic workers that gives employers privacy. While employers perceive privacy within their home, for many domestic workers the privacy is imagined in the public places like parks. This contradictory manifestation of privacy is one of the particularities of paid domestic work. A live-in domestic worker who has to wait for everybody in her employer’s house to sleep so that she can get some rest in the living room says: ‘Usually my daily chore gets over by 8:30 pm. However I need to wait until everybody leaves the living room. They sit back and watch television until 11:00 pm. The kitchen is small otherwise I could have used the kitchen to sleep. I am also expected to wake up by 5:00 am in the morning’. Expatriate labour in UAE comes under a particular contract system called Kafala. Under Kafala, the national sponsor becomes increasingly important. In the case of domestic workers, the employer is the sponsor. They do not come under the labour law since they are employed in a ‘private household’. Migrant domestic workers find themselves in a particularly vexing position with respect to legal systems. Like other workers, they also need a sponsor and are temporary contract workers. But because they are employed in the ‘private household’, they are not covered by labour law and their employer – who is also their visa sponsor – is responsible for them and usually holds their passport (Sabban, 2002: 18). In the event the employer decides to break the contract for whatever reason, their visa is cancelled and they are obliged to leave the country. This precarious labour condition in UAE forces many women domestic workers to abscond from their sponsors if the working conditions are hard and exploitative. Even though they are considered absconders in the official terminology, there is a labour market available for women runaway workers. Due to the high visa fee involved in sponsoring a domestic worker, many middle-class

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expatriates prefer women who are available in the labour market, most of whom are according to official terminology ‘absconders’. As a runaway domestic worker who finds a job in a middle-class Malayali house in Dubai, Suja experiences this state of not having a space of one’s own. As elaborated upon earlier, many non-national employers prefer undocumented domestic workers like Suja due to the high expense involved in sponsoring a domestic worker. So runaways get a labour market in UAE, even though they are absconders, hence illegal, in the official terminology. Hierarchy within the households is verbalized in the narratives of many domestic workers. Domestic spaces are produced through the markers of gender, class, and other marked social identities, and many narratives also talk about this social construction of hierarchical internalized spaces. As Ponnamma narrated in one of the interviews: ‘The house is big and there are many bedrooms in it. But they wouldn’t allow me to use one of the rooms even if it is not used by family members. I was expected to sleep in the kitchen. I am supposed to clean their bedrooms every day and during that time I have access to all rooms. I am not supposed to enter the rooms after the cleaning purpose is over’. This narrative verbalizes how hierarchies are created through the maintenance of strict control of workers’ mobility within the household. Gender, class, and caste play a significant role in this maintenance of social hierarchies. Many Indian women domestic workers expressed the everyday caste discrimination they experience within the households of their Indian employers. Ponnamma further expressed her anger: ‘Once I forgot to remove my used towel from the bathroom and my madam yelled at me saying I have made their bathrooms dirty with my towel. They wouldn’t mind asking me to clean their underwear and wouldn’t consider me dirty that time. For them “servants” are not human beings’. Ponnamma’s recognition of this injustice meted out at her on an everyday basis is significant. Instead of internalizing it, she resisted it. She ran away from the house and soon found another house to work in with the help of an informal network of domestic workers. Most national houses are on the periphery of the city. Usually expatriate populations occupy the centre of the city space whereas national houses are moved out to the periphery in exclusively Emirati neighbourhoods. This gentrification of Emirati neighbourhoods and the subsequent ghettoization affect the ways in which women domestic workers organize their lives. Many live-in domestic workers

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in Emirati households often live without the possibility of networking with other domestic workers, mostly live-outs. Networking, as an important activity of organizing life and labour, has significant implications in places like UAE. Rubia, one of the ex-domestic workers who currently runs a laundry shop in Dubai, talks about such isolation: ‘When I reached UAE for the first time, I didn’t have any contact other than and for almost two years I didn’t have any other human interaction other than the employers’. Rubia left her employers’ house after two years of contract (even though, as she says, ‘they were nice people’). My access to one of the Emirati houses in Sharjah brought home the diverse ways in which women organize their lives in the ghettoized Emirati neighbourhoods. I got access to this neighbourhood through Mariyam, one of the Malayali women domestic workers. During my visit to this neighbourhood Mariyam introduced me to another five women domestic workers working in the same neighbourhood. One interesting fact was that all of them were hailing from the same village in Kerala. There was a sense of strong community identity which was not so evident with many other domestic workers with whom I interacted in the city space. For example, Kunhamina and Nabeesa, two sisters working in an Emirati family, could not explore the city from the time they landed in UAE. Kunhamina migrated to UAE in 1982 and has been working in the same house since then. A few years after her arrival in UAE, Kunhamina brought her younger sister Nabeesa to the same house to work as a domestic worker. Both sisters along with the other four domestic workers I met in this Emirati neighbourhood have limited interaction with the city space. They hardly ventured out of their workspaces. The mobility of these women as part of the large chain of transnational migrant workers cannot be seen as simply a process of globalization or active formalized labour movement. The informal network (and often kinship network) where women play an active role (as in the case of Kunhamina bringing her sister to UAE) needs to be acknowledged as part of the transnational labour migration. Apart from these groups of women who work in the Emirati houses or live-in domestics in the Indian houses, there is another significant group of women workers living in shared bed spaces. Most of these women have reached Dubai through visa traders (in their local terminology they say ‘private visa’). They work as parttimers and find work in various houses. They are outside the surveillance of their employers but run the risk of being haunted by

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law enforcement officials. Most of the bed spaces reveal stories of negotiation with the constant CID raids. For example, Vanaja and Devi, two part-time domestic workers, used to live in a shared bed space in Karama. They were sharing a room with six other women belonging to a similar social economic background hailing from Kerala. The room had six bunk beds. Sati, one of the occupants and also the one who sublets the bed spaces to the others, told me that she prefers only Hindu women as roommates. Sati, who works as cleaning staff in one of the Indian schools in Dubai, considers her job ‘better’ than those of women who engage in domestic work. ‘I do not like to accommodate domestic workers here. Devi is my distant relative. That is why I accommodated her. I will ask Vanaja to leave soon’. During my second visit to this bed space, Vanaja had already shifted to another bed space in an adjacent place where she shared the living space with a group of other domestic workers. These internal hierarchies in shared spaces bring out the stigma of gendered labour and how it gets experienced by women who are part of that labour. The constant surveillance of law enforcement authorities such as police and CIDs is part of the everyday negotiations of women domestic workers who live in shared bed spaces. Shared bed spaces are usually targeted, as most of the tenants are considered undocumented. Space of living is carefully chosen for many women. Many prefer to choose a place of living where there is a density of ‘family’ (which becomes a legitimizing term) or prefer to stay with their male partners (boyfriends) as a ‘family’ to negotiating the surveillance of law enforcement authorities. This shows the blurred boundaries of legality and illegality as migrants move in and out of different living arrangements. Thus the particularities of gendered migrant labour contribute to the production of places.

Moving into public: accessibility, inclusion, and mobility Domestic work, particularly migrant domestic work, addresses the distinction between public and private in a complex way. With the gendered nature of domestic work, the intimate private space of someone else becomes a workspace (read public space) for women domestic workers. In order to get some privacy, women domestic workers often need to move out of the apparent public space(s). Thus, public and private spaces give conflating and intersecting

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meanings to the lives of women domestic workers. Women move into public spaces for a variety of reasons. In the case of women domestic workers, public space often provides a sense of privacy and anonymity. Not all women domestic workers get access to the same public spaces. The utilization of public space by women domestic workers helps us to deconstruct the mainstream narratives about accessibility to public spaces. Accessibility to public space is not the same for all women domestic workers. Certain unassuming spaces can at times provide specific accessibility and a sense of belonging to migrant women domestic workers. For example, a space like a church transforms into a space of informal networks. Many undocumented workers (mostly runaways) use the premise of church to meet possible employers and middlemen. As discussed, there is a demanding labour market for runaway domestic workers considering various regulations put in place for employing a domestic worker. Like churches, grocery shops in various parts of UAE, run by Malayali men, play a crucial role in helping out women who need help once they runaway, even for finding a duplicate passport. These are spaces which transform into spaces of informal networks for employment opportunities and play a crucial role in the lives of women domestic workers when they move in between legal statuses in UAE. Certain public spaces provide a sense of agency and freedom to women domestic workers. This sense of freedom and agency comes at the cost of the possibility of being caught by law enforcement authorities. Their engagement with the public space is usually based on individual desires and needs rather than emanating from any collective agency or solidarity. In an uncaring state like UAE, this is often all they can hope for. Even though these individual desires and needs share a similar cultural context of a marginal social class, they would not necessarily grow into any political solidarity or political unrest. Women runaway domestic workers who enjoy more agency and freedom in the social landscape of UAE need to be understood in this context where they are pushed to the status of undocumented workers. The runaway domestic workers often take that step fora multiplicity of reasons. Sometimes it is an escape from harassments to which they are subjected, and sometimes it is in anticipation of more desirable working conditions. The inequalities on the global scale often leave women to become migrant domestic workers, yet often this does not provide any

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upward mobility for them. Domestic work, which is often considered as an extension of daily gendered familial work, does not provide them the status of a worker who is actively engaged in the global market as a significant workforce. Women domestic workers who are caught between these inequalities often take up jobs outside their original sponsor/employer to assert their identities within the transnational migrant workforce. In the absence of any political solidarity (in the case of UAE, unionization is forbidden), any kind of resistance is often at the individual level. A woman becomes a runaway domestic worker (absconder in the official terminology) when driven by individual needs and desires rather than from being part of a collective consciousness. Becoming a runaway is considered to be a common practice among women workers. Women domestic workers who gather at the public park create a different kind of public space. For example, an undocumented worker who visits the park looks out for the possibility of meeting persons who could help her with providing a fresh set of documents. This invisible presence of informal networks is a characteristic of the public spaces like Karama Park in UAE. The park also provides other possibilities of community gathering in which women can vent their emotions against abusive employers. Even though they do not form any kind of unionized activities in the park, that space provides them with a sense of community feeling and helps them to understand various inequalities they go through. A public park like where domestic workers gather thus allows the possibility to create a complex public space where women can create an informal networking in which they can contact agents who could possibly help them to forge documents and get alternate employment and otherwise make plans to run away from abusive employers. Do these public spaces that women access give them any kind of power to resist the social inequality they face in their workspaces? Do they create a subaltern counter-public (Fraser, 1992; see also Moors et al., 2012)? The politics of exclusion women domestic workers go through at various points of their travel trajectories make them visible in certain spaces where they could articulate their identity, which is otherwise excluded in various normative dominant social spaces. Women domestic workers mark their identities as a significant workforce in the global labour market in a global city like Dubai. The dominant narratives available to us often try to place women domestic workers as the ‘category at risk’. The decision by

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the Indian state to ban women ‘unskilled workers’ below the age of 30 from availing emigration clearance reinforces some of these gendered stereotypes and erases women domestic workers’ particular experiences and the multiple negotiations they make in the global labour market. It is important to document the multiple negotiations women make, as hopefully this will counter the overproduction of trafficking narratives familiar in the context of gendered migration in the labour market.

Notes 1 Research for this chapter was conducted during my tenure as a postdoctoral fellow at Amsterdam School for Social Science Research (currently AISSR), University of Amsterdam, and was financed by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO/WOTRO). 2 Malayalees are a group of people who speaks the language Malayalam and originally inhabited in the south-west state of India, Kerala. 3 This terminology ‘dubaikkaran’ (one who is in Dubai) or ‘gulfkaran’ (one who is in the Gulf) has been used synonymously. Used as a masculine pronoun, migration was also understood as a masculine process during that time. Interestingly, Dubai is also used as a synonym for the larger GCC countries! 4 During the settlement of arranged marriages, a question often asked to the groom was ‘Kondupovumo?’ (Will you take her with you?). Often marriages are fixed with this promise. 5 The Art of Living Foundation is an international non-governmental organization founded by Ravi Shankar, who is popularly known as Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. My first contact with Susan was through the network of the Foundation.

References Buckley, Michelle. “Locating neoliberalism in Dubai: Migrant workers and class struggle in the autocratic city.” Antipode 45, no. 2 (2013): 256–274. Davis, Mike. Fear and Money in Dubai. New Left Review 41 (2006): 47–68. De Certeau, Michel, Fredric Jameson, and Carl Lovitt. “On the oppositional practices of everyday life.” Social Text 3 (1980): 3–43. De Regt, Marina. “Ways to come, ways to leave: Gender, mobility, and il/ legality among Ethiopian domestic workers in Yemen.” Gender & Society 24, no. 2 (2010): 237–260. Elsheshtawy, Yasser. “Transitory sites: Mapping Dubai’s ‘forgotten’ urban spaces.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32, no. 4 (2008): 968–988.

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Fraser, Nancy. “A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracies.” In Craig J. Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. Kathiravelu, Laavanya. 2012. Social Networks in Dubai: Informal Solidarities in an uncaring State. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 33: 103–119. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Zubaan, 2003. Moors, Annelies, Ray Jureidini, Ferhunde Özbay, and Rima Sabban. “Migrant domestic workers: A new public presence in the Middle East?” In Seteney Shami, ed., Exploring Public Spheres in the Middle East and North Africa: Theory, History, Gender and Conflict. SSRC, 2012. Osella, Filippo, and Caroline Osella. “Migration, money and masculinity in Kerala.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6, no. 1 (2000): 117–133. Pattadath, Bindhulakshmi. “Making sense of legality: Everyday resistance and survival tactics by undocumented Indian female domestic workers in the United Arabic Emirates.” In Jorg Nowak, Madhumita Dutta and Peter Birke, eds., Workers’ Movements and Strikes in the Twenty-First Century: A Global Perspective. Rowman and Little field, 2018. Pattadath, Bindhulakshmi and Annelies Moors. “Moving between Kerala and Dubai: Women domestic workers, State actors and the misrecognition of problems.” In Barak Kalir and Malini Sur, eds., Transnational Flows and Permissive Polities in Asia: Ethnographies of Human Mobilities, 151–168. Amsterdam University Press, 2012. Sabban, Rima. “United Arab Emirates: Migrant women in the United Arab Emirates: The case of female domestic workers.” Genprom Working Paper No. 9. Series of Women and Migration. Gender Promotion Programme, International Labour Office Geneva, 2002. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Yeoh, Brenda S.A., and Shirlena Huang. “Negotiating public space: Strategies and styles of migrant female domestic workers in Singapore.” Urban Studies 35, no. 3 (1998): 583–602. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien, and S. Irudaya Rajan. “Gender dimensions of migration in Kerala: Macro and micro evidence.” Asia-Pacific Population Journal 16, no. 3 (2001): 47–70.

Chapter 6

Women left behind Results from Kerala Migration Surveys S. Irudaya Rajan and K.C. Zachariah

Migration is a process rather than an event, unlike other demographic phenomena such as birth and death. It can be viewed as an economic phenomenon, though non-economic factors obviously have some bearing. Family reunification is a recognized reason for immigration in many countries because the presence of one or more family members in a certain country enables the rest of the divided family or only specific members of the family to immigrate to that country as well. A large number of people who immigrate to Europe do so through family reunification laws. However, many countries in Europe have passed laws in recent years to limit people’s ability to do this. Family reunification in the United States is the most common legal basis for immigration and it is governed by the terms of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The citizens and permanent residents of the United States may sponsor relatives for immigration to the United States in a variety of ways. A study of 44 migrant Mexican men and women in the San Francisco Bay Area suggests that the migration of men typically necessitates expansion of their wives’ responsibilities and acquisition of skills in tasks not traditionally undertaken by women (HondagneuSotelo, 1992). According to a study in southeastern Mexico, male out-migration has both positive and negative effects on the women left behind. Despite the lack of empowerment noted by the women themselves, it is significant that over time the changes in gender roles and gender relations may influence gender ideologies and increase women’s empowerment (McEvoy, 2008). The splitting up of families as a result of male migration may also have multiple adverse effects on education, health, labour supply response, and social status for family members who do not migrate (Demurger, 2015).

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Migration is not a recent phenomenon. India has long witnessed migration of different forms and in different castes and classes, but with the changing social, cultural, and economic scenario, the quantum and pattern of migration show varying trends. Diversity seems to be the standard when it comes to characterizing migration with respect to the nature of migration, the reasons for migration, the length of migration, and the frequency of return to the place of origin. Kerala is well known for its male emigration in search of employment while their female counterparts are left behind. It is estimated that today over 10 per cent of the population of Kerala lives outside the state in various parts of India, in the Gulf region, the US, Europe, and other countries around the world. Migration has been a significant factor in helping reduce poverty, unemployment, and relative deprivation in Kerala. For over three decades there has been steady migration from the state to countries in the Gulf and different parts of India and the world (Zachariah, Mathew and Rajan, 2003; Zachariah and Rajan, 2012; 2014; 2016a; 2016b). In Kerala, migration must have contributed more to poverty alleviation than any other factor, including agrarian reforms, trade union activities, and social welfare legislation (Zachariah, Mathew and Rajan, 2001a; 2001b). A common pattern of migration of men is that they leave their wives, parents, and children at the place of origin while they migrate in search for work, with only a minority of males joined by their womenfolk. There are two main impacts of male migration on families, the first being on women’s autonomy since the absence of their husbands forces or frees them to take roles that they would not normally undertake. The other is financial hardships and increased responsibilities for women. The out-migration of men has led to availability of more money with their families, and in particular, their wives. Thus men’s absence from home provides conditions of fostering women’s autonomy, self-esteem, and role expansion. In an earlier study in India, it was found that the root of the problems of male migration and female suffering lies in the structural inadequacy of the rural society. Also, both for the male migrants in the city and for the family in the village, the caste/kinship network proves highly functional (Jetley, 1987). Another study of male migration from rural to urban areas for skilled manual and whitecollar employment in the coastal state of Goa, India, suggests that in the absence of husbands, women are household heads in practice and execute various responsibilities such as hiring and supervision

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of agricultural labour. However, the situation has experienced a significant change with respect to emigration, but has undergone considerable change with respect to out-migration from the state. The household structure forms the key mediating factor through which husbands’ absence affects women. Women not residing in extended families are faced with both higher levels of responsibilities and greater autonomy, while women who live in extended households do not experience these demands or benefits (Desai and Banerji, 2008). In rural Odisha, a study reveals that the wives of solo migrants are able to put aside norms of female seclusion because the husbands’ absence increases the need for their participation in household affairs (Agasty and Patra, 2014). Migration of men from Kerala to the Gulf has led to several changes in lifestyle and consumption patterns, such as ownership of land, housing and household amenities, and nutritional and health status of the members of the household (Zachariah and Rajan, 2001). Deriving indications through statistical analysis of Kerala Migration Surveys, a new development was observed that unlike with emigrants, there were many more married women than married men among the internal migrants, reflecting the likelihood of the husbands of female out-migrants emigrating from India but leaving their wives in the states where they were working previously. Finally, it was examined that even if households in the state consisted of men left behind (MLB), the proportion was incomparably lower than that of women left behind. Along with the increase in migration, the number of return emigrants has also increased. The number of return emigrants (REM) to Kerala in 2014 was 12.48 lakhs, which is about 52 per cent of the number of emigrants. The corresponding numbers were 11.50 lakhs in 2011. The migration of men provides some economic relief to their families, but the women have to pay a heavy price in the form of excessive physical and mental stress (Roy and Nangia, 2005). The women left thus have experienced change in their freedom in terms of decision-making, mobility, and participation in political activities (Ullah, 2017). In such a context the area that needs to be focused on is the extent of women’s empowerment that took place as a result of migration, since the husbands’ absence would increase the need for their participation and leadership in the day-to-day affairs of the family. While male migration may be associated with a higher likelihood of remittances, women may need to fill in for absent husbands in many ways, including work on the family farm or in the family business. The recent emigration in Kerala is contributing towards

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increasing inequality in income among Kerala households. The reasoning behind this conclusion was that emigrants were mostly poorly educated construction workers whose income increased considerably in comparison to the better-educated service workers back home. This results in new policy challenges and reformulations of current policy issues. Growing individualism and declining family support networks are mainly due to internal and international migration in the state (Zachariah and Rajan, 2001; Rajan, 2015).

Women among migrants The proportion of women among emigrants as well as out-migrants decreases with age and fluctuates with marital status. It is lower in the Gulf region and highest among those who emigrated to the USA and the United Kingdom. In 2008, the number of emigrants from Kerala was 2.2 million, of whom 14.6 per cent were females, which made up only10 per cent in 1998. Between 1998 and 2008, the proportion of women among emigrants ascended as the latest populace of the same included more well-educated workers who could afford to take their families offshore. This increase was not monotonic in nature, thus negating the consistent and steady increase of women out-migrants at a substantially higher rate over the years. One reason is very general: migration takes place mainly among youth. When people get older their desire to come back and settle in their homeland increases. Educational attainment and religion are also contributing to this difference. In Kerala, migration to Gulf countries is high among Muslim communities and the majority of them are migrating for unskilled employment. The traditional Muslim culture does not allow women to go far from home, and if they want to, the financial and social security constraints won’t allow them. Contrary to this, migration to Western countries like the USA and UK is from Christian communities with well-settled jobs and high educational qualifications. Unlike Gulf countries, Western countries are providing a better social life and men try to settle there with their families. In the employment sector, there are relatively more women in semi-government jobs and household obligations, and men are more into agricultural labour. Although there has been a significant increase in the stock of Indian women migrants in GCC countries, the labour flows from India are still male-dominated. In certain states in India, however, the number of women engaged in international migration increased over the past

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decade. A large percentage of women migrants are domestic workers (Thimothy, 2013). Another prominent stream of female migration to the Gulf region is that of healthcare workers, particularly from Kerala (Percot and Rajan, 2007; Bindhulakshmi, 2010). We do not have conclusive evidence to argue that an increasing share of women in domestic works are reflected in the outflow of female workers migrating from India to the GCC countries. However, anecdotal evidence indicates such a phenomenon, at least in states and localities where migration links are stronger. Social and economic disadvantages and migration networks may be providing the necessary impetus to women to try their employment luck abroad as domestic workers. As nearly 90 per cent of emigration from Kerala is directed towards the Gulf region, and much of the economy of this region depends on the price of oil, future emigration from Kerala and remittances to Kerala could be affected very significantly in the coming years (Rajan and Zachariah, 2017). The ILO also states that impact of behavioural change on the labour market is indicated by cultures and societies sending a higher or lower proportion of working-age women to work. As such, gender gaps in labour force participation can have a very high and even overriding impact on the labour market, compared to cyclical economic change.

Women Left Behind Women left behind (WLB) is defined as married women in Kerala whose husbands live outside Kerala, in India or abroad, whereas Gulf wives (GW) are married women whose husbands live outside India but in the Gulf. They include women whose husbands were migrants at the time of the survey and whose husbands had returned after migration to the Persian Gulf countries. While establishing a distinction between the women left behind (WLB) and Gulf wives (GWs), Zachariah, Mathew and Rajan (2003) have tried to talk about the social consequences of migration, separation being a major concern. The Gulf wives are a subset of the women left behind. Kerala Migration Survey (KMS) 2013 is the sixth in a series of studies on international and internal migration from Kerala. The KMS surveys over the years have generated several unique databases and associated analysis that have stimulated a better understanding of the impacts of migration on both host and source societies.

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The sample size consists of 15,000 households in 2013. In the survey, KMS identified 15,807 married males and 18,480 married females. Thus at least 2,673 married females could be living apart from their husbands. These are the WLB in the sample households. The state-level estimate is obtained by using the appropriate raising factor and the number of WLB stands at 1.4 million in 2013. This number includes both the women whose husbands live outside India and those whose husbands live in other states within India. There is also another possibility: married men in Kerala whose wives are working outside the state. So this estimate of women left behind would be an underestimate. Wives of all migrants are not included in the study because many of the wives are living in their own residence after marriage in the absence of their husband. The number of WLB was 12.6 per cent of the married women in 1998, 12.2 per cent in 2003, 10.7 per cent in 2008 (Zachariah and Rajan, 2012), but 14.2 per cent in 2013. Another indicator of the existence of WLBs in Kerala is the difference between the number of married men and women at the destination countries. According to 2013 KMS, the number of married male emigrants is estimated at 1.5 million and that of females is 0.2 million. The excess number of males over the female emigrants is 1.3 million. Thus, the number of Gulf wives in 2013 stands at 1.30 million, which was 1.06 million in 2008.

WLBs by religion Given that the proportion of women left behind varies considerably by religious affiliation, the proportion of WLBs is highest among the Muslims and lowest among the Christians. The traditional outlook on Gulf migration in Kerala reveals that Kerala has a long history of migration links with the Gulf. It is a belief that the Mappilas (Muslims) of Malabar are descendants of Arab merchants and the experience gained from past migrations is an added advantage of Keralites over the other states. Caste-based statistics on Gulf migration points to the leading role of Muslim emigrants in making contributions to the economic progress of the Muslim community. Among the Muslim community, it should be noted that there is a tendency of male domination in migration. About 95 per cent of the Muslim emigrants are young men in the age group of 20–40. About 80 per cent of them are married at an average age of 23 years. The second-highest proportion of WLBs is among the Hindus with

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almost 34 per cent of women staying behind in Kerala without their husbands. Whereas Muslim WLBs consist of 50.7 per cent of the total population of WLBs, the Christians are only a mere 15.3 per cent. The proportion of WLB is high in Malappuram district, where the region is characterized by a high Muslim population. In Kerala a large number of Muslims are migrating mainly to Gulf countries to find better employment by leaving their families behind. Migration among Christians takes place normally to Western countries, where they are well educated and economically stable, and many of them take their wives along with them. The same could be the reason for the highest proportion of women migrants among the Christians and the lowest among the Muslims, and they can be seen concentrated mostly in the southern districts. This, by contrast, reflects the interreligious variation (Zachariah and Rajan, 2001). Moreover, a major portion of the Muslim emigrants are in the category of unskilled and semi-skilled workers. Only a few belong to the category of skilled workers. A majority of them were under poor economic conditions at the time of migration and were bound with a low educational status. Out of this population, only a small group possessed professional qualifications.

WLBs by age The proportion of women migrants decreases steadily with age in the case of emigrants as well as out-migrants. The women in Kerala who stay behind are highest in the age group of 25–29 with the percentage being almost around 23 per cent. Women beyond age 35 mostly stay with their husbands, hence justifying the relatively young age of WLBs in Kerala (see Figure 6.1).

Educational attainment of WLBs Most of the WLBs have completed their secondary level of education, and the highest number of WLBs fall in the age groups of 25–29 and 30–34, with the proportion being around 23 per cent and 18 per cent, respectively (see Figure 6.2). Around 30 per cent have a college degree that fall in the age group of 25–29. Altogether, almost 63 per cent of WLBs have completed their secondary education and around 23 per cent have finished their college degree. A very low proportion of the WLB population is illiterate. Thus, female emigrants from Kerala were highly educated, not only

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with respect to the general population of the state, but also with respect to the emigrants from the other sex (Zachariah and Rajan, 2001). They are relatively better educated than women in the general population, but their average educational attainment is lower than that of female emigrants or female out-migrants. Another fact to be noted is that in younger age groups, the educational qualifications of GWs were higher than those of men, where the label of ‘Gulf migrant’ brought status to the family (Zachariah, Mathew and Rajan, 2003). 25

23.1

20

18.4

17.5 16.1

15

11.3

10 5 0

6.9 3.9

2.8

15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49

50+

Figure 6.1 WLB by age, 2013 Source: Calculated by the authors based on the Kerala Migration Survey 2013 conducted by the authors.

40.0 35.0 30.0 25.0 20.0 15.0 10.0 5.0 0.0 15-19

20-24 25-29 30-34 Less than primary Diploma and others

35-39

40-44 45-49 Upper primary Secondary

50+

Figure 6.2 Educational qualifications of WLBs by their age, 2013 Source: Calculated by the authors based on the Kerala Migration Survey 2013 conducted by the authors.

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Impact of migration on WLBs Remittances Money transfers by migrants to their spouses or other people in countries of origin have been to a great extent perceived by governments as vital tools for lessening household neediness. The effect of a family member’s migration on those who stay behind can be either positive or negative, depending on individual circumstances. Although remittances are a potentially important means of easing family budget constraints and alleviating poverty, the most vulnerable populations may be hurt by a family member’s migration (Demurger, 2015). Gender not only impacts the variables of migration but also influences the amount, recurrence, and usage of the remittances being sent by migrants to their homes. Some of the major effects of emigration on a WLB and her household are caused by an increase in income brought about by the remittances that the emigrants send back home. In almost 70.5per cent of cases, the husbands sent money in their wives’ names. The remittances are very large compared to the income that the WLB was accustomed to before her husband’s emigration. The receipt of such large amounts brings with it many benefits, as well as a few problems. An increase in income leads to several changes in their lifestyles and consumption patterns (Zachariah, Mathew and Rajan, 2001a, 2001b, 2003). Changes would be discernible in ownership of land, housing and household amenities, the nutritional and health status of the members of the family, social status as reflected in the relationship of the family and the community, and the quality and quantity of education of their children. Women who had earlier been accustomed to a protected lifestyle are called upon to take charge of a number of household tasks. Women who had been accustomed to handling large sums of money would become responsible for the financial management of the household. They would be required to open bank accounts and approach public offices for a variety of purposes. Women who succeed in taking on the additional responsibilities develop new expertise and grow in self-confidence, become more independent, and rise in social status. Those who fail to rise to the occasion incur the displeasure of their husbands and other members of the family and even develop social and psychological problems. Thus, the impact of migration on women can be either positive or negative or both depending on her ability and background as well as the family environment in which she is placed.

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In only 22 per cent of cases, the remittances are sent in the name of the migrant’s parents. These are instances where the WLB might be young or new to the household, generally too early to manage the financial situation. Entrusting management of remittances in other cases irrespective of the WLB’s age is very rare. On the other hand, three out of four WLBs receive remittances in their name, indicating the financial autonomy they receive in the absence of their husbands. The average remittance per WLB was Rs. 75,000 in 2014. In cases where other family members are the recipients of remittances and not the wives, the average amount is Rs. 72,000 per annum. The mode of transfer of money is generally by bank, MoneyGram, Western Union, UAE Exchange, other financial institutions, through relatives/friends going on leave, etc. Nearly 82.2 per cent of money was transferred through commercial banks in 2014, which demonstrates its reliability over other unauthorized channels. Transactions through MoneyGram or other financial institutions were almost negligible. Fuel used for cooking There is an evident change in the lifestyle of the households of emigrants, as the remittances sent to home countries lead to a better standard of living. There are few prominent changes in lifestyle of the WLBs, but one of them is the kind of fuel used for cooking –L.P. gas (LPG) instead of kerosene or electricity. Very few, around 38 per cent, use wood as the main source of cooking in Kerala. Most wellto-do households use LPG, and the proportion using LPG for cooking is 58.5 per cent. Possession of property by the WLB In matters of property, the women generally do not enjoy the privilege of possessing any kind of property in their names. Nearly 64.9 per cent of the women left behind do not own property, and a meagre 12.7 per cent have it in their own name. Of these, the property is mostly in the form of land (62.8 per cent) and rarely in the forms of houses (31.9 per cent). The next highest frequency of property ownership attributes to the women who own property jointly with their husbands, with 17.8 per cent. This indicates that the presence of a WLB does not make much of a difference in terms

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of possession of property by households. It is not a priority on the list of items that emigrant families deem necessary (Zachariah and Rajan, 2012). Communication between a WLB and her husband Based on the earlier migration surveys, it is evident that migration results in considerable loneliness for both the husband and wife. According to the 2014 KMS, 98.1 per cent of WLBs keep in touch with their husbands while they are abroad. Very few of them have actually visited their husband’s country of employment. Nearly 94 per cent of WLBs have never visited the Gulf where their husbands work. About 6 per cent of them visited the country, staying for a week and sometimes for longer periods. Almost all WLBs use different means of communication, but a phone call is the principal means. Nearly 92 per cent of them have their own cell phones. The availability of technology has obviously simplified and resolved the gap in communication, with the frequency of contact sustaining a daily routine. Communication via emails or letters or even webcams is rare. Almost two-thirds of the WLBs’ husbands contact their wives on a daily basis as compared to 47.5 per cent of women who take initiative to keep in touch. However, even though very few WLBs actually visit their husband’s working place overseas (nearly 88.5 per cent had never done so), when they do, the period of stay is usually as long as three months (for 28.7 per cent of the women). One-week visits are rare, but 24.9 per cent of the WLBs stay for eight days to one month, 19.9 per cent put up for four months to almost a year, and only 18.2 per cent of them stay for more than a year. Source of income Most of the women left behind have remittances as a source of income. A small percentage of women have salaries, agriculture income, and rental income. Most of the GWs have full control over their income. A very large proportion of a WLB’s income goes to day-to-day household expenses. Some money is saved but almost 25 per cent is kept for emergencies. Very rarely is the money used for purchasing durables or ornaments or any other physical thing. And hardly 11.4 per cent of WLBs have a subscription to a chit fund.

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As evident from the lack of dependence on others for controlling and managing their day-to-day household responsibilities, most of the WLBs (around 70 per cent) are independent in handling expenses. Surprisingly, receiving instructions from a husband is reported to be very rare as compared to receiving instructions from in-laws or parents (23.5 per cent and 7.2 per cent respectively). Autonomy of WLBs The separation of a WLB and her emigrant husband makes her independent and autonomous with the passing years. In the absence of the husband, most of the decision-making responsibility falls on the wives, if not on the other members of the family. Issues related to the healthcare of family members and purchase of daily household needs depend on WLBs in most cases, while 34.3 per cent of the decisions related to the usage of household money are made jointly by a WLB and husband (see Table 6.1). Even major household purchases and decisions to visit family/relatives are joint decisions of husband and wives. However, nearly 53.9 per cent of WLBs do not have a say in the usage of their own money. Regarding going out of the house, autonomy is dependent on the place WLBs go. Most enjoy the liberty to go to the market alone, pay the bills independently, and even visit places like schools all alone. But when it comes to visiting hospitals, more than 55 per cent have to depend on someone else. It is the same with recreation – only 10 per cent are allowed to go alone (see Table 6.2). Approximately 60 per cent of WLBs have savings accounts, but only 1.4 per cent of WLBs have taken out loans for starting businesses of their own. It is more likely that they are compelled to Table 6.1 WLBs’ dependence on others as revealed by the KMS 2013 (per cent) Decision by

HH money Healthcare Major HH Purchase of Visit to family/ usage purchase Daily HH needs relative

WLB 30.0 Husband 26.1 WLB and 34.3 husband jointly Others 9.7

54.9 17.3 23.7

30.4 21.8 36.0

49.5 12.0 21.0

27.1 23.2 40.5

4.1

11.8

17.5

9.2

Source: Calculated by the authors based on the Kerala Migration Survey 2013 conducted by the authors.

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Table 6.2 Decisions to go places, KMS 2013 (per cent) Decision

Market

Paying bills

Hospital

Recreation

School

Alone Only with someone else Not at all

44.8 35.1 20.1

41.9 34.2 23.9

39.4 56.7 3.8

10.0 41.9 48.1

52.3 35.5 12.2

Source: Calculated by the authors based on the Kerala Migration Survey 2013 conducted by the authors.

Table 6.3 Problems felt by WLBs due to husband’s absence, 2013 Problems

Per cent

Loneliness Added responsibility Insecurity Health of parents/in-laws Bringing up children Financial adjustments Others

71.3 71.1 27.7 32.1 30.6 33.8 5.7

Source: Calculated by the authors based on the Kerala Migration Survey 2013 conducted by the authors.

focus more on household matters due to a lack of support than that they lack the entrepreneurial spirit altogether. Problems and prospects When women were asked about the problems they faced after their husbands left, they referred to their major problems as ‘loneliness’ and ‘added responsibilities’ as shown in Table 6.3. More than 70 per cent of WLBs reported both loneliness and additional responsibilities as the main problems, while more than 30 per cent of WLBs reported financial adjustments and bringing up children. Relationships with in-laws were reported to be quite satisfactory with more than half of the WLB population reporting normal relationships and another 47 per cent reporting excellent relationships. In the very rare cases (2 per cent) where relationships with a husband’s parents were found to be strained, the main reasons were related to the disciplining of children (44 per cent) and financial issues (40 per cent).

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If a person in the household became sick, the responsibility of taking care of the sick was shared by the members of the family. But the 2013 survey observed that in most cases the responsibility fell on the WLB, with 35.2 per cent. However, other WLBs reported support from their parents (22.2 per cent) and in-laws (19.1 per cent), and the remaining 23.6 per cent received support from neighbours, friends, and other relatives. Not many reported problems in bringing up their children, but for those who did, the nature of the problems was generally related to disobedience (11.5 per cent), disinterest in studies (10.5 per cent), and mishandling money (6.5 per cent). During the survey, all WLBs were asked to state their good and bad experiences of their life that were due to their husband’s absence. Overwhelmingly, the best good experience was the financial benefits. After the financial benefits, most of them opined their status with relatives had been improved, and also their lifestyles (Table 6.4). By contrast, more than 68 per cent listed loneliness and isolation, followed by heavy responsibilities, as serious bad experiences. Other bad experiences were children’s health problems, anxiety, and fear, and worries about the future/studies of children.

Table 6.4 Good and bad experiences of WLBs due to husband’s absence, 2013 Good experiences

Bad experiences

1 2 3 4 5

Financial benefits Improved lifestyle Improved status with relatives Cleared loans and debts Constructed house

78.0 45.0 44.9 27.4 23.0

6

Best education for children

19.9

7 8 9

Helped relatives/in-laws Bought gold ornaments Purchased land

19.9 15.2 9.1

10

Greater exposure to outside world

8.2

Loneliness and isolation Heavy responsibilities Anxiety and fear Children’s health problems Worries about the future of children Dependence on outside help Insecurity Disposal of property Disarray in household matters Legal disputes

68.3 63.5 26.5 27.7 24.4 22.1 21.1 7.6 7.2 2.2

Source: Calculated by the authors based on the Kerala Migration Survey 2013 conducted by the authors.

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Emigration prospects In order to assess the opinions of WLBs about the prospects for continued emigration to the Gulf, all WLBs were asked the following question: If you have a daughter of marriageable age, who would you like her to get married to: • • •

a person working in Kerala, or a person working in India, but outside Kerala, or a person working outside India?

A whopping proportion of the WLBs (83.4 per cent) reported that they would like their daughters to get married to a person working in Kerala. The second preference was for grooms working outside India (10.4 per cent), and very few (6.2 per cent) wanted their daughters to get married in India but outside Kerala. In spite of the differences in salary and living standards, most WLBs do not want their daughters to get married to people settled outside Kerala. This reaction can be inferred to be in response to the loneliness and the trauma of separation that these WLBs have felt in their married life. They think a job in Kerala might be a brighter possibility for happier life.

Conclusion Over the years, more and more women have been joining their husbands abroad. This change is attributed to well-educated men who are better employed and are thus able to afford to raise a family there. Others reasons include educated wives who find work abroad and a better environment to raise a family. According to KMS 2013, it was observed that unlike with emigrants, there were many more married women than married men among the internal migrants. This implies that the husbands of female out-migrants emigrating from India left their wives in the states where they were working previously. Also, the proportion of men left behind (MLB) was lower than the proportion of women left behind (WLB) in the state. Comparing religious affiliation, the highest proportion of WLBs was of Muslim women. Kerala has a relatively young population of WLBs, between 25 and 29 years of age. Around 30 per cent of

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these women have college degrees and almost 63 per cent have completed their secondary education. A very low proportion of the WLB population is illiterate. Historically, Kerala was the leading source state for migrants going to the Gulf countries. Unlike the rest of India, Kerala is experiencing an ageing population– this too impacts migration. The chapter further explains that in 70.5 per cent of cases, remittances were sent to the womenfolk who managed the finances at home. This gives autonomous power to the female head of a household in decision-making. But most of these women did not hold property in their name. It was observed that more women held property jointly with their husbands than alone. The advancement in technology has helped migrant members to stay in touch with their families back home. Problems of loneliness and added responsibilities haunt the women left behind as they have to singlehandedly take care of the household. This could be the reason why a majority of these women preferred that their daughters marry someone within the state.

References Agasty, Mahendra P. and Rabi N. Patra. 2014. Migration of Labour and Left-Behind Women: A Case Study of Rural Odisha. American International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Volume 7, No. 1, Pp. 28–33. Bindhulakshmi, Pattadath. 2010. Gender Mobility and State Response: Indian Domestic Workers in the UAE. Pp. 163–181 in S. Irudaya Rajan (ed.). India Migration Report 2010: Governance and Labour Migration. Routledge, New Delhi. Demurger, Sylvie. 2015. Migration and Families Left Behind. IZA World of Labor, Volume 144. Desai, Sonalde, and Manjistha Banerji. 2008. Negotiated Identities: Male Migration and Left-Behind Wives in India. Journal of Population Research, Volume 25, No. 3, Pp. 337–355. Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. 1992. Overcoming Patriarchal Constraints: The Reconstruction of Gender Relations among Mexican Immigrant Women and Men. Gender and Society, Volume 6, No. 3, Pp. 393–415. Jetley, Surinder. 1987. Impact of Male Migration on Rural Females. Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 22, No. 44, Pp. 47–53. McEvoy, Jamie P. 2008. Male Out-Migration and the Women Left Behind: A Case Study of a Small Farming Community in Southeastern Mexico. All Graduates Theses and Dissertations. 179. http://digitalcommons.usu. edu/etd/179

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Percot, Marie and Rajan, S.I. 2007. Female Emigration from India: A Case Study of Nurses. Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 42, No. 4, Pp. 318–325. Rajan, Sebastian Irudaya. 2015. India Migration Report 2015: Gender and Migration. Routledge, New Delhi. Sebastian Irudaya Rajan and K.C. Zachariah. 2017. Kerala Migration Survey 2016: New Evidences. Chapter 18, Pp. 289–305 in S. Irudaya Rajan (ed.). India Migration Report 2017. Forced Migration. Routledge. Roy, Archana K. and Parveen Nangia. 2005. Reproductive Health Status of Wives Left Behind by Male Out-Migrants: A Study of Rural Bihar, India. Pp. 209–241 in S. Jatrana, M. Toyota, and B. Yeoh (eds.). Migration and Health in Asia. Routledge, London. Thimothy, Rakkee. 2013. Mobility of Women Workers from South Asia to the Gulf: Stakeholders Responses. Pp. 296–309 in S. Irudaya Rajan (ed.). India Migration Report 2013: Social Costs of Migration. Routledge, New Delhi. Ullah, Ahsan A.K.M. 2017. Male Migration and Left Behind Women: Bane or Boon? Environment and Urbanisation ASIA, Volume 8, No. 1, Pp. 59–73. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien, E.T. Mathew and S. Irudaya Rajan. 2001a. Impact of Migration on Kerala’s Economy and Society. International Migration, Volume 39, No. 1, Pp. 63–88. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien, E.T. Mathew and S. Irudaya Rajan. 2001b. Social, Economic and Demographic Consequences of Migration in Kerala. International Migration, Volume 39, No. 2, Pp. 43–72. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien, E.T. Mathew and S. Irudaya Rajan. 2003. Dynamics of Migration in Kerala: Determinants, Differentials and Consequences. Orient Longman Private Limited, Hyderabad. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien and S. Irudaya Rajan. 2001. Gender Dimensions of Migration in Kerala: Macro and Micro Evidences. Asia Pacific Population Journal, Volume 16, No. 3, Pp. 47–70. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien and S. Irudaya Rajan. 2012. A Decade of Kerala’s Gulf Connection. Orient Blackswan, New Delhi. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien and S. Irudaya Rajan. 2014. Researching International Migration: Lessons from the Kerala Experience. Routledge, New Delhi. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien and S. Irudaya Rajan. 2016a. Kerala Migration Study 2014. Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 51, No.6, Pp. 66–71. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien and S. Irudaya Rajan. 2016b. Emigration and Remittances: Results from the Sixth Kerala Migration Survey. Chapter 16, Pp. 238–254 in S. Irudaya Rajan (ed.). India Migration Report 2016: Gulf Migration. Routledge, Abingdon, UK.

Chapter 7

International migration and impact of remittances on left behind wives A case study of the Doaba region of Punjab Atinder Pal Kaur

A central characteristic of people is their apparent movement from one station to some other place for their sustenance. Migration represents an important dimension and family remittances constitute a major agent in integrating societies in the worldwide setting, both economically and socially. An individual’s migration is not his sole decision; rather, the decision is rationally motivated by the thought of the welfare of the rest of the members of the family and hence is made collectively (Lucas and Stark, 1985). This thought is further catalyzed by ‘push and pull’ factors that help a family to make the decision. The factors that push an individual to migrate to another country include poverty, socio-political turmoil, etc., and the pull factor of the destination that lures him is the advanced level of economic development of that country. Here, remittances are utilized so as to maximize potential economic gain and minimize the scope of economic risks (Kanaiaupuni, 2000; Massey, 1990; Massey and Parrado, 1994; Taylor, 1987; Stark, 1984). It can be deduced that migration has become a survival strategy for the left behind families to overcome economic hardships. Such migration creates transition in the family structure, bringing changes to the lives of those women who are left behind. In most cases international migration results in the absence of adult men from families. Consequently, the women who are left behind have to adjust to the new situation, hence their role and status often undergoes a massive change (Hadi, 2001). Many studies that focus upon migration establish the fact that the migration of a husband has a positive effect on a left behind woman’s life. These women enjoy autonomy and independence and don the hat of a decision maker (Yabiku et al., 2011). Abadan-Unat

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(1977), in his study of Turkish women, asserted that the women who remain behind have greater decision-making power in the family structure, especially those women who live in nuclear families. Results from various studies in places such as Mexico (De Snyder, 1993; Radel and Schmook, 2009), Morocco (Sadiqi and Ennaji, 2004), Armenia and Guatemala (Menjíver and Agadjanian, 2007) and Bangladesh (Hadi, 2001) highlight qualities like greater decisionmaking, more management duties, and autonomy among left behind women. In the absence of a husband or other male in the family, women enjoy increased freedom and autonomy in managing their households (Khafagy, 1982; Gulati, 1983; Colfer, 1985; Shah and Arnold, 1985). The prolonged absence of a male further encourages women to perform duties in managing the household (Gulati, 1983) while growing independently; this helps them to develop new interests and often results in the discovery of hidden potentials (Go et al., 1983; Gardner, 1995; Hadi, 1999). Gulati (1993) found that the absence of a husband for a long period of time actually helps women regain their health, as the inter-birth interval is widened and therefore they are able to take better care of their children. Gardner (1995) points out that in nuclear families, women have better control over domestic affairs when compared with extended families having in-laws. Sometimes the autonomy and greater decision-making is instead diluted to other male members and community members (Mc Evoy, 2008). Especially in extended families, other family members or male members may have considerable influence in the absence of the migrant husband (Abadan-Unat, 1977; Haan, 1997; Desai and Banerji, 2008). Such kinds of situations occur especially in extended families or in a culture where women are not usually given much freedom of movement (Haan, 1997). While it is believed that greater autonomy for women is overall a beneficial outcome, at the same time several negative impacts of male migration on the women left behind have also come to the fore(Gordon, 1981). In the absence of men, the responsibilities of women increase drastically, as she has to step into the shoes of her husband while taking care of her own tasks, duties, roles, and responsibilities simultaneously (Khaled, 1995; Boehm, 2008; Grawert, 1992). Women among the ‘patriarchal societies’, especially in migrant families, form a part of household strategies such as family reunification and family formation (De Hass and Rooij, 2010). Women have a limited role, and emphasis is given to household chores and rearing and caring of children. In a study of

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Lesotho, some women who remained behind reported higher strain and stress due to increased management responsibilities (Gordon, 1981). Menjíver and Agadjanian (2007), in their comparative study of women belonging to Armenia and Guatemala who were left behind, point out that women may take on additional responsibilities, but that this does not help bridge the gap of gender inequality. Another negative effect is that women’s dependency on remittances, which are received at irregular intervals and in limited amounts, increase (Kothari, 2003). Prolonged absence of men may result in a higher possibility of divorce (Sadiqi and Ennaji, 2004), family disintegration (De Snyder, 1993), more physical work (Engel, 1986), loneliness (Zachariah et al., 2001), and a decrease in social support and social networks (Roy and Nangia, 2005; Kothari, 2003). Radel and Schmook (2009) point out that having increased household responsibilities does not necessarily mean the coming of egalitarian gender ideologies. In other words, even if women experience an increase in autonomy, there is no guarantee that the hardships they face would vanish – for example, gender inequalities they experience at the household and societal level due to strict patriarchal and societal norms which control women’s mobility in every sphere. It is clear from the literature that the impact could be mixed, as male migration has both positive and negative effects on the lives of those women who remain behind. The present study mainly focuses upon migration of men from Punjab and the long-lasting effects on the women who are left behind. This study has an economic tinge, as it reflects upon the effects of remittances on women left behind due to prolonged absence of men from the home. It examines the impact of remittances upon the families, especially women, where the male members or breadwinners live outside the country. Women’s roles in household decisionmaking and their relations with other family members are explored to understand the larger impact of migration on gender relations. The study was conducted among the Punjabi migrant families in the Doaba region. The Doaba region is a part of Punjab that comprises four districts: Hoshiarpur, Nawanshahar (Shahid Bagat Singh Nagar), Jalandhar, and Kapurthala. Two villages of the Doaba region were chosen purposely, namely, Boolpur and Burewal. These villages were selected because they are home to migrant families. Castesin the villages belong to the agricultural community but still have differences that crop up due to disparities in relation to agricultural holdings and cultivation. Most of the communities in the

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villages were vegetable cultivators. However, Jats were big agriculturalists who cultivated wheat and rice. They had comparatively larger land holdings. Men from both the villages were migrating abroad due to economic reasons. Village people were economically not that rich, and changes in cropping patterns forced them to search for new occupations, for which they headed towards Arab countries, especially to United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Those migrant families were from landowning communities; their problem lay in the minds of their children, who were not willing to work on their own land. Most of them wanted to migrate to foreign countries, mainly the UK, USA, Canada, and Europe. The majority of them knew people who already resided abroad. This made it easy for them to get general know-how about the place and find available work first, and then plan their migration accordingly. Due to this migration, most of the women were forced to stay behind without their husbands. The data was collected through purposive sampling of migrant households in the selected two villages. Data was collected through the qualitative method, and six case studies and four semi-structured interviews were conducted during fieldwork. Non-participant observation was also done to understand the phenomenon of migration among both the villages. The study explores how lone women feel about themselves. Certain peculiar changes in the family structure can be noticed, like more autonomy, independent decisions related to money matters, etc. All this, when accompanied with free will, often comes as a breath of fresh air for the womenfolk. After their husbands have left, they become head of the household and single-handedly make all the decisions related to their children’s education and other such economic affairs. However, the patriarchal power still remains in the hands of their husband’s family, their in-laws. The researcher attempts to compare the levels of freedom that women of both castes attain while utilizing the remittances sent by their husbands.

Migration among Punjabis and status of women Migration started a long time back, in particular after the annexation of Punjab1 by Britishers in 1849. Due to the paucity of systematic study, it is very difficult to trace the history of Punjabi migrants. Most of the migration of earlier days that took place in Punjab was largely confined within the boundaries of present-day India. The

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history of Punjabi migration can be confined to two distinct periods: the colonial period (from 1849 to 1947) and the post-colonial period (from1947 until the present). It is important to mention here that there was once a powerful tradition of recruitment of Punjabi men to the British Army in the Majha2 region during the colonial period. The pioneers of Punjabi immigration from the Majha, Malwa,3 and Doaba4 regions began to dominate, exceeding migration from the Amritsar, Firozpur, Ludhiana, Hoshiarpur, Nawanshaher, and Jalandhar districts by constituting the core zone of emigration. Towards the end of the nineteenth century Punjabis were identified in Australia, Fiji, and New Zealand (Jayaram, 2011). During the first two decades after independence, most of the migration took place from the Doaba region: the post-colonial phase is marked by a sharp increase in the international migration of Punjabis, in which Jat Sikhs were dominant, followed by Ramgarhias, Chamars, and Ad-dharmis (Ballard and Ballard, 1977). The representation of Jats and Chamars has been noted among Punjabis in North America, the Middle East, and eastern Europe (Juergensmeyer, 1982; Verma, 2002; Taylor and Singh, 2013). In the contemporary times of globalization, migration of skilled workers has started taking place, mostly to Australia and Canada, and now migrants are not from any particular division of Punjab. Rather, this trend has gripped almost the entire Punjab (Rajan and Percot, 2011). Bertolani (2008) has mentioned representation of three main caste groups, Jat, Ravidasis, and Lohana, in France. Jat Sikhs are the most economically powerful, politically/socially influential, and occupationally privileged group within Punjab and the ‘dominant caste’5 (Jodkha, 2002), owning over 80 per cent of available agricultural land, and they are present in dominating numbers amongst migrants also (Jodkha, 2002; Ram, 2007). The significance of overseas migration to the economic and status dominance of Jat Sikhs has increased in recent times (Taylor and Singh, 2013). There is more migration to Gulf countries from these villages because less money is required to migrate. Even other lower castes are also migrating, and their main destination is also Gulf countries. A large number of houses belong to left behind families, which include left behind wives and their children; these are either joint families or nuclear families. The Punjabi society is a patriarchal society based upon patrilineal norms. Married women stay at their in-laws’ homes and have limited say in the household and limited access to the outside world.

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Gender inequality prevails among the Punjabi societies in relation to the public and private sphere. All the household decisions are made by elder male members of the family and by the migrant husbands. The participation of women in the economic decision-making process, especially related to purchase of property, land, household, agriculture, and business, remains low. She has to rear children and care for them; she has to handle all domestic chores, including cattle rearing to fulfil the milk needs of the family. She has to cook food for the whole family thrice a day. She also does extra cattle rearing, milk, and churning of milk to produce butter for family consumption. Sometimes she goes to fields to gather fodder for the cattle and brings the uncut fodder back home on her head. By contrast, male members always enjoy freedom both in public and private spheres. The movement of women is restricted within the four walls of her home. But the absence of the male member and the inflow of remittances result in certain changes in the family sphere. Because of the man’s absence, the woman becomes the nodal head holding a strong grip over all the household affairs, thus disrupting the age-old patriarchal norms prevalent in the Punjabi society.

Women’s position in joint and nuclear families As discussed earlier, Punjabi society is a closed society where a joint family system has prevailed for centuries. The newlywed brides usually stay with their in-laws, including brothers-in-law and sisters-inlaw, under the same roof. There is no separate kitchen; all members share the same kitchen and it is the responsibility of the bride or married women to cook food for everyone. Even in the families of migrants, the left behind women, whose husbands have gone overseas, cook food for everyone and do all household chores. Their work sphere is limited to household chores and they don’t participate in economic matters, the reason being that in joint families, remittances are sent to eldest male member of the family. Many women in joint families have revealed that they do not have any right to go out alone and deal in the public sphere. Even money received in the form of remittances from the husband is not under their control. These kinds of situations, in which women have to stay with in-laws, sometimes without economic security, give rise to unwanted tension which further leads to quarrels or fights, thus escalating the tension to a level where nuclear families are forced to

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come into existence. Most of the migrants’ houses are occupied by nuclear families, and an adjoining house belongs to the in-laws. This shows a nuclear household can be carved out of the main house for the peaceful coexistence of a migrant’s wife and his children with his parents, as this woman relates: I had love marriage and we stayed with our in-laws. But from last 3 years, I am staying alone in my own house with my son. I separated after my husband’s migration as the conflicts related to economic matters started. My in-laws shirked away their responsibilities of providing me all the basic necessities to lead a normal life. The excuse they cite is that they are already under huge burden of debt they had taken to help my husband migrate to another country. With no help coming from their side, I have learned to manage my home by myself. (35-year-old wife of a migrant) In-laws practice strict control over remittances and other household assets that they use for family welfare. In such cases the left behind wives suffer a lot and get very little or even no monetary help from in-laws. In-laws feel that only they have a right over economic remittances because the migrant son belongs to them. It does not end here; the in-laws put strict controls over their daughter-inlaw’s movement. As in-laws hold all the money under their control, the left behind woman requires their permission to go out to fetch necessary goods for herself. Normally, someone from the family accompanies her, and this person can be her mother-in-law, brotherin-law, or father-in-law. This restriction is akin to putting her inside a virtual jail and tying her with fetters woven with honour (izzat) of the family, as evident from the following account: When I need to go out, especially to market to purchase things such as me and my children’s clothes, slippers etc., I usually go with my mother-in-law or brother-in-law. Once when my son got sick and I wanted to go to town to look for better doctor, to my utter dismay, they denied. They asked me to take medicine from local hakim as he would charge less fee. In Punjabi families ‘aurat’ [woman] doesn’t have any right to go alone anywhere outside the home and she is not free enough to take her own decisions. Even though I am educated, I have done B.A. and B.Ed. but for them I still am an ‘Anparhaurat’ [illiterate

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woman]. You know ‘adami’ [the male] of the family rule over us. It feels as if I am bound by the shackles tied to my feet to keep me as a slave behind four walls of the home. (38-year-old wife of a migrant) The conservative mindset of Punjabi society and strict restrictions put over women’s mobility create friction amongst members of a joint family. In both the villages, many wives of those who have migrated prefer staying in a nuclear family with their children. Other members of the family maintain tight control over finances, which pushes the woman aside, sidelining her to the extent that she can’t claim even a penny from the remittances sent by her husband. Such nuisances create a rift in the joint family system, and this ends up dividing the family into two separate households and two nuclear families. Due to such unpleasant changes, the nuclear family system has been on the rise amongst almost all the migrants’ families, thereby proving that women prefer to stay alone rather than be tied to the joint family system. This is a blow to the old Punjabi culture and a family system that was known for its unity and strength.

Change in women’s household tasks, workload, and stress There is a noticeable change in the household tasks. Earlier, a woman’s area of work was limited to domestic household chores, rearing and caring of children, etc. She did not have any exposure to the outside world. But with the migration, women are now actively involved in the outside world as well. They not only manage their personal lives but also engross themselves in dealing with the public sphere. With the easy flow of remittances, they are now in a better position to make all household decisions and manage all things skilfully. This can be seen in the following narrative: My husband sends me Rs. 25,000 per month in my bank account. From that money I use Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 15,000 for routine monthly expenditure and it is my responsibility to manage everything. So what I do is divide all the money according to various necessities, as some amount is kept for buying gas cylinder, 2,500 for grocery, some amount for electricity bill, separate amount for children fee, 1,000 for scooter petrol,

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1,500 for milk expenditure. After all expenses are made I am usually left with 2,000 to 3,000 rupees extra from which I buy green vegetables. My husband doesn’t ask anything in relation to economic matters that makes it my prerogative to decide upon each and everything in my home. (41-year-old wife of a migrant) Once the women of a migrant’s family become active in both public and private spheres, they start handling both the spheres efficiently, but somehow this increases the burden upon them. Earlier their work was limited to household chores only and the man used to take care of the public sphere, but now all the workload falls upon the women due to the absence of their husbands. In such conditions, the woman has to manage both the spheres, and this leads to a stressful life, as revealed in the following account: My husband sends me 40,000 to 50,000 per month in my bank account, which is a joint account with my husband. I spend only 10,000 and try to save as much as I can. All responsibilities were handed over to me since the day he left. All decisions related to basic needs of house like groceries, gas cylinder, vegetables, tuition fee etc. everything is taken care of by me. But such responsibilities lead to sleepless nights and sometimes stressful days. As I always remain in fear that what would my husband say or how would he react if he learns that I have overspent? It is an uncounted burden that I am sharing. (32-year-old wife of a migrant) No doubt women are sharing burden of their household, but they also get freedom in both the public and private sphere. Another interesting fact that has been found is that for women of Jat caste, the area of work changes because of the availability of remittances. They are able to hire agricultural labour and household servants on their own. Their area of work has undergone a sea change from being limited to household chores to now supervising agricultural labour and other household servants. Women have become more authoritarian in approach and free from household chores. However, women who have smaller land holdings have drastically increased workloads. Not only do they handle all household chores, but they take care of agricultural land as well. The situation warrants it, as now the men are offshore searching for greener

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pastures, and at the backend the nuclear family has come into place. Women learn about agriculture while working in their fields, and this increases their first-hand knowledge about agricultural practices such as cultivation. This is clear from the following comment: All decisions related with agriculture are taken by me, which include what we sow, grow and cultivate. No doubt my husband guides me over our telephonic conversation which helps me a lot. During growth periods of crops, it is my duty to water the crops. Sometimes I visit the fields at night also. (40-year-old wife of a migrant) Changes in household tasks and in the way women handle their lives generate feelings of pride and self-confidence and make them feel independent. A close conversation with these women revealed that their morale now stands boosted when it comes to dealing with the world outside the home. The realization that they can manage well without their husbands often results in a feeling of equality in their minds, thus making them comfortable while talking or discussing with other male members of the village. This has helped them, to some extent, to shun the veil of ignorance and hesitance.

Role in family decision-making (women, husband, and in-laws) In Punjabi society all the major decisions of the family are always made by the eldest male member of the family. Women don’t have any right to speak in front of elders and thus their interference is minimal in relation to decision-making. But with the migration of a husband or male member, the autonomy of a woman increases. She now actively participates in both the private sphere and public sphere of family. But these changes have been noticed only in the nuclear families or extended families where women have become the head of the household. In the joint families, women are still under the subjugation of in-laws where they don’t have any right to make decisions or practice autonomy. The following comment clearly shows subjugation by in-laws: It is difficult to stay in joint family where you have unmarried sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, mother-in-law and fatherin-law and even grandmother-in-law. I am the eldest and their

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only daughter-in-law, so I have to take care of all the household chores by myself. If I raise demands in relation to household necessities, it becomes the main cause of quarrel, because all the remittances are under the control of my father-in-law and he takes all the decisions. In family, I can’t speak anything in front of him. In such circumstances I am forced to turn to my parents and this makes my head hang in shame. (39-year-old wife of a migrant) The above narration clearly shows that those women who are staying in a joint family have a problem of adjustment because their husbands are sending money to their parents’ account and the women don’t have any access to or right to such money. Mostly the joint family system is still prevalent. If a husband has migrated then other male members or relatives, for example an elder male member like a father-in-law or uncle, becomes head of the household. Peasant families are conservative in nature, and women don’t have any say in any sphere of household tasks. During the study, it was observed that those women who are staying in a nuclear family have tasted independence to an extent, even though a few matters still come under their husband’s control. Though they are confidently doing all household and outside work, the fact that permissions are still granted by their husbands resonates in the following narratives: It is not easy to stay without husband; I have to shoulder a lot of responsibilities which a normal individual can’t even imagine. For financial matters, I have to depend on my husband who sends remittances from abroad since he migrated and thus, still he indirectly controls all economic matters and I can’t spend a single penny without his permission. The budget of the family is always prior discussed with my husband and then I am allowed to spend money in accordance with our discussion. But sometimes when budget of family shoots up, my tension levels also escalate, giving me sleepless nights. (37-year-old wife of a migrant) Though, I am very happy that I am handling both Ander and Bahar de kaam [household and outdoor chores]. But such things create tension and overload in my mind. No doubt we all women whose husbands have migrated try to give our best in all spheres, but this is Doguna Bhar [dual burden] on us.

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We have to do task serving as both Adami and Janani [male and female]. We have to prove our mettle similar to that of an Adami [male] of the household. (38-year-old wife of a migrant) It does not end here; husbands and their respective wives normally make decisions on the basis of consultation and mutual agreement. Migrant women receive a call daily from their husbands and it is during this conversation that they discuss all matters of concern from both the public and private spheres. All the major decisions of the family are made by them on the basis of mutual consent: what the family budget will be, how much to save, how much to spend on marriage shagun (gifts) on relatives, etc. No doubt a woman has authority in family matters, but she cannot spend without the consent of her husband. This can be considered as either an obligation to her husband or paying respect to him as a male member of the family. Physical distance is no hindrance in believing that he is still the head of the household. However, women can exercise some power, as evident in this account: Responsibilities [with laugh] It is me, who takes all family decisions. He sends me pessabahar ton [money from abroad]. There are no restrictions imposed on me by my in-laws or other relatives and not even on my family matters. I have purchased TV, fridge, cooler and scooter with that pessa [money]. Regarding shaguns [monetary gifts], I needn’t to ask my adami [husband]. Still I consult with him because it is good to decide after mutual consent because after all he is the bread-earner of the family. But final decision related to children’s education, household expenditure and all other things is mine only. He has given me this much freedom. (47-year-old wife of a migrant) During interviews and observation one thing became clear: among joint families, those women whose husbands migrated just after marriage are still treated as outsiders and are dominated by their in-laws, which demonstrates that they have not fully accepted the marriage. But the scene is different where the woman is old and has her own extended family comprising her sons, daughters-in-law,

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and grandchildren, has complete authority over remittances, and is regarded as head of the household. As other members of the family are dependent upon the migrant’s wife for monetary matters, they obey her decisions without questioning. One woman chuckled while sharing: Madam, I am head of the household. Though I have sons but still all major decisions are taken by me. My husband transfers money into my account, so it is me who decides how much is to be spent and on what [with laughter]. Even my Gharwala [husband] supports my decisions. (50-year-old wife of a migrant) Migration among male members brings self-confidence to left behind wives. They become more independent, autonomous, and fearless to make family decisions to any extent. No doubt, those women staying in joint families face restrictions, but those who live in nuclear families or are in old age enjoy utmost freedom. This is sort of a new cultural development in Punjabi society. Earlier women or wives did not have the right of decision-making, but slowly and gradually the system of Punjabi families is changing. In contrast to joint families, in nuclear families women have authority and power of decision-making related to minor issues. Even the migrants’ wives who are staying in nuclear families admit that not living with their in-laws has changed their lives for the better.

Remittances as emancipation of women? No doubt migrants’ wives face many kinds of household problems, such as being overburdened with responsibility, a dual workload, stress, and tension, but still positive changes of growth can be clearly seen in the lives of the migrants’ wives. Women are constrained to remain behind four walls; they have no movement out of the home, as mentioned in earlier narratives which show that those women who stay in joint families are still accompanied by one of their family members. By contrast, women who stay alone or in a joint family where no other male member is present act as head of the family while simultaneously taking care of both the public and private spheres. Urged by necessity, changes have been

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seen among the migrants’ families, as is clear from the following narrative: All the groceries of the household are bought by me. I usually go out by myself on my scooter and don’t feel the need to ask someone to accompany me. My husband has full trust on me, and he permits me to go out alone. Now all household responsibilities are taken care of by me and I enjoy performing these duties. (40-year-old wife of a migrant) Another interesting fact that has come to the fore is that the mobility of women in the public sphere has increased. As the husband is not around, someone needs to volunteer to do household tasks and maintain the household properly. The void that is created by the husband or by male migration is filled by migrants’ wives themselves in a few cases. With the easy flow of remittances, it becomes more convenient for them to do outdoor chores. Now their mobility is no longer restricted inside four walls; rather, they have become independent and are courageously making all decisions related to money matters on their own. The control over remittances ignites the thought of self-dependency. The woman becomes an authoritative figure and hence everyone in the family obeys her. Migrants’ wives are making decisions on how much money should be spent on which area. Women’s participation in all money matters has increased and men’s participation is gradually seeing a decreasing trend due to their long stays abroad. Moreover, when migrant husbands come during holiday visits, it is only for two months, during which they do not exercise their authority over their wives because of the fact that while they were away, it was their better halves who managed everything. So, in a way, the female partner is in a better position to make decisions even during their husband’s short stay. This is clearly shown in the following comment: Mera Banda [my husband or man] came for two months holiday for our daughter’s marriage. He had come after three years. He clearly stated that I don’t know about your system here so, you have a free-hand and do whatever you want to do. I will provide you all the money [chuckles]. All responsibilities were taken care of by me and I was the one who

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performed all the shaguns [rituals of marriage] at my daughter’s marriage. (51-year-old wife of a migrant) Even in other cases where husbands have control over economic matters, and where wives need to take permission in all financial matters, the trend of seeking prior permission is on the decline because it is difficult to ask a migrant husband all the time. They are now consulted to give suggestions only on major decisions such as land and property purchase, etc. But in most cases, women themselves make all the decisions. It is difficult to rely upon men all the time. Sometimes, such as during emergencies, wives themselves handle all aspects of the situation. This leads to the question, if women can handle situations during an emergency, then why not in routine situations? So it can be said that the growth of women’s autonomy and independence is on the rise. Migration does have positive effects, making women the head of the household, a nodal decision maker who navigates both public and private spheres with ease, but somehow patriarchy and male dominance still exists among the Punjabi migrant families.

Conclusion In Punjabi society women are always symbolized as the honour, or izzat, of the family. This izzat remains under protection until the time of marriage, and marriage is regarded as ‘the be-all and end-all’ of their lives. A woman’s movement is restricted to the four walls of her home and her participation in family matters is very nominal. She is often regarded as a mute spectator who can listen but can’t speak and also can’t take part in major family decisions. But the migration of a husband to a developed country and the experience he garners from the new developed world, when shared with left behind families, brings changes to the homeland. A majority of those women who are staying in nuclear families have more authority and say in decision-making. Though their husbands try to curtail their freedom and sometimes even try to subjugate their own wives, this is declining with the passage of time. However, Boyle et al. (1998) emphasized that although women don’t intentionally perpetuate the institution of patriarchy, when migration is based on the needs of their husbands, they are unconsciously promoting the same. Due to migration, changes in the traditional patriarchal

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structure have now become a necessity for the family. There is a clear-cut shift of power from male to female in families of those who migrated. Somehow, either due to necessity or for any other reason, the structure of patriarchy has started losing its ground, and a shifting of the power centre from male to female has taken place in the families of migrants. Zachariah and Rajan (2015) made the observation that those women who earlier had a restricted lifestyle and couldn’t take charge of the household and outdoor work and were not exposed to the outside world before their husband’s migration are now pushed by circumstances to open their bank account and deal with public officers for a variety of services. This has instilled confidence in them and they have become more independent in their socio-economic sphere, which helps to improve their overall social status. Left behind women who are staying within joint families still face discrimination in receiving their share of the remittances and in other economic discussions also. Their in-laws still try to command the overall mindset of the women by controlling their movement and restricting them from making any economic decision, and such women still reel under the subjugation of their in-laws. But the scenario is completely different when women are staying in a nuclear family, as they get relatively more freedom in relation to financial matters. The absence of a male member at home creates a vacuum of authority and power. Migration brings a shift in the power structure from male towards female in the house. In the absence of the husband or other adult man, women enjoy increased freedom and autonomy in managing their household affairs (Khafagy, 1982; Gulati, 1983; Colfer, 1985; Shah and Arnold, 1985). Children also pay respect to their mothers by obeying them and by giving respect to the decisions they make. The absence of the masculine father figure has pushed the mother to take the role of the head of the household, and this is a positive sign of empowerment. A majority of women are staying at home and are not working outside because of the easy inflow of remittances in the family. Those women who are working as well become more independent in both public and private spheres and confidently manage both the spheres. The continued absence of men encourages women to take on all the major roles in managing the household, and this makes women grow independently, which helps them to develop new interests and also leads them to the discovery of hidden potential or talents in themselves (Go et al., 1983; Gardner, 1995; Hadi, 1999).

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The construction of new houses and learning to cope with advancements in technology has become part of women’s daily life. At the same time, migration also has some negative impacts on women’s lives. Many women are still kept under the subjugation of in-laws or their husbands, particularly in the joint family system, where they still face discrimination in all family matters, especially with respect to remittances. The members of the extended family may exercise greater control over left behind wives once their husbands migrate (Abadan-Unat, 1977; Haan, 1997). They experience freedom only after getting separated from their in-laws. Women generally experience more autonomy when they live separately from their in-laws. Several empirical studies have supported a link between migration and residential independence. In a study of wives married to migrant husbands in Egypt, Louhichi (1997) observed that after a husband’s migration, there was an increase in femaleheaded nuclear families as opposed to extended families. Desai and Banerji (2008) also pointed to residential independence as the key factor in linking men’s absence and an increase in women’s autonomy. However, some cases do exist where husbands still dominate and control the family economy even from a faraway place. The mobility of a woman is restricted by her husband; she needs permission before visiting her relatives and parents. In some cases, major family decisions are made only by the husband and the woman is still confined to kitchen work. Yabiku et al. (2010) made the observation that migrant husbands exert their authority over their wives in several small decisions and activities such as spending money, visiting friends, visiting parents, and going shopping. Any single one of these daily events is perhaps inconsequential, but when accumulated together, having to ask a husband’s permission to do them could impact a wife’s autonomy. Some other cases have come up where women feel overburdened due to extra responsibilities for which she is not yet mentally prepared. This can be a heavy burden that she carries that can hamper her mental and overall growth. Gordon (1981) reported that Lesotho’s left behind women remained at higher levels of strain and stress due to a burgeoning increase in their responsibilities, as in the absence of men, women become responsible not only for their own works but for their husbands’ tasks, duties, and roles as well (Khaled, 1995; Boehm, 2008; Grawert, 1992). But it also brings positive changes to the old family structure and to women’s lives, especially with respect to making decisions related to a woman’s

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own life and family matters. She becomes more independent and confident and triumphs in gaining autonomy in both the public and private spheres. Her area of work is no longer limited to four walls, but rather is expanded to the outer world as well, which was earlier unknown to her. Now she becomes head of the household and deals with all household affairs. This is a positive addition to her routine life that results in her overall growth. Other family members of the household also obey her decisions, recognizing her authority. This scenario changes her status in the family to that of a successful woman, which can be considered a path of empowerment for her. This new kind of development in her life also overburdens her with work and often leads her to a stressful life. However, the zeal of the left behind women is admirable, and it can be said that they are confidently handling all situations and trying to incorporate positive changes into their lives both for themselves and for their family members.

Notes 1 The term Punjab comprises two words: Punj, meaning five, and Ab, meaning water. It is called the Land of Five Rivers. But after the partition in 1947, it comprises only two and a half rivers: Sutlej, Ravi, and Bias. 2 Majha lies between the rivers Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej and is called the heartland of Punjab. 3 Malwa lies south of the river Sutlej. 4 Doaba lies between the rivers Beas and Sutlej. Do means two and Ab means water: its literal meaning is the land between two rivers. It is one of the most fertile regions of Punjab. 5 According to M.N. Srinivas, 1995, ‘dominant caste’ means when it is preponderant numerically and also in economic and political power.

References Abadan-Unat, Nermin. “Implications of migration on emancipation and pseudo-emancipation of Turkish women.” The International Migration Review 11, no. 1 (1977): 31–57. Ballard, Roger, and Catherine Ballard. “The Sikhs: The development of South Asian settlements in Britain.” Between Two Cultures (1977): 21–56. Bertolani, Barbara. The Sikh in Itlay: The Role of Ethnic and Family Network in Immigrantions and Social Integration Process. Switzerland: Lund University. (2008). Boehm, Deborah A. “‘Now I am a man and a woman!’ Gendered moves and migrations in a transnational Mexican community.” Latin American Perspectives 35, no. 1 (2008): 16–30.

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Boyle, Paul, Keith Halfacree and Robinso Vaughan. Exploring Contemporary Migration. London: Routledge. (1998). Colfer, Carol. “On circular migration from the destaff side.” In C. Helm (ed.), Labour Circulation and the Labour Process. London: Standing G. (1985). De Haas, Hein and Aleida Van Rooij. “Migration as emancipation? The impact of internal and international migration on the position of women left behind in rural Morocco.” Oxford Development Studies 38, no. 1 (2010): 43–62. Desai, Sonalde, and Manjistha Banerji. “Negotiated identities: Male migration and left-behind wives in India.” Journal of Population Research 25, no. 3 (2008): 337–355. De Snyder, V. Neily Salgado. “Family life across the border: Mexican wives left behind.” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 15, no. 3 (1993): 391–401. Engel Barbara Alpern. “The woman’s side: male out-migration and the family economy in Kostroma province.” Slavic Review 45, no. 2 (1986): 257–271. Gardner, Katy. Global Migrants, Local Lives: Travel and Transformation in Rural Bangladesh: Travel and Transformation in Rural Bangladesh. Clarendon Press.(1995). Go, Stella P. et al. “The effects of International Contract Labour (Philippines).” Manila: Integrated Research Centre, De La Salle University 1 (1983): 1–22. Gordon, Elizabeth. “An analysis of the impact of labour migration on the lives of women in Lesotho.” The Journal of Development Studies 17, no. 3 (1981): 59–76. Grawert, Elke. “Impacts of male outmigration on women: A case study of Kutum/Northern Darfur/Sudan.” Ahfad Journal 9, no. 2 (1992): 37–60. Gulati, Leela. Impact of male migration to the Middle East on the household in districts of high labor migration. Paper presented at the conference on Asian Labor Migration to the Middle East, 19–23 September. East-West Population Institute: Honolulu. (1983). Gulati, Leela. In the Absence of Their Men: The Impact of Male Migration on Women. Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd. (1993). Haan, Arjan de. “Rural-urban migration and poverty: The Case of India.” IDS Bulletin 28, no. 2 (1997): 35–47. Hadi, Abdullahel. “Overseas migration and the well-being of those left behind in rural communities of Bangladesh.” Asia-Pacific Population Journal 14, no. 1 (1999): 43. Hadi, Abdullahel. “International migration and the change of women’s position among the left-behind in rural Bangladesh.” Population, Space and Place 7, no. 1 (2001): 53–61. Jayaram, Narayana, ed. Diversities in the Indian Diaspora: Nature, Implications, Responses. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (2011). Jodhka, Surinder Singh. “Caste and Untouchability in Rural Punjab.” Economic and Political Weekly 37, no. 19 (2002): 2957–2963.

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Juergensmeyer, Mark. Religion as Social Vision: The Movement against Untouchability in 20th Century Punjab. Berkeley: University of California Press. (1982). Kanaiaupuni, Shawn Malia. “Reframing the migration question: An analysis of men, women, and gender in Mexico.” Social Forces 78, no. 4 (2000): 1311–1347. Khafagy, F.A. “Socio-economic impact of emigration from El-Quebabat village.” Population Studies 61 (1982): 39–45. Khaled, Louhichi. “Migration and women’s status: The Jordan case.” International Migration 33, no. 2 (1995): 235–250. Kothari, Uma. “Introduction: Migration, staying put and livelihoods.” Journal of International Development 15, no. 5 (2003): 607. Louhichi, Khaled. “The impact of the emigration of the husband on the status of the wife: The Case of Egypt.” In Women and Families: Evolution of the Status of Women as Factor and Consequence of Changes in Family Dynamics. Paris: CICRED. (1997): 323–339. Lucas, Robert E.B., and Oded Stark. “Motivations to remit: Evidence from Botswana.” Journal of Political Economy 93, no. 5 (1985): 901–918. Massey, Douglas S. “Social structure, household strategies and cumulative causation of migration.” Population Index 56 (1990): 3–26. Massey, Douglas S., and Emilio Parrado. “Migradollars: The remittances and savings of Mexican migrants to the USA.” Population Research and Policy Review 13, no. 1 (1994): 3–30. McEvoy, Jamie P. Male Out-Migration and the Women Left Behind: A Case Study of a Small Farming Community in Southeastern Mexico. Utah State University. (2008). Menjívar, Cecilia, and Victor Agadjanian. “Men’s migration and women’s lives: Views from rural Armenia and Guatemala.” Social Science Quarterly 88, no. 5 (2007): 1243–1262. Radel, Claudia, and Birgit Schmook. “Migration and gender: The case of a farming ejido in Calakmul, Mexico.” Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers 71, no. 1 (2009): 144–163. Rajan Sebastian Irudaya and Marie Percot. Dynamics of Indian Migration: Historical and Current Perspectives. India, Routledge, 2011. Ram, Ronki. “Social exclusion, resistance and Deras: Exploring the myth of casteless Sikh society in Punjab.” Economic and Political Weekly (2007): 4066–4074. Roy, Archana and Parveen Nangia. “Impact of male out-migration on health status of left behind wives: A study of Bihar, India.” In Meeting of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population 18–23. IUSSP (2005). Sadiqi, Fatima, and Moha Ennaji. “The impact of male migration from Morocco to Europe on women: A gender approach.” Finisterra 39, no. 77 (2004).

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Fred Arnold and Shah, Nasra M. “Asian labor migration to the Middle East.” International Migration Review 18, no. 4 (1984): 294–318. Stark, Oded. “Migration decision making: A review essay.” Journal of Development Economics 14, no. 1 (1984): 251–259. Taylor, J. Edward. “Undocumented Mexico: US migration and the returns to households in rural Mexico.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 69, no. 3 (1987): 626–638. Taylor, Steve, and Manjit Singh. “Punjab’s Doaban migration-development nexus: Transnationalism and caste domination.” Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 24 (2013). Verma, Archana B. The Making of Little Punjab in Canada: Patterns of Immigration. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Pvt. Ltd. (2002). Yabiku, Scott T., Victor Agadjanian, and Arusyak Sevoyan. “Husbands’ labour migration and wives’ autonomy, Mozambique 2000–2006.” Population Studies 64, no. 3 (2010): 293–306. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien, E.T. Mathew, and S. Irudaya Rajan. “Social, economic and demographic consequences of migration on Kerala.” International Migration 39, no. 2 (2001): 43–71. Zachariah, Kunniparambil Curien, and S. Irudaya Rajan. Researching International Migration: Lessons from the Kerala Experience. Abingdon, UK: Routledge (2015).

Chapter 8

An understanding of the social space of left behind females A study of the Dogra community from the Jammu region Neha Gutkar

Movement from one place to another in search of a livelihood has always been a key feature of human history. Some basic factors that have influenced the mobility of people from one region to another are uneven distribution of population and resources, unbalanced utilization of resources, and variation in economic and cultural developments. Different parts of the world, on the whole, have different types of mobility caused by various socio-economic conditions. While some regions lag behind in terms of capacity to support populations, a few others are ahead in providing such opportunities and hence attract populations to access them. The rural-urban gap gets widened due to the process of industrialization, which further leads to movement of working populations towards industrial locations. Moreover, various studies have shown that migration has been greatly influenced by social and cultural as well as economic factors. Also, the outcome of this process is different for different communities and groups as well as for men and women. And this mobility of people has either favourably or adversely influenced the socio-economic conditions of that area also. Scholars have tried to study the phenomenon of migration from various angles. Different scholars have tried to define the concept of migration in distinct ways because of their different approaches. While geographers have emphasized the time and space significance of mobility, sociologists have laid stress on social consequences of mobility, and economists have considered the economic aspect of migration to be of importance. The literal meaning of ‘migration’ is ‘shifting of people or an individual or group of individuals from one cultural area to another, which may be permanent or temporary’. In Webster’s Dictionary, the term has been defined as ‘the act or an instance of moving from one country or region to settle in another’. It is also defined as ‘an act of moving from one area to another in search of

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work’. According to many individuals, the simplest meaning of the word migration is a simple shift in the physical space. But it is interesting to note that the meaning of migration is changing with the passage of time. Nowadays, both the scope and definition of migration have become more complicated, i.e. movement of an individual from one place to another cannot define the concept of migration. In addition to the above-mentioned dimensions, one more parameter needs to be analysed, i.e. the relationship between economic change and family change. Scholars as early as Marx commented on the change brought about by changes in the mode of production, especially the changes in the family in the shift to capitalist modes of production. In describing the impact of the Industrial Revolution in the West, Kingsley Davis (1984) suggests that one of the biggest changes for gender roles resulted from the ‘shift of the locus of work from the home to somewhere else’. As men, and later women, moved their productive activities from the home to the factory, they experienced more freedom in their daily lives, and less control by family. This shift in the locale of production has the potential to alter women’s autonomy. In recent times there has been a shift on focus of research towards women migrants and also the gendered nature of this process of migration has been recognized (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1992; Chin, 1997; Yeoh et al., 1999; Lutz, 2002; Morokvasic, 2004; Shah, 2004). However, much less attention has been paid to understanding the lives of those who themselves have not migrated but who have been affected by the phenomenon, as their husbands have moved away in search of employment opportunities, leaving them behind (Hugo, 2000). This chapter has tried to focus on such dimensions. A common pattern which is a characteristic of developing countries is that migrating males usually leave their families, i.e. wife and children, back at the place of birth. This is a very common feature of developing countries. For instance, Kanaiupuni (2000) found that in rural households it has been a common practice to leave their families back at the place of birth when male members migrate in search of better employment opportunities. This strategy was found suitable for short-term migrations.

1. Gender as a ‘social construction’ and its impact on migration theory Ongoing developments in feminist theory throughout the 1980s and 1990s have contributed towards gender analysis rather than concentrating on individual decisions of men and women. Gender

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has been seen as a core organizing principle that underlies migration and related processes, such as the adaptation to the new location, contact with the place of origin, and possible return. In feminist theory, gender is seen as a matrix of identities, behaviours, and power relationships that are constructed by the culture of a society in accordance with sex. This means that the concept of gender – what constitutes ideals, expectations, and behaviours or expressions of masculinity and femininity – will vary among societies. Also, when people interact with each other, by adhering to this content or departing from it, they either reaffirm or change what is meant by gender, thus affecting social relationships at a particular time or in a particular setting. This means that gender is not immutable but also changes and in this sense is both constructed and reconstructed through time. The feminist view of gender as a ‘social construction’ has raised two questions that have fuelled much of the research in the study of women and migration over the last decade. The first relates to patriarchy or hierarchies of power, domination, and control men use to rule women. The situation focuses on the interpersonal relationships between men and women. The question that here arises is, ‘How do women’s relationships with family members, including spouses, change with migration?’ Some studies have raised questions as to whether participation in the labour force in the host location affects women’s authority within the family and their sense of control. Some others have tried to find out whether migration of men influences the power relationship and decision-making process among men and women. One initiative in migration research undertaken by anthropologists is to examine the dynamics of power relationships when men migrate, leaving behind women in their native place, to understand the coping capability of women to run the family. Gender-differing interactions are influenced by differences in biology as well as social and economic presuppositions and interests.

2. Women in the Jammu region The only state that has been described as ‘the crown of India’ is the state of Jammu and Kashmir. This state has emerged in three phases, which are highlighted by Dogra historiography. Traditionally, women have a limited role in economic life, and their participation in other spheres has also been limited. Like most places,

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women’s role in the region has centred on the upbringing of children, managing domestic affairs, etc. Males have taken the role of sole breadwinner of the family. The status of females in the state has borrowed a lot from the history of the region, particularly from the reign of different rulers. On October 26, 1947, the Maharaja of Kashmir signed the Instrument of Accession of the State to the Dominion of India. Article 370 came into the picture during this time and it granted special status to the state. This article has proved to be very detrimental even for those women who have been born in the state. Under this article, if a woman who is a permanent resident of the state gets married to a man who is not a citizen of the state, she loses her citizenship status and right to all property. If she marries someone outside the state, not only does she lose her rights to ancestral property, but she cannot get a job in the state, and no admission will be granted to her in any medical, engineering, or other colleges established with financial aid by the union of India. In any society women and children are the most vulnerable and worst hit. There has been a gradual rise in gender inequality, especially during the last two decades, due to prevailing social, economic, and political turmoil. Physical, sexual, or psychological violence against women within the family and community has been one of the most prevalent topics throughout consultations. Domestic violence seems to be a widespread problem in almost all societies, and it has its roots penetrated deeply in the region also. Gender-based violence itself is an obstacle to equal rights. A tendency in the community and among authorities of not wanting to interfere in ‘private’ matters within a family further exacerbates the problem of inequality.

3. Impact of male migration According to the report presented by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO, 2001), migration provides an interesting trend. About 99 per cent of migration takes place within India, though India contributes significantly to international migration also. As per the data indicated in this survey, 27 per cent of the Indian population is identified as ‘migrant’, where females represent an overwhelming majority, i.e. 77 per cent, as they are supposed to migrate in the context of marriage. Further, it has been shown that about 40 per cent of the female population both in rural as well as urban areas are migrants. According to one recently  held  survey  (Indian

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Human Development Survey, 2005), it has been documented that in the age group of 15–49 years, as many as 4.5 per cent of rural and 1.5 per cent of urban women’s husbands live elsewhere (Desai, et al 2010). This phenomenon has been widespread among less developed states where, as in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, very few females live away from their husbands. This finding has been in line with the proposition that the concept of leaving behind females and husbands migrating alone exists more among north Indian families as compared to other parts. Zachariah (1964: 261) made an observation about the internal migration in India: ‘Unlike in the western countries, migration in this country is highly selective of males’. This also seems to go along with the facts presented above. An analysis of the available literature leads to two types of impact. One is that male migration leads to female autonomy. One can perceive it either way, as a forced undertaking of roles in the absence of a husband, or as the freedom to take on roles they usually would not be undertaking (Hugo, 2000). In one of the studies done by Hondagneu-Sotelo (1992) on Mexican males and females in the San Francisco Bay Area, it came to notice that the absence of a male leads to the expansion of a female’s responsibilities. Another study of male migration which was done in Goa, India, on rural-urban migration suggests that in the absence of husbands women are the de facto head of the household and they execute various responsibilities, including hiring and supervision of agricultural labourers (Mascarenhas-Keyes, 1990). The second type of impact indicates the financial hardships and increased share of responsibilities on the shoulders of females. Also, the assumption of responsibilities outside the home can in some cases lead to an increased burden of work on them. For example, according to the study conducted by Paris (et al.) in 2005 in the villages of Eastern UP, if the amount of remittances is not large enough then the female of the house has to compensate, and she might have to work as a farm labourer to fill the gap. In one study conducted in Brazil over the females left behind alone, it was found that there was no improvement in their social status even when they were supposed to be heading the house in the absence of their husbands (Goza et al., 1994). While the argument seems to be logical, it is far from reality. As has been noted by Gupta and Ferguson, ‘representations of space in social sciences are remarkably dependent on images of break, rupture and disjunction’ (1992:6). However, this rupture may be less severe than imagined. It has been noted that migration is a messy

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process. Many studies conducted within India have found that the process of migration sometimes gets delayed until some male relative is available to take care of the family left behind (De Haan, 2006). Therefore, the response of communities and households towards migration helps in shaping the impact of male migration on the autonomy as well as empowerment of females. Migration is a highly localized phenomenon in the context of Indian society. Migration has been looked upon as a basic change that transforms urban centres. According to Zachariah, economic factors are predominating causes of rural-urban migration. Lashley and Dasgupta also expressed views similar to Zachariah’s, and they have expressed their views on the role of poverty as a motivating factor in migration. In light of the existing literature, the age group of the respondents was analysed to develop an understanding regarding migration, its pattern, and its impact on the left behind. There are very few left behind females in the age groups of below 25 years and above 56  years. The major portion is concentrated in the 26–55 group. These females have been left behind to take care of the family and kids and they spend a lot of valuable time alone. The survey also suggests that the largest percentage of our female respondents (20.0) is in the age group of 36–45 years, followed by those in the age group of 46–55 years and 26–35 years, as they both have the same percentage of females. Further, we were trying to understand their educational status so as to analyse the reason of their subjugation more clearly. Of the female respondents, 40 per cent were illiterate; only 8 per cent of them have studied up to primary, and 26 per cent have attained education up to matric (10th). And among the rest, 10 per cent have studied up to the 12th standard and graduation, and only 6 per cent among them were able to reach post-graduation. This educational backwardness has become a major hindrance in attaining a status of equality within the family. Many of the respondents have explained their uneasiness over many issues for which they never get considered. For them, the only job assigned by other members is the bearing and rearing of children, and nothing else. Based upon their educational status we also tried to learn about their respective occupations. To our surprise, as many as 33 respondents out of a total of 50 were homemakers, 6 women were doing business, 9 women got into the service sector based on their qualifications, and 2 were still studying. Those among the homemakers expressed their desire of becoming financially independent,

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but whenever they tried to take initiative they were never allowed and were asked to take care of family. Many of them know the art of tailoring but they stitch only for themselves and their children. According to them, even if they have too much spare time, they cannot convert their hobby into an earning tool because of family. Those who have gotten into business struggled a lot to start their own setup and faced challenges from within the family. Somehow these females managed to convince their husbands. 3.1 Status, decision-making, and autonomy To understand the status of females in their respective households, the respondents were asked certain questions. Much of the information has been gathered in the prepared tool, but there were also some informal interviews and discussions which have helped us to analyse other aspects. We wanted to know information regarding making the decision to migrate. We wanted to understand the position of females within their respective households, their role in decision-making processes, their participation, and their say. But for all these enquiries, we got just one response: the women had no idea about the place of destination. Their husbands decided to migrate, and their husbands asked them to remain. They have simply obeyed and no one questioned the decision. Continuing with this, there is one major aspect that is related to the status of females in every household. In this regard we tried to comprehend their position in their respective households through the replies they gave in response to a set of questions framed under the section, ‘Whom do you consult on the following matters?’ The first enquiry raised was related to the decision-making process on deciding the school of their children. Only two among the total sample agreed that they have the right to decide on the school for their children, whereas in the case of 28 females it is their father who decides. For the remaining 20, it is the in-laws, i.e. the parents of the husband, who decide on this. Another area of enquiry was related to ‘Important religious occasions and ceremonies at the place of destination’. The results that appeared in this section were also quite surprising, as even after becoming the assumed head in the absence of her husband, the influence of a woman’s in-laws can be profound. Even when celebrating their traditional religious ceremonies they have no freedom. Only ten females hold the autonomy to make important decisions related

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to religion; all the rest depend on their in-laws’ decisions. Many among these informed us that they’d had the freedom to make decisions on religious matters when their husbands had been home, or even now when they come back, but in their absence they can only follow the instructions as they have no other support system. Another important aspect to analyse is their position at the time of disputes in their joint families. As many as 45 females expressed their discomfort over not being included in such matters of the house. Many among them informed us that they have never been consulted by anyone in the family, including their respective husbands, which hurts them a lot, as they are also members of the family. Furthermore, marriage is a bond where both partners rely on each other and perform their activities together. Staying together in one place helps them in performing indoor, outdoor, and social activities together. Staying together and mutually enjoying success and failures is the beauty of married life. In the absence of husbands, females get overburdened not only physically but also emotionally. They have to behave as both father and son to their children and in-laws respectively. A woman shoulders the responsibility of fulfilling the absence of her husband by being present at indoor, outdoor, and other social spaces. A husband’s migration usually puts females in an alienated situation where her negotiation with society and family needs to be worked out again. She feels totally new to the circumstances she has been left to, and this leads to a mental/ psychological struggle within herself. This aspect of the survey was a bit difficult to be captured in questions and hence separate open discussions were recorded and transcribed later on. This conversation included a huge range of problems faced by the women, which include isolation, depression, a sense of being abandoned, lack of self-confidence, anxiety, loss of family life, lack of emotional stability, and many more. One of the above-mentioned problems is present in almost all respondents without their knowledge. Almost everyone has to alter their behaviour, their way of conduct, while interacting with their in-laws or with other relatives and society in the absence of their husbands. The woman’s problem multiplies when she has to manage all chores along with disciplining kids, looking after their education, etc., and she has to be more particular in such circumstances of performing her basic roles. She does not even control the money sent by her husband, and hence she will use the money as per the directions provided to her either by her husband or her husband’s parents. But even in such conditions, over a

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period of time, left behind females develop the habit of managing and living independently. However, this can also lead to conflict on the return of their respective partners. 3.2 Social circle of left behind females Living away from one’s husband is very difficult. These women have to act as a pillar of support to make their family function together in his absence. Further, they have to be very obedient towards their in-laws as well as other relatives. But sometimes the situation worsens when it comes to financial matters. There have been several cases where we were informed of financial disputes among them. These women have to act as per the advice of their husbands, or else marital disputes can arise. Also, they need to control their relationships with males as a sign of moral conduct, and hence they avoid interacting with the opposite sex. Furthermore, we wanted to understand the depth of their relationships with their social groups. Almost every female affirmed that they have adjusted well with their present social group, but as we know, there are always exceptions. There have been cases where females found it very hard to cope with the developing pressure, leading them to leave and either settle with their mother’s family or start living alone with their children in a different house. 3.3 Impact of a father’s absence on a child’s overall development As has been stated earlier, marriage is a cordial relationship of two persons sharing every responsibility of married life. Taking care of children is one such aspect which needs to be looked at by both persons. Children’s overall development (both physical as well as mental) depends on the care and affection they get from parents. But in migrant households this whole process comes under the surveillance of a wife who has been left behind to take care of them. In such a situation it becomes difficult for a mother to decide on terms of punishing her own kid. The question arises whether the kid should be punished or not, and if yes what the punishment should be. Such were the responses from all our respondents when it came to their responsibility of rearing a child in the absence of the father. Moreover, many women expressed their discomfort on being held responsible for not teaching moral values to her children

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if they misbehave, though it is only the mother who is there to run hither and thither to make them study, to visit school for parents’ meetings, and also if required to hire a tutor to make them perform better. In all this process she ignores her needs, desires, comfort, and leisure. Many of them reported confrontations with their grown-up kids both in financial and discipline matters, which many times lead to disturbing situations. According to the respondents, they have sacrificed their present for the future of the whole family. They live apart to improve the financial situation of the family, to educate their children, and also to attain possession of material articles. But many among these have realized that they have found achievement of material gains with undisciplined and unsatisfied children.

4. Conclusion Social science models are consistently being challenged by exceptional circumstances and are being modified in response. In a study conducted by Folbre (1994) on the finances of men and women in sub-Saharan Africa, the neoclassical economic household model has been criticized. This led to restructuring and refocusing on distribution patterns at the intra-household level (Thomas, 1994). The results arrived at in this chapter present implications for future research and also the nature of research on gender and patriarchy in developing countries like India. It also lays emphasis on looking into the factors limiting the degree of freedom by concentrating on the role of household structures as well as other family members besides the husband. Though a considerable number of studies have been done on the power structure and its role between men and women, very few studies have been focused on other factors disempowering women, specifically the role of age. Our results also show that migration does not bring any positive change to the social position of females; rather, they get disadvantaged as their responsibilities as a single mother as well as a female increase in their respective households in the absence of their husbands. Further, in this study we also tried to analyse the impact of a father’s migration on the children of his household. It has been shown that the father’s absence from a household sometimes leads to confrontations between a mother and child. Also, a husband’s absence leaves a noticeable mark on emotional as well as physical abilities. Results in the chapter have revealed the impact of the

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long-distance relationship on the overall performance of females. Irrespective of whether or not husbands stay with their wives, females have not gained freedom and autonomy.

References Chin CBN. (1997). Walls of silence and late twentieth century representations of the foreign female domestic worker: The case of Filipina and Indonesian female servants in Malaysia. International Migration Review, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 353–385. Davis, K. (1984). Wives and work: The sex role revolution and its consequences. Population and Development Review, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 397–417. De Haan, A. (2006). Migration, gender, poverty: family as the missing link (pp. 107–128), in S. Arya and A. Roy (eds.), Poverty, Gender and Migration. New Delhi, India: Sage. Desai, Sonalde B., Amaresh Dubey, Brij Lal Joshi, Mitali Sen, Abusaleh Shariff and Reeve Vanneman. (2010). Human Development in India: Challenges for a Society in Transition (p. 234). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Folbre, N. (1994). Who Pays for the Kids? Gender and the Structure of Constraint. New York: Routledge. Goza, F. (1994). Brazilian immigration to North America. International Migration Review, Vol. 28, pp. 136–152. Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson. (1992). Beyond “Culture”: Space, Identity and the Politics of Difference. Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 7, pp. 6–23. Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. (1992). Overcoming patriarchal constraints: The reconstruction of gender relations among Mexican immigrant women and men. Gender and Society, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 393–415. Hugo, G. (2000). Migration and women’s empowerment. Pp. 287–317 in Presser, H., Sen, G., (eds.) Women’s Empowerment and Demographic Processes: Moving beyond Cairo. New York: Oxford University Press. Kanaiaupuni, S.M. (200). Reframing the migration question: an analysis of men, women, and gender in Mexico. Social Forces, Vol. 78, No. 4, pp. 1311–1347. Lutz, H. (2002). At your service madam! The globalization of domestic service. Feminist Review, Vol. 70, pp. 89–104. Mascarenhas-Keyes, S. (1990). Migration, ‘progressive motherhood’ and female autonomy: Catholic women in Goa (pp. 119–143), in L. Dube and R. Palriwala (eds.). Structures and Strategies: Women, Work and Family. New Delhi, India: Sage Publications. Morokvasic, M. (2004). ‘Settled in mobility’: Engendering post-wall migration in Europe. Feminist Review, Vol. 77, pp. 7–25. National Sample Survey Organisation. (2001). Migration in India, 1999– 2000. New Delhi: Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India.

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Shah, N.M. (2004). Gender and labour migration to the Gulf countries. Feminist Review, Vol. 77, pp. 183–185. Thomas, D. (1994). Like father, like son; like mother, like daughter: Parental resources and child height. Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 950–988. Yeoh, B.S., Huang, S., and Gonzalez, J. (1999). Migrant female domestic workers: Debating the economic, social and political impacts in Singapore. The International Migration Review, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 114–136. Zachariah, K.C. (1964). Historical Study of Internal Migration in the Indian Sub-Continent, 1901–1931, Bombay, India: Asia Publishing House.

Chapter 9

Fractured between two worlds Narratives on the gendered experiences of two generations of immigrant Indian-Hindu women in Canada Smita Verma

Migration studies in India started with a slow pace after independence. Three distinguished scholars, namely Prof. I.P. Desai (1964) and Prof. M.S.A. Rao (1974), both sociologists, and Prof. K.C. Zachariah (1960, 1964), a demographer, initiated research work on migration. Initially migration studies basically dealt with rural push and urban pull theory. Several explanations were given for rural push, such as severe and chronic drought in native villages, poverty, unemployment, and exploitation (Desai and Pillai, 1970; Sovani, 1961; de Haanand Rogaly, 2002; Kanbur and Banerjee, 1981; Rhoda, 1983). The explanation given for urban pull migration is availability of gainful employment (ibid., 1964). Almost all studies have talked about male migration and only a few studies have focused on family migration (Bhattacharyya, 1985). More attention to women as migrants came with studies on labour migration of women in the 1970s and 1980s. Primarily, the studies on gender as a part of migration studies treated gender as a static category, tightly compartmentalized into binaries of male and female (Boyd, 1984; Houstoun et al., 1984), often referred to as the ‘add women and stir approach’ (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2000; Indra, 1999; Kofman et al., 2000). Another factor which contributed to the focus on migration studies on women was the changing world view which saw women as equal partners in development. The paradigm shift of the United Nations approach from women in development to gender and development was the beginning of a move away from looking at biological differences to social differences between men and women (UN, 1998). Since then migration studies has come a long way. Contemporary migration studies have increasingly acknowledged and highlighted

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a wide range of issues related to the rising numbers of women involved in all forms of migration streams. With the introduction of a global economic structure and market economy with a borderless society, the process of migration of both skilled and unskilled labour has been enhanced and the scale of both female and male migration has gone up within the country and overseas. Recent migration statistics and research literature point to the fact that women form an important component of international migration, and nearly half of the international migrants are women only (Jolly et al., 2003; Russell, 1995; United Nations, 1998). This trend of an increasing proportion of women migrants is most evident in Asia, especially from Sri Lanka (Kottegoda, 2013), Indonesia (Surtees, 2003), the Philippines (Gamburd, 2000; Huanget al., 2005), and India (Madhumathi, 2013; Purkayastha, 2005), both in unskilled and low-skilled labour. The increasing feminization of the labour market, which has raised demand for female labour, and the ready supply of female labourers from developing countries have motivated women to seek employment in overseas destinations. In 2005 in Asia, female migrants constituted 44.7 per cent of total migration, but the number of women migrating from some countries has surpassed that of men. For example, in the Philippines 65 per cent of those who left the country to work or live abroad in 2005 were women. In 2002, twice as many women as men migrated from Sri Lanka to other countries. Between 2000 and 2003, 79 per cent of the people who migrated from Indonesia to work elsewhere were women (Dhar, 2007). Sassen (1984) argues that feminized domestic and international migration flows are products of the evolution of capitalism where ‘Third World women’ have become key to capitalism’s demand for flexibilization. Interestingly, the study of female migration is very recent and it has its beginnings in findings of significant numbers of women in migration flows where men predominated or by encouraging migratory flows that are mainly female (Castro, 2006). Even though the proportion of women as migrants has remained high throughout the last few decades, these statistics do not capture the changing nature and circumstances of their migration. From absence of the term gender in earlier literature to its visibility in the later text gained momentum in the late 1980s. This led to the shift from studying women vis-à-vis men to gender as a dynamic system of relations. This shift was to examine how gender permeates a variety of practices, identities, and institutions implicated in migration-gender

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as a constitutive element of immigration (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2003). The focus has now been on the experiences of men and women as gendered beings and in conversation with each other. This shapes the power dynamics both in public and private spaces. From the modernist approach of well-defined boundaries to the post-modernist construction of gender as discursive, dynamic, fluid, and relational (Parrenas, 2001), the journey from ‘sex roles’ to ‘gender roles’ has been enriching and has given a complex and nuanced understanding of gender as dynamic and multilayered. The act of bringing gender centrally into migration studies is an endeavour to remedy many decades of disregard of gender as a category of scholarship, based on the conjecture that women were merely passive migrants – as wives, daughters, sisters, or mothers who went along as an attaché/appendage to the migrating male member. The only criterion was to quantify the ‘sex’ as a variable (Pessar, 1998). In this context, the concept of ‘feminization of migration’ has therefore gained currency to denote not only the importance of women in migration but also new sites of economic processes and work that are unequivocally gendered. Furthermore, the feminization of migration is also a signifier of the social acceptance of women’s presence in the workforce due to certain historical processes, such as women’s involvement in plantation work under colonialism, or as part of specific economic development processes, such as export-led industrialization and/or focus on investment in the tourism industry (Oishi, 2005). In addition to low-skilled migration, women are overrepresented in brain drain trends too, highlighting both semi-skilled and highly skilled migration. It is important to mention that gender remains a very prominent component when talking of the effect of migration, as the impact and anxieties are not the same for both the sexes, in both the private and public domain. As Nawyn (2014) says, gender as a system or power relations permeates every aspect of the migration experience. Studies conducted from the 1970s onwards in the United States examined the characteristics of immigrant women, the timings and volume of their migration from sending communities, and their adaptation process in the receiving nation. These studies revealed the fact that women were both independent economic actors and dependent family members in the migration process (Boyd, 1975; Donato, 1993; Pessar, 1988). But Mehotra’s (2004) study on Asian first-generation immigrants in the USA concentrated on ethnicity,

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identity, and cultural aspects. A study conducted amongst the university students of second-generation Hindu communities in the cities of Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa reveals the fact that students face numerous challenges in negotiating their identity. Gender matters when it comes to the nexus of religious and cultural boundaries (Holtmann and Nason-Clark, 2012). Another study conducted by Raslton (1999) on South Asian immigrant women youths in the cities of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Vancouver concludes that rather than being ‘caught between two cultures’, second-generation daughters in multicultural and multiracial societies create, live, and operate in what Homi Bhava (1994) theorized as the ‘Third Space’, an in-between hybridized space where diversity, differences, and boundaries of intersecting race, class, and gender are negotiated and redefined in everyday life (Ralston, 1999). Another study conducted by Sheel (2008) on an Indian community in Vancouver of British Columbia examined the complex interplay of money, marriage, and gender that impacts on the status of women in the society. She also tried to understand the linkages between immigration process, notions of culture and identity, and gender relations. However, it is important to note that the third generation has exhibited the most interest in rediscovering and restoring the practices of their grandparents (Botting and Coward, 2001). As a result, the nexus between migration, gender, and care provision has become a key issue of concern in public and social policy (Razavi, 2007). Migration contributes immensely to gender equality and empowerment of women by providing women migrants with the income and status, autonomy, freedom, and self-esteem that comes with employment (UNFPA-IOM, 2006). Moving to a new country exposes women to new ideas and social norms that can promote their rights and enable them to participate more fully in the society. It can also have a positive influence on achieving greater equality for them in their country of origin (ibid). Over the last 25 years there have been concerted efforts by social scientists to incorporate women’s issues into the theories of international migration (Curran et al., 2006). By the mid-1990s sociologists had effectively turned to qualitative methods to understand the dynamics of gender and migration. They critically analysed how migration processes are reciprocally related to the construction of gender (Curran et al., ibid.). These examples of pioneering research on gender and migration reflected extensively on both qualitative and quantitative illustrations

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which, according to Hondagner-Stelo (2003), are a key ‘constitutive element’. Lawson (1998) suggests that the dynamic nature of gender is difficult to capture with quantitative data. Ethnographic work itself analyses gender as a dynamic concept and captures the dynamic nature of gender in ethnographic work (Nawyn, 2010). Therefore in this chapter an attempt has been made to decipher the migration experiences, social construction, and practice of gender construction as a ‘Hindu’ and as a ‘Canadian’ amongst the migrant Hindu families who have settled in Canada over two to three generations. This piece of work is an outcome of my visit to Mississauga in Ontario, Canada, in the month of September 2008 to join my family who has been there for more than a decade. I was there for about five months. My earlier visits were of shorter durations (15–20 days), more as a visitor. However, this time I was going as a permanent resident, and I decided to stay there for a longer period. During this stay I was introduced to many Indians who were close friends of my family and who stayed together through thick and thin. The circle was large and bursting with warmth. I got an opportunity to closely interact with some of these family friends on different occasions on a regular basis. My whole understanding and comprehension of ‘migrants’ took on a new meaning when during those casual talks I came across the womenfolk, mostly elderly, who engaged in constant enquiry of how I was feeling, why I came over and took leave from my job. They were appraising my uncertainties, but at the same time the way they drew comparisons on small things kept me engaged. I wondered why, after decades of stay here, even now they drew constant comparisons between the two worlds and tried reliving the native nostalgia on everything they did as a woman in India and on their clearly defined roles. The pride taken in being in control of their ‘private space’ was amazing. Their recollections were not just stories but lived experiences which unfolded in bits and pieces slowly and comfortably. Though the younger womenfolk in the family did not pay much attention, the elder women clearly struggled with how much historical ‘Indianness’ they should profess in front of them. It fascinated me as a sociologist and a migrant woman to explore how a cultural discourse of tradition and gender construction, which is inherently ideological, is reproduced not only in theory but also in practice and perpetuated through the ‘women’s world’, within the family across generations, and is not necessarily hegemonic in nature.

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In this chapter an attempt has been made to recount the narratives from the lived experience of first-generation and second-generation migrant Indian-Hindu women residing in the towns of Mississauga and Brampton (suburbs of Toronto) on their social construction and practice of gender relations as ‘Hindu’ and as ‘Canadian’. It also examines the dynamic shift in women’s identification of their roles at home, what I refer to as ‘Indian space’, and in the outside world, the ‘immigrant space’, which poses serious challenges, and the varied agencies used by them to build bridges between two polarized worlds to maintain their autonomy. It also aims to provide a comparative account of how the first-generation Indian immigrant women (Hindus) interpret, practice, maintain, and negotiate gendered relations within the domain of their religious beliefs and cultural norms in both the spaces.

Locale of study, methodology, and constraints in data collection The study was conducted in two towns of Toronto – Brampton and Mississauga. These localities have a high population of Asian immigrants both old and new, particularly Hindu Indians who immigrated more than three decades ago. Brampton is often referred to as ‘Little India’, and even now for many new immigrants it is like a home away from home. This is an ethnographic study of Hindu women migrants, through narratives of ten cases of two generational accounts. The main source of my analysis was the text of the interviews conducted over a period of four months at different time periods according to mutual suitability. It helped me to map their ethnographic accounts and get a deeper insight into their lives as Indians and as Canadians. This gives a glimpse of migration within the families over a span of more than 30 years. As an ethnographer, I tried my level best to make the interaction shared and informal so that the sharing was without any inhibition. My interactions with the respondents were not confined exclusively to their homes, but rather spaced out at different sites on different occasions, what Gusterson (1997) calls ‘polymorphous engagement’. The multiplicity of dialogues, the juxtaposition of unmediated unveiling of experiences, and the reflexivity became vital to understanding their own construction of identity and that of others from the community. Getting into the field as another migrant was not difficult. However, the transition from the role of a migrant to a sociologist cum

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ethnographer was challenging. I had to recognize my partisanships as a migrant and predispositions as a Hindu Indian to do justice to my role as a researcher. The field was rich, waiting to be recounted. Though most of them were happy and relaxed with me during informal interactions, comforting me as a new addition to their community, the moment I switched over to the role of a researcher, they raised concerns – ‘Why study us?’ ‘What is so special about being migrants?’ ‘Ask the men they got us here’. Some of them were reticent in the beginning. Some even got inquisitive about my personal life, but once I answered all their queries and reinforced my authenticity they opened up and shared a plethora of experiences from their journey of more than three decades. My status as a migrant Hindu Indian woman created spaces for dynamic sharing of their lives as immigrants, which were generally assembled and interwoven through casual talks and storytelling. Though migration impacts the whole life, the main concern of this chapter is to give a comparative narrative account of how the first- and second-generation Hindu Indian immigrant women interpret and practice, maintain, and negotiate gender relations within the domain of their religious beliefs and cultural norms both in ‘private space’ and ‘immigrant space’. This chapter tries to understand the experiences of migrant women in three specific spheres which have important junctures and narrates both the preservation and transformation of gender roles across generations – family, marriage, relationships, and religion.

Family: continuities and dislocations The narrations of the first generation outline not just the struggles in adjusting to the new homeland but also the pain and remorse of being uprooted from family and friends. Almost all the firstgeneration women migrated as dependents and were given little agency in the decision to migrate. As Saroj,1 58 years old, shared: Growing up with maids through my childhood made it really easy for me and my sister not to do any housework chores, cooking, cleaning etc. I remember as a child coming home from school taking my shoes and uniform off and just leaving it anywhere in the house and them [maids] pick up after me. The lifestyle there makes it really easy to be brought up by maids and not have to lift a finger. I just remember them always being

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around and my family not having to do anything. Moving to Canada after marriage and coming into a culture where the idea of doing everything on your own was the hardest part to adjust with. It was like a feeling of being lost in the woods to fend all by yourself. My parent at home cook meals, take care of my sister and I and worry about laundry, dishes etc. This is something new which they had never expected. Sunita, a 60-year-old first-generation immigrant, walked me through her migration and the difficulties faced on various fronts, including language: ‘After migration my role as a traditional Indian woman was full of difficulty. The weather, language, culture etc. and sparsely populated surrounding wreaked havoc on me. I went into depression and it took me quite some time before I could realize that there was no way out except for accepting the land as my home. The expenses of settling down were exorbitant so was the loneliness. To keep myself engaged, I started stitching for family friends. That activity kept me engaged and also I could generate some amount of pocket money and expanded my friendship with people’. Roopa, 63 years old, was nostalgic while talking of migration. I still remember the scene when my husband decided to migrate to Canada. I was almost numb, not knowing how to react as I always wanted to be near my parents. But had no choice you know those days women were hardly consulted. I was hardly aware what it would be like . . . the only thought was that why I was being punished. . . . Once we arrived to Canada . . . for a few days I felt like an alien . . . the sense of time, language, dress, weather all were new. To add to it hardly anyone on streets . . . miles and miles and no person to be seen. I felt lost and went into severe depression . . . it is only when my husband started his business and met Indian friends I could recover. . . . Now after ages have passed . . . life is going fine . . . but for me being uprooted from my people always saddens me till date. Wish we could have gone back. Besides the challenge of being newlywed, all of them confronted the challenge of a totally new world which was almost alien and no support structure to fall back on. However, despite its challenges and struggles, it made them grow independent and learn skills in language and use what they had learned as young girls in

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India – stitching, taking care of younger brothers and sisters. It gave them the agency to become independent women and active support partners to their husbands. Kamini, 55 years old, narrated: After my marriage I moved to Canada to join my husband who worked there. The social mobility was not as expected . . . it came with a heavy price. Highly educated with no family in Canada and limited social infrastructure I was almost lost. The language was English but still new to me despite all my education in convent. I experienced pregnancy within the first few months making things worse . . . without the traditional support of the Indian extended family; however that period of struggle helped in creating a sense of independence and confidence to fight out the odds. I interacted with Canadian friends who were immigrants of other ethnicities at my husband’s workplace. My life made me do things which I never imagined in my nightmare – cooking, feeding. The bigger challenge was post-motherhood, as many of them experienced challenges in instilling ‘Indianness’ among their children. The process of socialization itself for them was a full-time job, as the balance between two worlds had to be maintained coherently. The reminiscence of migration for Vimla, 68 years old, of handling the challenges of maintaining religious identity was very vivid. ‘There was no challenge with practicing religion in Canada especially after the family relocated to Toronto, where numerous religions institutions were readily available to visit and offer prayer. The Canadian society is tolerant to different religious practices and beliefs. As my child grew older, the practice of religion became more prominent and ritualistic. Retaining of language was a bigger challenge likely due to the fact that while religion can be practised within the confines of the house or temple, school and work environments do not accommodate Hindi as a language to communicate. We consciously developed Hindi only in an environment at home where she and her husband always communicated with each other in Hindi and also talked to the children in Hindi’. Vanadana, 57 years old, shared the difference in her role as homemaker in India and in Canada and the sacrifices she made: ‘I came as a dependent housewife but then gradually took up a job of babysitting not for money but to keep myself busy. . . . It was a shock to me as to see a city having almost half of the population as Indian. . . .

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I would often ask myself why I had to marry and come to a totally alien world. . . . After my first child’s birth, I gave up babysitting to become a full-time mother and housewife. I wanted to be very particular in walking my child through all the cultural norms as practised in our religion. The difference is the traditional stay at home as a mother and the Canadian stay at home as a mother are not the same. It is a bigger challenge to be a homemaker in Canada, especially for limited family incomes, the costliness of acquiring house help and the need to learn numerous new skills: mowing lawn, cooking, shovelling the snow, cleaning the house. This all needed to be done while taking care of a growing child’s needs. But my children had their priorities intact and that is my reward’. Gender pressures experienced by the second-generation women to conform to the collective culture as Hindu were fraught with negotiations. Nobody wanted their children to sound like they had gone culturally haywire and let them down in the society. In the absence of extended families, especially the grandparents who play a major role in the process of integrating the young ones into the family norms and cultural ethos through socialization, the singlehanded burden of this was on the first-generation immigrants. There are other studies too which talk of restrictions and conformation to one’s own culture(Dhruvrajan, 1993; Talbani and Hasan Ali, 2000; Farha, 2004). Most of the women in both the first and second generations encountered difficulties with retaining ‘Indianness’. As Sameera, a 23-year-old enthusiastic young woman, shared: ‘I would say that we are still learning everyday as what Indianness is all about . . . any new situation the dictum follows how it had to be done following the traditional practices. It is a strong belief and practice that women should know cooking even if they might not necessarily do it. We are learning our native culture that is being shared by my parents’. Rather than seeing the cultural upbringing split between ‘Indianness’ and ‘Canadianness’, the second generation often practised both, but not always smoothly. Some confronted tensions and complexity balancing the two, especially the gendered expectations. Nita, a 26-year-old second-generation woman, articulated how although mothers have the same love for their sons and daughters, the burden of conforming to traditional roles was more on daughters. ‘I guess for us housework, cooking, clothes, boyfriend; marriage is just stricter than for the natives in Canada . . . because we have bigger family and Indian community friends and everyone

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cares about what others will think.  .  .  . You know what there is a massive competition amongst parents specially moms on whose daughter is the best and well behaved. . . . One of the major criteria is abiding to cultural norms of Indianness – dress, respect for elders, knowledge how to do household chores, and yeah don’t forget the Indian cooking stuff .  .  . woh what aroma .  .  . I don’t mind all these . . . but yes when with friends it gets multicultural’. For most of the second-generation women the line was well-defined since childhood – both for public and private spaces. Garima, 29, shared her feelings and her gender expectations. ‘My parents were cool and I don’t remember restrictions imposed to screw our lives as teenagers . . . but definitely late nights were beyond comprehension. My brother could stay back at his friend’s home but we sisters could not even think of . . . the upbringing gave us immense space to share our concerns and also obey to what the parents say . . . come on after all they have struggled hard to give this life of comfort to us. . . . Why would they desire something wrong. See as women so much more of carrying the ethos of tradition rests on us. As daughters we need to understand our roles’. The adaptation and socialization for both the generations is a dynamic process which continues even now. The second-generation women were often caught in dialectical situations between home and the outside world on both personal and professional issues. Most of these dilemmatic situations which concerned home were approached with perseverance, with understanding, and at times with reasoning and persuasion to reach common ground, while the freedom in public spaces, especially regarding education and career, was democratic. This is reinforced through other studies (Naidoo and Davis, 1988). ‘Can you believe if we have anyone visiting from India, specially my grandparents, my mom warns me on hundred and one things, dressing, eating and how to behave.  .  .’came the response from Twisha, 21 years. Food was not just for satiation, but some of it carried the essence of culturally defined health benefits. It is also a reminder and reinforcement of identity and emotional bonding (Stacey, 1998). As a second-generation respondent, Preeti, 19 years, remarked with pride: Normally at home we have Indian food though it might be not that elaborative as traditional layout is supposed to be. . . . My mom keeps reminding us every now and then that what is good

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health and how they grew up learning not just how to cook but also the medicinal ‘nuska’ and benefits of different food . . . you know what we refer as home remedies . . . amazing storehouse of knowledge. Some situations had smooth sailing, with both the generations reaching compromise usually on issues of dress and permission to have non-vegetarian food outside the home. However, there was a stern dictum on eating meat, which is considered to be a sin by the Hindu religion in many cases. The acknowledgement of being wrong was quite overt in the response of Ekta, a 25-year-old graduate: Once by mistake . . .well not really. . . just out of curiosity I indulged in taking beef burger with my friends at the university. . . . I kept that as a secret knowing I would be reprimanded. But eh my friend who was visiting my home shared with my mom and that day hell broke and heaven fell on me. . . . Finally I was made to feel guilty of committing a blunder. . . . My mom took a promise on me to never ever do that. . . . I am happy I have kept her promise till date. Divya, a 27-year-old of the second generation, shared the difficulty in conceding on certain issues: ‘There are certain areas which cannot be bargained on . . . specially dress . . . how can one chill out with friends wearing traditional Indian dress . . .? So uncomfortable. We have agreed on this . . . when socializing in Indian marriages and celebrations the traditional dress code follows but that is it! Nothing beyond that . . . rest it is formals or casual western wears. My mom hates me for wearing shorts but . . . hard luck I cannot give it up. . . . It is so damn comfortable’. Most of the participation in outside space often led to strained negotiations. As Brah (1996) observed, women may embody both dialectical cultural behaviours depending on the space/domain of the politics and the requirements of the space and circumstances – multi-spaced and multi-located. As the young and restless 18-yearold Amrita responded: Holy cow! . . . The expectations at times get too much to be swallowed. You know I am very much Indian at heart as we grew up practising Hinduism as a way of life but cannot let even my own snatch my freedom to be secular in my dress,

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food, likes and dislikes at least when with my friends .  .  . it always leads to so much of anxiety and misgiving . . . but I latch on till the end. The normal concerns for food and dress codes to be adhered to were expressed by both the generations, yet the main pressure was on conversing in the native dialect – Hindi – at home and when with family friends. The aim was not just to learn the language, but through it to imbibe the teachings of the religion and the sociocultural makeup of being a Hindu. Many even shared that they were introduced into using Hindi, not just for conversation but also for reading and writing, at Sunday schools in the temples. The insecurity of parents about losing their children to the ‘Canadianness’ was immensely noticeable. The formal and informal social structures of the Indian space provide support for retaining the Indian norms and values. This pressure was often taken very sportingly by the children as adults. They often expressed thanks to their parents for keeping them in touch with their native land through the dialect. As Preeti, 19 years, remarked: I am happy I can speak and read Hindi . . . though not very good with writing the language. . . . At least it helps me connect to my religion and my Indian cousins and of course why forget Bollywood movies . . . aren’t they a cultural treat to the sense organs! Yamini, 25 years, recollected how she disliked going for Hindi classes but expressed that she was thankful now that her parents pressured her to learn the native dialect: ‘I remember as a child I did not enjoy going to Sunday schools. . . . It was hell lot of pressure to learn Hindi and speak at home and then when in school speak in English. . . . The switch over was often bumpy. I remember as a kid when I would visit India with my mom we spend a month or so . . . with grandparents and cousins and it was such a treat and speaking in Hindi was difficult . . . but after being there for more than a month Hindi seemed to come naturally. On return to Canada going to school became a challenge as I would lose on to English and felt out of place. So each time the smooth transition was difficult. But now I feel thank god for I can be Canadian and yet an Indian’. The democratic upbringing by first-generation immigrants was a challenge which most of them felt they did their best on while

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compromising neither on their duty to introduce their children, especially daughters, as Hindu nor on their freedom to pursue their goals as professionals and their agency to learn skills of their choice and have multicultural friendship circles. This gendered upbringing of the second-generation girls was not always smooth; it had its challenges, as they tried to balance both the world’s pulls and pushes. The going was more difficult for the second generation in the absence of any role model.

Institution of marriage: concerns and challenges The domain of moving out of a parent’s house, dating, premarital sex, and marriage was the most confrontational zone for traditional struggles between the first-generation parents and second-generation children, especially daughters. For the first generation the idea of an opposite sex relationship is ideally located in marriage, while for the second generation the contradiction between two cultures is evidently stressful. Reviews of literature on immigrant families talk on the issue of dating and relationships as a potential zone for tension, particularly for the daughters of immigrants. Sexuality remains a major issue to cope with for most of the parents (Hynie, 1996; Ghosh, 1996). Most of the daughters gave overriding importance to family and none of them moved out as adults to live on their own. The very idea of moving out seemed bizarre and made very little sense. Discussion on the problematic and prickly subject led to sharing by both the first- and second-generation Hindu Canadians. For the first-generation respondents, sex before marriage was almost like a sin and not approved of at all. The reasons given were that love and sex should happen only after marriage. For the first generation, marriage was considered as Sanskar (as per Indian tradition), providing a strong bond of relationship between two families rather than two individuals. The community participates and blesses the newlywed couple to begin their Grihastha life as per Arya culture. The basic aim of marriage as they conceived it was neatly stated by Gayatri, a 61-year-old mother. ‘The most significant challenges following may be linked to the child’s teenage years and their open engagement in a forever expanding Canadian social system. Late night parties, drinking, and the likelihood of involvement with the opposite gender of other religions; for me and my husband such common issues in Canada were not frequent during our youth in

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India. For us the norm was parents as the guide. . . . Peer pressure was peripheral. Having an adult daughter in a culture, which after almost two decades seemed absolutely alien . . . as now my daughter was young. Despite the faith in our upbringing, we had our share of stress. . . . The best we thought was to share our concerns with family friends of Indian origin and we really benefited from seeing how other family friends dealt with similar issues at home’. Gender ideologies change as part of the process of assimilation, accommodation, reaction, and resistance to the new cultural milieu for the second generation. But even for the first generation there were signs that they loosened up the traditional gendered norms for daughters to some extent. They preferred it if they arranged the marriage as parents but also gave space for some derailment in the event the daughters chose themselves, with all traditional parameters of marriage being taken care of (religion, ethnicity, region, and social status). The reinforcement of who is acceptable in marriage and who is not is reinforced by other studies (Basran, 1993; Badruddoja, 2006). They gave space to choose but at the same time also required their children to get the consent of the parents . . . after all, the family is part and parcel of the whole union. Despite all changes, the purpose of marriage lies in the happiness of not just the bride and groom but also their families. Marriage is not between two individuals, but two families from traditional Indian norms. Vimla, 68 years old, an elderly mother, shared her experience of her daughter: ‘An initial bumpy road slowly transitioned into a smoother road ahead . . . though I had faith on my upbringing, however a big challenge was casual dating and the conflict due to interreligious and interracial relationships besides religion. I always maintained that friendship is ok but when it comes to marriage it should be family decisions. . . . See we did not even have courage to express our likings in marriage. Love was to follow marriage. The only thing permitted was both the future partners could see and talk to each other for a few hours in front of parents and then approved/we have given ample space. . . . But would never adjust to interracial marriage. Homogeneity in marriage is the base for success. We always practised the culture and not just teach so finally it has paid . . . my daughter got married in own community and we all were involved in decision-making’. The second generation had their own understanding on dating, premarital sex, and marriage. Their dilemmatic situation was clearly reflected in their narratives. Dating was not a big issue for the young

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women of the second generation. It was natural to feel attracted and dating was very healthy as it would help in understanding the opposite sex’s likes and dislikes better. Though they did not approve of premarital sex for themselves, they did not judge it among their friends as good or bad, as it was their personal preference and concern. However, some who dated men from different ethnic-religious backgrounds kept it secret from their parents. They feared being reprimanded for breaching their trust and also found it difficult to cross the cultural norms/values. The respondents, though young, were very much rooted in the tradition of their culture, yet found it difficult to stay away from the influence of the Canadian culture, and this was explicit through the dilemma between one set of ideology for dating and a different one for marriage. Most of them were open to other racial groups as far as dating was concerned but when it came to marriage all the respondents preferred men from their own ethnic-cultural background. One of the respondents, 29-year-old Garima, shared her dilemma: I have multicultural and multiracial friends group. . . . Most of us studied in same university. . . . U know we are like just pals kind of genderless . . . so it’s fine to hug, fagging, have fun and just hangout whenever we can catch up . . . but as I get home I have to let go of and change my role . . . become a woman. My parents are democratic but still very much Indian at heart and in values. The gender upbringing though invisible but still exists. Guess if they even get inkling about it I am done. . . . Of course I am adult working my livelihood but then am a girl and cannot do away with my Indianness. But dating is ok. After all it is natural to get attracted. I have a boyfriend he is Italian and younger to me. . . . We hang out but I dare not talk about it to my parents. They will jump to the conclusion that any relationship with men from other race and religion would definitely mean just physical . . . not true . . . smooching is fine but then period! Rest should follow after marriage. The cultural restrictions were sometimes very challenging, as Shalini, 22 years, shared: My family is my whole soul. Being the eldest child I have been always corrected for any behaviour which would leave a bad

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impression on my younger brother and sister. So you can say I had to be a torch bearer of traditional Hindu culture. However this never meant lack of agency for me. I went to play games – tennis, swimming . . . hanged out with friends, went for parties but the limit was self-circumscribed. Even if I wanted to break free all rules I landed in dilemma. I remember I fell in love with one of the family friend’s son, but he was a Sri Lankan Muslim. We were thick pals and I don’t know when we fell in love. No one doubted us and the dating went on . . . but then he proposed we moved out to be together and that was it! Move out no ways. . . . It meant betrayal to my parents . . . what would the family friends say, how would my parents react .  .  . and all their faith on me . . . we discussed and called it quits! Now when I look back I don’t repent. I don’t think it would have worked being from different religious identity. Though marriage maintained their native roots, the second generation did not show such rigidity for dating. They did hang on to the cultural understanding of premarital sex being morally wrong and adhered to chastity. Sex, though tempting, should be a by-product of marriage. However, after engagement they could be together, and two respondents even thought that if sex happened it was between the two. Overall marriage, even though not thoroughly a Sanskar for them, did carry the traditional ethos of Indian culture, where the involvement of parents was more about security for the future just in case things did not work out. . They believed that the parents should be ok with their choice and preferred partners from their own religion. Still the traditional parameters of family were taken into consideration.

Enactment of gendered roles through religion Religion is an important element in the cultural socialization of the next generation (Kurien, 2002). The emphasis is on traditional Indian religious values (Farver et al., 2002). The role of religion is not just to unify them as a community but also to give common ground for sharing, bonding, and inculcating in their children, born in a foreign land, the cultural ethos of being Hindu. Their function to serve as role models by themselves practising the faith overtly was accepted by a majority of them.

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However, in the informal talks with the second-generation immigrants, it was observed that despite the tension about following the religious practices and faith, beliefs were not a major issue for them, and they looked comfortable in acknowledging the importance of them, even though a proper comprehension of the rituals, text, and practices might not be in-depth. The identity as a Hindu woman entailed not just practising religion but also defining the gendered role as a ‘Hindu woman’. This socialized the girl into the journey of role, duties, and expectations. However, the role of religion differed for both the generations. As Twisha, 21, stated: ‘I might not understand religion, all the nuances of Gita and Ramayana but hold on! I definitely connect to the ethos expressed concisely and feel proud to be a practising Hindu; the essence of it stays with me and guides me in my everyday life. I know my duties towards my family’. Another comment by Sameera, 23 years, supplemented the idea: Definitely language barrier in scripture reading is there yet learned it and have experienced how ‘HE’ [here referred to as Lord] intervenes and helps you whenever you need. What is important is doing by heart and not by compulsion and to be frank. Language is not an issue, it is just a medium. The aim of socializing early into religious practices is not just to pray but also to initiate them into role expectations, rituals, and norms. The idea is to pass on the richness of the culture and tradition to the next generation (Botting and Coward, 2001). One of the first-generation immigrant women, Yamani, 55 years old, described the importance of religion: Our parents taught us that family ties are a vital part of being a Hindu. . . . U know joint families, sharing and caring for people across generations and extended family . . . it is so fulfilling. I agree to it. . . . It is emotionally satisfying too. . . . The only way to maintain your identity and pass on to the children is to follow your religion – the rituals, celebrations of festivals and transmitting good ethical values to children. Sushila, a 65-year-old elderly mother, shared: Being in a different culture it is a challenge to keep our children rooted in their own culture. The only way is to imbibe the rituals and practices on my religion as a child. I don’t want my

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daughter to grow up a misfit. After all being a woman she needs to understand our way of family life. What better way than through religious preaching. Moreover I don’t want my family and friends to comment that look her daughter is spoilt and out of hand. (Are shaadi to Hindu se hi karni hai na – Ultimately marriage will be with the Hindu guy only). The older generation used to hold the thread of religion tightly not just to dispel the isolation of migration but also to integrate into the ‘native’ social network and strongly hold on to an identity of oneness. However, the responses of the second generation showed practising one’s religion to be entirely private. Despite the general lack of in-depth knowledge, a majority of the young women found reading scriptures or at least reciting some prayers to be inspiring and were not ashamed of openly acknowledging this in diverse friend groups. They felt comfortable and cool in maintaining social harmony in the family. Young Preeti, age19, comfortably narrated, ‘So many gods . . . friends take a dig at me . . . why so many varieties . . . I find it difficult to explain. . . . But then it is their perspective. But I am not going to give in to being made up for fun. The philosophy is that there are many paths but one goal and that is believe in Krishna. Period! Given the flexibility individual can follow one’s path. I have admired Mira and her love for Krishna. The dedication and love is out of the world. I wish I can be like that’. What was interesting was the balancing of their personal faith with that of a similar faith in the secular fabric. Their regular visit to the religious ceremonies and temples did not deter them from gracing an Iftar party, going for Langar to Gurudwara, or celebrating Christmas with equal zest. The practising of one’s faith with respect for other faiths exemplified the rich nurturing and excellent balancing of both the worlds. The majority prayed regularly by listening to bhajans while driving to the office or chanting mantras in their mind when free or when preparing for some important work. Therefore, it can be safely said that flexibility in the practice, which was very common, gave ample freedom and space to follow the teachings. Parents played a major role in reaching out to their children about religious beliefs and practices through small stories out of the varieties of scriptures. Many times they even cited looking up comics on the issue while visiting India to acquaint them with their faith. For many the visit to

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temple as a child was more for fun with peers and the Prasad served. The understanding of performing prayer was almost negligible. To make more sense of the practices, the preaching also worked in the concept of Karma – ‘as you sow so you reap’. The practical aspect of connecting spirituality helped in building a strong belief in one’s own religion without fear of any remorse and ridicule. Often visit to pujas (prayers) with parents as a child and gradually learn to read some part of the scripture, even though in heavily accented and broken Hindi, reflected the open acceptance to participate is a welcome change. Not shying from sharing her love for reading Sundar Kand or any Katha in Ramayan, Yamini, 25 years, expressed: You know I have to read Sundara Kand every time when who so ever in our family friends organised ‘Ramayan Paath’ .  .  . even though it comes usually at I don’t mind. . . . I feel so satisfied and connected with ‘HIM’. . . . My mother is so proud of me and most of her friends too appreciate this. They often give my example to their children. However, maintaining continuity in the same faith and learning rituals differed for young men. Though the parents desired the same values and role expectations from them, they did not force conformity. Meenakshi, a 54-year-old mother of two young children, stated: ‘I know that even though my son is not very ritualistic his faith as Hindu is very deep. See finally the woman of the house has to keep the tradition going on so . . . if she is properly groomed the man follows. . . . So the focus should be more on them. I am very liberal I have a daughter too I give the same advice for her too’. Similar sentiments were aired by Usha, 64 years old: ‘We might sound strict but the truth is that both genders have different roles to perform and culture and tradition has to be maintained by the girl . . . so her responsibility towards keeping the family integrated into the defined norms and values is of utmost importance’. The inequality in socialization of one’s roles through religious engagements is reflected in the encouragement for girls to perform gender role expectations to ensure conformity in their future life after marriage. The second generation endured their identity comfortably as secular Hindus in the Canadian space. The same could

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not be said for the first generation, who shared their experiences of isolation.

In lieu of conclusion Interdependence of these structures impacts women differently and migration is not gender-neutral. The burden of conforming to traditional gender roles, especially in the Indian space, and the enrichments of the Canadian space when it comes to relationships show the duality of giving selective freedom. Religion acts as a vehicle to root them into the cultural norms and role expectations as a Hindu and above all as a Hindu woman. They handle issues related to family and marriage which are important for keeping intact the ethnicity and identity with changing times in a different culture and society through negotiations rather than suppression. It is a big challenge for them to keep the three major institutions – Family, Marriage, and Religion – intact in spaces like Indian space vis-à-vis Canadian space. The younger generation is comfortable in speaking their identities as Canadian Indian-Hindu without the concern of being rejected. The main anxiety of the parents is losing the ethnicity of their children, but with the growth in the numbers of the Indian community settled there, it is no longer an isolated community. Given the qualitative nature of the study and the fact that the number of respondents was very small, it would be difficult to draw any concrete conclusion, but certainly this area warrants further research.

Note 1 Pseudonyms have been used to conceal the identity of the respondents.

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Chapter 10

Two steps forward, one step backward A step ahead? Rimple Mehta

Women’s bodies are symbolically projected to represent the boundaries of the nation as well as the reproducers of the nation. Ironically, women, who are seen as markers of the territorial space of the nation are also seen as the property of the nation, and therefore in need of defence and protection from the patriotic sons (Mostov, 1995). While the patriotic sons are expected to protect their mothers, wives, and daughters, they may deem it right to invade feminine spaces of another nation if it restricts their sovereignty in any manner. This relationship between women and the nation is underlined by the danger of exclusion and the pressures to conform to national cultures and values. They are seen as the bearers of cultural values by virtue of being the markers, bearers, and reproducers of the nation. Khosravi (2010:22) explains: Displacement – or, in the botanical jargon of the national order of things, uprootedness – is believed to result in an ‘unnatural’ mode of being. Border transgressors break the link between ‘nativity’ and nationality and bring the nation-state system into crisis. In such a scenario, moving out of one’s state to go to another ‘illegally’ is perceived as an ‘unnatural’ act that ought to be controlled and punished. While transgression of borders is considered as an unnatural act either by a man or a woman, for a woman, crossing national borders is perceived as transgressing territorial borders, as well as the normative limits of mobility and behaviour as prescribed by her family or community as well as the state. Therefore, mobility of women across borders is often a much-contested issue, because they are perceived as transgressing both the political nation,

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which they seemingly embody and represent and the social norms and codes of conduct. Through their mobility, women challenge the notion of rootedness. They challenge the androcentric notion of settlement, guided and established by the male breadwinner, by going back and forth across the border and by pursuing their aspirations and desires through this mobility. By going back and forth across the border and by pursuing their aspirations and desires through their mobility, they also pose a challenge to the gendered space created for women by men. While crossing borders that are the markers of the state, women are questioning ‘its territorial designation, and its spatial limitation’ (Duhacek, 2002:118). Symbolically, women are crossing the very boundaries that are meant to protect them from outsiders, and hence putting their sexuality under the scanner. The concerns over women’s sexuality are very closely related to the discourse on ‘honour’, which is not limited to the family or community but also extends to the logic of the state. The honour of a state is perceived to be deposited with the women of that state. The rights of women as citizens are often curbed, and it’s in the domain of women’s sexuality that this rights discourse develops and is used to further the cause of the androcentric institutions and social interactions. In this context, this chapter will explore the experiences and negotiations made by the Bangladeshi women in two correctional homes in Kolkata charged under section 14 of the Foreigners Act 1946. This discussion will be centred on the concept of honour and how that interplays in the national and socio-cultural spaces that they traverse.

Gender-power-mobility Women crossing political borders is a very common phenomenon, especially in certain parts of the world, but what needs attention is how her mobility is socially viewed, particularly if the crossing is perceived to be of her own volition and without a male companion; also what needs to be examined is how her mobility is represented in literature. In earlier academic works on transnational migration, women were either seen as companions of migrant men or as passive victims of trafficking. Pessar and Mahler (2003) argue that gender has been sidelined from scholarly research on international migration. According to them, though women have been absent from international scholarship relating to migration, they constitute a large proportion of the people crossing borders. Their work

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reflects that until the 1970s, most scholarly works focused on men as migrants and women as mere passive companions in the entire process. It was only in the 1980s that feminist scholarship began to look at women as agents in the process of migration. Pessar and Mahler (2003:817–823) build their framework based on three concepts – ‘geographic scales’, ‘social locations’, and ‘power geometries’, which are components of what they call ‘Gendered Geographies of Power’. Through the concept of ‘Gendered Geographies of Power’, they explain how gender articulates with migration and operates at various levels – the body, the family, and the state. Their analysis demands that we examine not only what actually flows into and across transnational spaces but also who controls the production, content, and directionality of these flows. They add that it is not enough to merely count the movers and the stayers; it is important to understand how gender controls options available to individuals and to groups, determining who stays and who moves – how often, when, where, and why. Cross-border mobility thus needs to be seen in terms of its power dynamics, in terms of who moves where and issues of safety and vulnerability that such mobility entails. Some bodies can go across borders very easily in comparison to others. This is a result of the complicated taxonomy of identities of who is potentially dangerous and who is not. Therefore, how people move is different, and what one moves as is different. There is a difference in going from one country to another for a conference and going to work as a nanny or house help. For instance, the migration of the largely uneducated Bangladeshi women to India, who are the subject of discussion of the present chapter, is mostly in search of unskilled labour, in contrast to the migration of women from Kerala to other parts of the country as well as to countries in the Middle East to work as nurses. The bargaining power and the choices available to the two different sets of women will be different. Massey (1994:154) argues that mobility is inflicted by power geometry. The way one moves may increase or decrease one’s social power. Everybody is not mobile. And for everyone who is mobile, it is not always an act of power or greater liberation or freedom. Mobility, therefore, needs to be seen as enmeshed in various social structures, which govern, restrict, or facilitate it for people from various locations within the structure. The issue of mobility of women, who cross geographical borders without necessary documents which would have given them the protection of their home states necessitates a discussion of space.

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In the context of the present discussion, space refers to a national space and the way it is woven together with, and reflects the values of, various socio-cultural spaces. A discussion on space from this point of view becomes important because it serves as a source of identity for people, who move across socio-cultural spaces. According to Massey (1994): what gives a place its specificity is not some long-internalized history but the fact that it is constructed out of a particular constellation of social relations, meeting, and weaving together at a particular locus. While spaces develop into geographical places, these are also dynamic constructs where locational socio-cultural identities get rooted through complex interactions. This perspective suggests that places are not empty receptacles where social interactions take place but have a dynamic and ever-changing nature. What may be an important point of departure to understand this dynamic nature of place is the interaction of gender and space and the development of particular social values in particular spaces. Seemanthini Niranjana’s (2001) work on the intersections of gender and space highlights the need to locate the subjects of anthropological research in the spaces that they inhabit in their everyday life. According to her, spatial considerations are central to the articulation of the logic of everyday life and more often than not they find expressions through a range of practices. For instance, prior to the partition of India, spaces around India and erstwhile East Pakistan borderland were marked by a constellation of intertwined social relations that knew no margins since there were no geographical barriers or borders. These received a jolt in 1947 when the division of territorial spaces took place and India was partitioned. Partition created spaces of abhorrent social relations; relations that had previously developed irrespective of socio-political divisions were now meant to be severed. The arbitrary fixing of political borders posed a great hindrance to existing social and familial relations which now had to be renegotiated from across the border, devoid of close intimate spaces (Chatterji, 1999:231). It caused great suffering, trauma, and pain to people, who had been living in some kind of social contract, sharing the same social space. Partition caused great shifts in populations across geographical borders and spaces and sometimes it became impossible for people to know if their kin or shared social

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contacts were dead or alive (Butalia, 1998:8–9). The impact of partition covered by scholars of history (and literature) has been limited largely to discourses on the state of exception or the dichotomy between dominance and resistance; that is, a history of mass killings and exodus and relocations (Jones, 2012). Discussions on the multiple strategies, negotiations, and experiences of marginalized groups with the sovereign state in the course of mobility are few and limited. Such interactions are contextual to the social location of marginalized groups, especially in the background of their forced mobility from one emerging sovereign state to another. In the context of India, as well as in the global context, another point that needs to be emphasized is the criminalization of border crossings and the increased securitization of borders. These issues have become even more pertinent in the post-9/11 phase where the anxiety over the protection of state sovereignty has heightened in the background of terrorist attacks and transnational crimes. McCulloch and Pickering (2012:1), in the introduction to their edited volume, Borders and Crime: Pre-Crime, Mobility and Serious Harm in an Age of Globalization, have argued that the border has ‘become a pre-eminent site for criminalization and crime control on a global scale’. Any violation of national borders, such as that of irregular crossing, is seen as a threat to state sovereignty and is punishable by law. As has been mentioned before, along with a threat to sovereignty, irregular cross-border mobility brings with it various socioeconomic and religious threats along with threats of terrorism. Globalization and acts of terrorism have created anxieties around violence, human rights, and state sovereignty that are evident in the securitization efforts of various states. In particular, borders have come to the forefront in the scholarship on transnational policing as being central to a broad range of criminal activities and subsequent practices of enforcement (see Weber, 2013; Pickering, Bosworth and Aas, 2014). Sharon Pickering (2011) argues that the experience of extralegal border crossing is significantly different for women. She points out how the nature of border policing is gendered and therefore comparable to other policing functions in liberal democracies. She focuses on a more dispersed form of policing that impacts women’s experiences as compared to a limited understanding of border policing. Extralegal border crossing is controlled by violence and criminality and, most importantly, gender-based border crossing. In the background of this discussion of geographies of power and heightened criminalization of cross-border mobility, it is important

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to explore the experiences of women and understand how their everyday life is affected by the larger international politics.

Honour in the South Asian context Honour is a complex set of societal norms imposed on both men and women in South Asia from time immemorial that often regulates their everyday lives. However, the onus of preserving the family honour rests more on its women than its men, who are expected to mete out punishments for transgressions to its women. As such many women in India and Bangladesh are constantly negotiating with multiple codes of behaviour in their daily lives. These codes of behaviour, as mentioned, have been engrained into society over centuries, a society that was and continues to be patriarchal on both sides of the border. Codes of behaviour define certain actions as honourable and others as dishonourable depending on the socio-cultural and historical context of that act in a given community. Norms of honour, thus, define the roles and duties of an individual within a social group. Boundaries of honour are both visible and discreet and regulate the behaviour and choices that individuals make in a given milieu. This chapter looks at how the Bangladeshi women prisoners responded to the boundaries created by the codes of honour, which they refer to asmaan-shonmaan, during their mobility across the Indo-Bangladesh border, their stay in the prison, and their return to Bangladesh. Discussions on honour feature in literature pertaining to crossborder migration which took place at the time of India’s partition in 1947 and again at the time of creation of Bangladesh in 1971. There is ample literature discussing the violence meted out on women and their exchange between India and Pakistan at the time of the historical partition in 1947. Hindu and Muslim women were treated as symbols, who would uphold the honour of religious communities and the honour of the newly formed states of India and Pakistan. Their sexuality was of concern to their families as well as the vanguards of the new states. Butalia (1998:192) points out: If colonialism provided Indian men the rationale for constructing and reconstructing the identity of the Hindu woman as a ‘bhadramahila’, the good, middle class, Hindu wife and mother, supporter of her men, Independence, and its dark ‘other’, Partition, provided the rationale for making women into symbols of the nation’s honour.

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The control of sexuality of women and setting up of moral codes of conduct for preserving the honour of the nation state becomes an important part of international politics when one nation state pits itself against another, especially at times of crises. Gupte (2012) appropriately remarks, ‘Women’s sexuality is the weakest link in patriarchy’s chain because after all, in spite of the careful crafting of patrilineality, the fact that motherhood is certainty and fatherhood a matter of speculation or faith remains’. It is this insecurity and fear that ties the family, community, and state together to perpetuate codes of conduct on women. There is, hence, a continuum in which honour functions within the family, community, and state. Honour as an institution generates fears and marks certain sexualities as responsible for bringing shame not only on the individual but also through the individual upon a family, community, or state. While the nation state strives to preserve the ‘purity’ of its female citizens, it posits it against the ‘impurity’ and potential threat of foreigners. Migrants are often referred to as dirty because they are seen as ‘out of place’, out of where they are supposed to be. Lofgren (2002:271) explains: The pedagogy of space also works as a purifying process. All that is alien must be placed (and thus controlled) outside the home territory, which means that a constant process of cultural projection is at work. Border crossings help to develop certain interconnected kinds of polarities, such as familiar/alien, home/ abroad, safe/dangerous, pure/impure. These polarities are maintained through sexual mores. Fears related to sexual contamination are instilled in order to maintain the sexual purity. A border is a symbolic axis between us/them, insider/ outsider, here/there, citizen/foreigner. It is also representative of a power relation that is intrinsically patriarchal. Therefore, women are seen as violating the social codes of conduct, and participating in the political betrayal of the nation. Mobility, therefore, needs to be seen as enmeshed with the various social structures that govern, restrict, or facilitate it for people from various locations within the structure. The narratives of Bangladeshi women in correctional homes in Kolkata highlight the interconnections between the notion of honour and transborder mobility and how it impacts the everyday life experiences of these women.

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Honour and criminalized transborder mobility In a capital-deficient country such as Bangladesh, where unemployment looms large and population pressures are high, the promise of a better livelihood in India, the growing demand for labour in the unorganized sector in India, and historical, cultural, and socioeconomic ties attract an exodus of Bangladeshi men and women into India. There is a definite market in India whose demands migrants from Bangladesh meet in the form of unskilled labour. They serve certain important functional purposes for the growth of the Indian economy by providing a very cheap labour force. Female domestic workers from Bangladesh provide cheap labour to a number of middle-class and upper-middle-class households in urban India. It is commonly known that the Bangladeshi workers compromise on a number of issues that the local workers would not. They work for less pay, give more hours to work, and are willing to do more arduous work. Illegal cross-border activities, such as cattle rustling, trafficking in persons and narcotics, and smuggling of persons and goods, are an integral part of life at and across the Indo-Bangladesh border. There is also a flourishing informal economy between merchants in India and Bangladesh, which is often outlawed by the state. A number of Bangladeshi women and children are becoming the victims of trafficking in human beings with false promises of jobs, marriage, and other forms of security across the Indo-Bangladesh border. The Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association (BNWLA), in a study undertaken in 1998, has estimated from different sources, such as newspaper reports, literature reviews, and information from the law enforcing agencies, that 300,000 children from Bangladesh work in brothels in India and 4,700 children were rescued from traffickers in the last five years (BNWLA, 1998). Agents, who facilitate the process of crossing the border often smuggle these people in illegally (Paul and Hasnath, 2000). Often these people-smugglers also play the role of people-traffickers. There is an array of wellnetworked agents in both India and Bangladesh (ADB, 2003). There are recruiters, travel agents, and brokers, etc., who constitute an entire ‘industry’ that thrives on the illegal flow of people from one side of the border to another (Paul and Hasnath, 2000). Because of the thin line between people-smuggling and people-trafficking, it is often difficult to say, who has been smuggled and who has been trafficked. Women, who are identified as having been trafficked are sent to government-run protective homes under the provisions

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of subsection 4 of section 17 of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act1986, and those who are identified as migrants without legal documents are processed under the criminal justice system and are either imprisoned under section 14 A(b) of the Foreigners Act 1946, or relevant provisions of the Passports Act 1967. Bangladeshi women in correctional homes in Kolkata, participants of my doctoral research, crossed the border and came to India, either to escape multiple situations of vulnerability, in search of a livelihood, or with aspirations of a better life. A number of them were trafficked or smuggled under false pretexts. Under various circumstances they were arrested by the police in India under section 14 of the Foreigners Act 1946, for entering the country without valid documents. Section 14states that a person arrested under this act could be sentenced for imprisonment between two to eight years and is also liable to pay a fine. The Bangladeshi women, who were in the average age group of 18–22 years, were generally imprisoned for two years along with being given a fine. A number of them had worked as child labourers. Some were married in their early teenage years, and some of them experienced violence in their marital lives. For some, their husbands had either deserted them or married another woman. So for most of these women, initially, crossing the border was a matter of moving from a vulnerable and violent situation in the hope of finding a better space for themselves. The realization of bhool [mistake], or mistake, for most, happened at the time of crossing the border when they became a part of the surreptitious process of border crossing, and when they saw that the agent, who had showed them dreams of a promising life was asking them to conspicuously run across the border, or to wade across narrow ditches or jump across barbed wire walls. Though they went through the entire process, there was a lingering fear, apprehension, and confusion which they ignored as they moved towards what they believed was a bright future. They realized that there was something ‘wrong’ but the fear was an undetermined one. Menon and Bhasin (1998:59) point out that with women: the shame-fear-dishonour syndrome presents itself differently: fear at the prospect of being sexually used; the unspeakable shame of being raped; fear of death and afraid because without defenders; and the twin dishonour of violation and consequent rejection.

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The uncertainty and fear could therefore comprise various apprehensions that may not be linked to a fear of violation of political borders and therefore the law of the land. But there was a transition from an understanding of their act of crossing the border as a bhool to an aporadh [crime] when they were arrested by the police and later imprisoned. While in prison, they feared that on their return they would be insulted for having spent time in the prison, and foremost for crossing the borders of their desh [country]. Their character would become a topic of discussion for members of the community and even more so if they had spent a large amount of time without any communication with their family. The fact that they had spent time outside their home and desh was enough for fingers to be pointed at them. Rumpa said: Being in the prison is like being in an immoral place [read brothel] . . . it’s the same thing . . . they both mean the same thing. . . . In my desh serving a prison term is a matter of great consequence  .  .  . in our community a woman needs to run a household, and needs to stay in purdah .  .  . we are Muslims and need to be behind a purdah but now we are in prison. . . . Can you imagine what an impact it will have on our maanshonmaan [honour]. It is important to note that she equates the prison to a brothel. This is in reference to the perceived damage that both of these places cause to a woman’s maan-shonmaan or honour. Outside the boundary of the home and neighbourhood, a prison and brothel could mean the same thing because it is a space where ‘honourable’ women should not be present. Apart from stepping outside the boundaries of the home, the fact that some of these women were the first in their family to serve a prison sentence acts as another level of shame. Hamida, for instance, said that no one in several generations of her family had seen the insides of a prison while she had seen three of them. She said: I do not feel bad about anything else apart from the fact that no one in my family has been in prison. Not even any of the male members. I am a girl and I have been in prison. It is a shameful thing for my family.

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She refers to the fear of loss of face for having spent time in the prison. Spending time in the prison would also raise questions on their character and render them corrupt like the other ‘criminals’ with whom they spent their time in prison. The Bangladeshi women prisoners threatened and posed a challenge to the social order of ‘purity’ and ‘pollution’, allegedly bringing shame in two ways – first, by their movement, not only out of the home but also out of the borders of their state; second, by being arrested and serving a sentence in a prison. Both these acts bring along with them a perceived danger of a loss of face in society. Their mobility and resistance to the existing social structures and normative codes of behaviour put them at risk of ‘losing’ their honour. It would also raise suspicion among the members of their society of their being involved in all sorts of immoral and nefarious activities during their stay abroad. Sonali, unlike many others, had not been involved in sex work but she feared that her absence from home for so long would raise suspicions amongst extended family and neighbours with regard to her character. She feared: Everyone will say nasty things about me, that I was involved in immoral work and that I am myself immoral. The fact that I am stuck here and struggling will not be understood by anyone. All they will know and believe is that I have become an immoral person. Sonali’s narrative indicates that she differentiated between the nature of the work and the character of the individual. She separates immoral work and immoral self, suggesting that the devaluation of a certain kind of work should not lead to a devaluation of the person doing that work. Her narrative suggests that she perceived sex work as immoral and was worried that people would think she was involved in it and had become an immoral person as well. She hoped that the people of her village took into consideration her struggles in the prison instead of raising questions on her character by extrapolating her absence and linking it with sex work. This extrapolation of their absence for long periods of time impacted different people in different ways. While Sonali’s primary concern seemed to be how she would be labelled and judged, Hamida was concerned about her future marriage prospects. Unlike many of the other inmates, Hamida was not married off in her early teens. She saw marriage as meaningful and integral to her future. She was afraid that the rumours that were spread about her while she was away

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from Bangladesh would keep families from approaching her family to ask her hand in marriage. She said: I am never going to get married. Who in the village is going to marry me after they find out that I have spent time in the prison? There are some people in the village whose only job is to spread rumours about people. Even if some boy’s family wants to come and see me they will tell them about my past. Once someone hears that do you think they will come to woo me for their son? My life has been completely destroyed. There is nothing to look forward to now. Though Hamida does not talk directly about maan-shonmaan, her narrative is indicative of the fact that there was a connection between her absence from Bangladesh, suspicions about her sexuality, her marriage, and the responses from her community members. Also, she stresses marriage as her future and its destruction as a result of the events in her life. Since marriage is a family affair, Hamida’s likelihood of getting married was dependent on the way the entire community viewed her actions, which in turn would reflect on the status of her family. Prior to returning home there was another hurdle they had to cross with regard to preserving their maan-shonmaan, i.e. the Border Security Force (BSF). There were several rumours, stories, and pieces of information about BSF raping and torturing the Bangladeshi women before they were finally asked to run to the other side of the border to Bangladesh. The women heard some of these stories from the prison staff or police, who had accompanied the released Bangladeshi women to the border or through communication with women, who had been released and had returned to India only to be imprisoned again. They had heard that the BSF often forced women to give them sexual favours before letting them go back to Bangladesh. In the initial conversations the Bangladeshi women would often display extreme anxiety about being raped on their way back, as this would imply losing whatever little honour they had remaining with them. Their narratives with regard to sexual favours for the BSF shifted over time. They began laughing and joking about it, saying how a few minutes of sex would ultimately lead them to much-desired freedom. This can be analysed at two levels – first, that with time their trust in me, the researcher, became stronger and they felt safe to reveal their vulnerability without the fear of being

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judged, and second, they had begun to understand the inevitability of the process of going back, which involved an unpleasant exploitative interaction with the BSF. These narratives need to be seen in the background of systemic oppression faced by the Bangladeshi women. Women’s security in India and Bangladesh is jeopardized and threatened and their lives and dignity are at great risk on a daily basis, from the likelihood of sexual assault to domestic violence in public and private spaces. This threat limits women’s capacity and ability to exercise their fundamental freedoms. Their vulnerability tends to increase in a place that is not very familiar to them. In such places it becomes important to preserve one’s own integrity as well as reinvent oneself to take charge of the new conditions of survival. Salma, who had worked in a brothel for few months and had managed to finally escape from there, said: Didi I have heard that at the time of push-back the BSF tortures the women. I am scared about this. I have a little ijjat [honour] left and hence I am here in the prison. What if my ijjat is destroyed while crossing the border? A few days back a few women have been sent back through push-back. We have heard that their ijjat had been destroyed at the border. Many like Salma felt that by surrendering themselves to the police and by being in the prison they had saved their ijjat from being ‘damaged further’. They felt that their maan-shonmaan was not completely over. They worried that whatever was remaining would also be lost if they were raped at the border before going back to Bangladesh. They viewed maan-shonmaan as something that could be broken down into smaller units. The loss of some units would mean that there would be some units left to hold on to before they could be said to be completely devoid of it. It was difficult for them to fathom the consequences of returning to Bangladesh, to their family or friends, with no traces of maan-shonmaan. A seemingly minor administrative delay on the part of the various institutions had a great impact on the everyday life of these women. Hamida said: Didi they are not providing us with the coach which will take us back. . . . I know it is not affecting their maan-shonmaan. . . . But our maan-shonmaan has long been destroyed . . . my parents have been shamed . . . now I just want to go back to my own desh.

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A long absence from home, having left behind husband and family, would generate all sorts of suspicions. Further, the women felt that the suspicion and allegations put forth by the members of the community or neighbourhood would require them, upon their return, to make an extra effort to abide by moral codes of conduct to maintain their image in public spaces. Any attempts to talk to men, who were not related to them would incur more insults. Bipasha said: Everyone is going to talk about me.  .  .  . They will insult my father and taunt me and accuse me of being corrupt as I have spent time in a prison in India. . . . My father will lose his maanshonmaan . . . I am thinking about all this. The fear of the negative public gaze on them and their family seemed to haunt the Bangladeshi women closer to the date of return. While they thought about their time after prison life, they faced several insults within the prison itself. The prison staff perceived the Bangladeshi women as ‘sexually aggressive’ and dangerous. They were often compared to the Indian women prisoners, who were perceived to be much more cultured and well behaved and therefore easier to manage. They also faced questions with regard to the need to leave their desh and come to India. At times like these, the Bangladeshi women would engage in moral policing on each other so that they could uphold the image of a good Bangladeshi woman in India. While they thought that it was important to question the prison administration, they thought it equally important to project the image of a moral Bangladeshi woman to preserve the maan-shonmaan of their desh. The point at which the discussion on maan-shonmaan became very intense was when the women started discussing their release from the prison and the stages in the process of returning to Bangladesh. This was the point when their narratives about maanshonmaan exhibited angst about shaming their family not only by being imprisoned but also by raising anxieties and suspicions about what they might have done in the years that they were away in a foreign country. During their stay in India, whether in the prison or outside it, they were trying to protect their own maan-shonmaan in a foreign country and the fear of losing the maan-shonmaan of the family was in the background. At the time of return this fear got foregrounded because they would now be physically present to face the slandering from their community members. Ironically, the moment of return brought with it an immense sense of insecurity.

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The moment of return, which was a moment of freedom from incarceration, was also a moment of uncertainty and lack of direction. Some wanted to go back home but were not sure how their family would receive them; some decided that they would go back to Bangladesh but would wait for a few months and assess the situation in the neighbourhood before going to meet their family; some decided never to return home. They had been constantly preserving and reinventing themselves in various ways during their stay in India, but their return to Bangladesh would require them to discard some of those inventions about themselves and re-situate themselves in their locale. At various stages of their mobility across the border the issue of honour surfaced differently. Many of them understood that no amount of explanation on their part could stop their neighbours and community members from shaming them and their family. They still tried to think of ways in which they could make the process of going back less shameful for themselves and their families. Crossing the threshold of the house and desh was perceived as crossing the boundaries of a virtuous woman. In order to reinstate the faith of the community members they felt they would have to conduct themselves in an extra pious manner. This brings forth the vulnerability and lack of choices that the women were confronted with on their release. Having said that, it is important to clarify that the moment of release from prison was still something that they desperately waited for despite its accompanying uncertainty.

Conclusion Through their so-called transgressions of the borders and boundaries, the women challenge the patriarchal social and political system that is dominated by male machismo and violence and seek to imagine a better life outside the given framework of docile behaviour expected of them. It, therefore, becomes important to hear and understand women’s voices with respect to borders. Transgression of borders is simultaneously perceived as a threat to social and moral codes of conduct. This transgression primarily refers to a threat of transgression of sexual norms that affect the imagination and political projects of the nation state, the family, and religious communities. It is important to see the overlaps between political and social borders, as political borders also extend as borders of social and moral control and vice versa.

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The narratives of the Bangladeshi women revolve around the border – there are stories of acceptance, rejection, abjection, threat, fear, honour, and hope for the future of their children. The narratives bring out the implications of political borders on the everyday lived experience of women, who transgress these borders. The way mobility across borders shapes the everyday lives of these women highlights the nexus of the family, community, and state. They all work together to impose codes of ‘honourable’ behaviour on the Bangladeshi women. Their narratives also highlight the choices they need to make in varying situations of vulnerability. They negotiated with the codes of honour that were imposed on them by various institutions of the state and society at large. Whether it was about their behaviour as a female prisoner in India or as a female citizen of Bangladesh, they constantly negotiated both territorial and moral spaces to make a space for the survival of the self. The narratives of the Bangladeshi women throw light on the role that codes of honour played in their lives and the way they played roles within and beyond fixed notions of what brings honour and what brings shame. They feared a loss of identity and their social position if they defied codes of honour. But somewhere lurking behind their narratives of adherence and fear were their narratives of transgression and a secret celebration of that transgression. What does this moving back and forth across the boundaries of honour mean for the women? Does the sum of steps forward and steps backward effectively lead to a step ahead? Does this step ahead bring a radical/qualitative/quantitative change in their everyday lived experiences? If not, then what does this progression in terms of a step mean? How can one quantify this step? Rather, is there a need to quantify or qualify this step? Or does it make the most sense in its ambiguous quantitative and qualitative qualifications? Two steps forward, one step backwards: Is this a step ahead?

References Asian Development Bank (2003) Combating Trafficking of Women and Children in South Asia: Regional Synthesis Paper for Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, Manila: Asian Development Bank. Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association (BNWLA) (1998) Survey in the Area of Women and Child Trafficking, Dhaka: BNWLA. Butalia, U. (1998) The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India, New Delhi: Penguin Books India.

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Chatterji, J. (1999) ‘The Fashioning of a Frontier: The Radcliffe Line and Bengal’s Border Landscape, 1947–52’, Modern Asian Studies, 33(1). Duhacek, D. (2002) ‘Gender Perspectives on Political Identities in Yugoslavia’, in Ivekovic, R. and Mostov, J., eds., From Gender to Nation, Ravanna: A Longo Editore, 113–126. Gupte, M., Awasthi, R. and Chickerur, S., eds. (2012) ‘Honour’ and Women’s Rights: South Asian Perspectives, Pune: Masum Publications. Jones, R. (2012) ‘Spaces of Refusal: Rethinking Sovereign Power and Resistance at the Border’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102(3): 685–699. Khosravi, S. (2010) ‘Illegal’ Traveller: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Lofgren, O. (2002) ‘The Nationalization of Anxiety: A History of Border Crossing’, in Hedetoft, U. and Hjort, M., eds., The Postcolonial Self: Belonging and Identity, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 217–232. Massey, D. (1994) ‘A Global Sense of Place’, in Space, Place, and Gender, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 146–156. McCulloch, J. and Pickering, S. (2012) ‘Introduction’, in McCulloch, J. and Pickering, S., eds., Borders and Crime: Pre-Crime, Mobility and Serious Harm in an Age of Globalization, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1–14. Menon, R. and Bhasin, K., eds. (1998) Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition, India: Kali for Women. Mostov, J. (1995) ‘“Our Womens”/“Their Womens” Symbolic Boundaries, Territorial Markers, and Violence in the Balkans’, Peace & Change, 20(4): 515–529. Niranjana, S. (2001) Gender and Space: Femininity, Sexualization and the Female Body, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Paul, B.K. and Hasnath, S.A. (2000) ‘Trafficking in Bangladeshi Women and Girls’, Geographical Review, 90(2): 268–276. Pessar, P.R. and Mahler, S.J. (2003) ‘Transnational Migration: Bringing Gender in’, International Migration Review, 37(3): 812–846. Pickering, S. (2011) Women, Border and Violence: Current Issues in Asylum, Forced Migration and Trafficking, New York: Springer. Pickering, S., Bosworth, M. and Aas, K.F. (2014) ‘The Criminology of Mobility’, in Pickering, S. and Ham, J., eds., The Routledge Handbook on Crime and International Migration, London: Routledge, 382–395. Weber, L. (2013) Policing Non-Citizens, London: Routledge.

Chapter 11

Transnational migration and gendered (re)organization of eldercare Sreerupa

Kerala has had a history of large-scale transnational migration, but the ageing of its population has been a more recent phenomenon. Rapid demographic transition, population ageing, and widespread transnational migration have come together to define the larger socio-demographic context of the state, particularly among certain communities like the Syrian Christians1 from south-central2 Kerala, which was one of the dominant emigrant communities of the state (Zachariah, Mathew, and Rajan, 2003; Kurien, 2002). Among the Syrian Christians, the specific gender patterns of transnational migration from the community and the spatial dispersal of family members across the globe, along with an intensification of ageing among those staying behind, brought forth a reorganization of care for the older members of the family staying behind. Research on gender and migration has recognized that migration processes are gendered and that gender relations change with the migration process (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2000; Szczepaniková, 2006). Further, certain community-specific gender characteristics shape patterns of migration and migration-induced social change (Kurien, 2002). Given this context, the chapter examines the gendered character of migration and its gendering influence on the (re)organization of eldercare provisioning among the high-status and affluent Syrian Christian community. The chapter also explores the influence of the other axes of differentiation, like class and caste, in view of the intersectionality of gender, class, and caste. The chapter engages with these issues in an empirical setting in Central Travancore, Kerala.

Conceptualizing care: nurturing care and reproductive labour To understand the gendering effects of the transnational migration process on the organization of eldercare, the study needs grounding

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in the theoretical conceptualization of care. One of the major theoretical directions in the field of care has been to highlight relationality and interdependence as the defining characteristics of care work (Duffy, 2005). Framing care as nurturance, feminist scholars have defined care as a process, a practice, or a way of thinking that has a strong emotional dimension and is based on human connection in relationships (Cancian and Oliker, 2000; Tronto, 1993; Fisher and Tronto, 1990). Within the nurturance conceptualization of care defined by emotion and relationship, Joan Tronto (1993) has suggested four dimensions of care, namely, attentiveness to care needs, responsibility to meet care needs, competence to provide care, and responsiveness to care received, respectively. While the nurturance conceptualization privileges the relational component of care work, reproductive labour3 includes both relational and non-relational tasks. It is defined as ‘work’ that is necessary to maintain people both on a daily basis and intergenerationally and to ensure the ongoing reproduction of the labour force (Duffy, 2005; Glenn, 1992). Although there are overlaps, a reproductive labour definition captures a broader universe of activities – such as food preparation, housecleaning, and laundry – that are excluded by a nurturance framework (Duffy, 2005). Duffy (2005) in her study argues that these two distinct conceptualizations have quite different implications for the empirical study of care work and for analysing race, ethnicity, and class inequalities in paid care. Since a theoretical focus on nurturance would privilege the experiences of those ‘privileged’ by gender, class, and ethnicity while inadvertently excluding the experiences of those disadvantaged. On the contrary, by considering the non-relational reproductive labour also as care, the paid care work done by mostly lower-class and lower-caste women gets recognition as care.

A note on the fieldwork and methodology The chapter draws its empirical material from an ethnographic fieldwork in Tirunadu from 2008 to 2010, which is located in the high migration region of south-central Travancore in Kerala. Tirunadu4 is a predominantly Syrian Christian neighbourhood in a village in Pathanamthitta district.5 Syrian Christians are a high-status, affluent ethnic community forming a small percentage of the population. Syrian Christians popularly believe that they are the descendants of high-caste (Brahmin) converts of Thomas, the Apostle of Christ, thought to have arrived in Malabar on his apostolic mission in AD 52 (Visvanathan, 1989). The region was a base for a number of

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Christian denominations; however, Syrian Christian Marthomites6 were one of the groups largest in number and influence. According to local narratives, the region used to be an agricultural hinterland which was transformed by international migration. Kurien (2002) in her study of Syrian Christians from the region also noted that at the turn of the twentieth century the community was poor and largely agrarian. Through international migration a significant proportion of the community were able to improve their economic position. The Syrian Christians, who were not very mobile before the Second World War, became a prominent migrant community in Kerala after the war (Zachariah, 2001; Zachariah, Mathew, and Rajan, 2003). The large inflow of remittances from abroad became abundantly visible in the relative affluence of the region. The landscape was filled with large fancy double-storey houses, many of which were vacant for years after the families’ emigration. The main junction at Tirunadu boasted the presence of banks or ATMs of nearly all the major banks and financial organizations operating in Kerala, which according to locals was flush with remittances from migrants. However, Tirunadu, like many other parts of Kerala, was not only experiencing large-scale emigration of the younger population and their relocation abroad; the region was also experiencing an intensification of ageing, with the age structure being skewed towards older age groups. Tirunadu is located in a district that not only has one of the highest migration rates in the state but also has the highest proportion of elderly, at 21 per cent in 2004 (Rajan and Aliyar, 2004). The region thus became the site for two key processes of transformation – ageing and transnational migration. Given this context of large-scale migration of the younger generation and an intensification of ageing among those staying behind, the chapter examines the gendered character of migration and its influence on the reorganization of eldercare provisioning for those staying behind, while recognizing the intersectionality of gender, class, and caste. Empirical material for the chapter has been drawn from an extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Tirunadu in the south-central Travancore region. The ethnographic field study was focused on the migrant households belonging to the relatively affluent middle- and upper-middle-class Mar Thoma Syrian community, where the ageing parents have stayed behind. Although the region was a base for a number of Christian denominations, Mar Thoma

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Syrian Christians were one of the groups largest in number and influence. In-depth ethnographic interviews (from 60 elderly households) and observation were used to understand the care arrangements made for older men and women of different marital statuses and differing care needs, mainly in the household. The interviews were conducted in Malayalam (local language), were of one to two hours in duration, and were taped and transcribed.

Gender specificities of transnational migration Kerala has had a long and complex history of transnational migration (Joseph, 1988; Kurien, 2002; Zachariah, Mathew, and Rajan, 2003), which had deep economic,7 social, and cultural influences (Gulati, 1993; Zachariah and Rajan, 2012; Rajan and Narayana, 2010; Kannan and Hari, 2002; Osella and Osella, 2000). Migration from Kerala has seen several phases from the early twentieth century. However, transnational migration from Kerala was dominated by movement to the Persian Gulf countries, a process that witnessed a boom in the 1970s (Zachariah, Mathew, and Rajan, 2003). Later, over the decades, migration flow diversified to newer destinations, including the US, UK, Europe, Australia, Canada, and so on. Transnational migration from Tirunadu and surrounding regions also happened in phases, with early migration to Singapore and Malaysia8 and later to Africa9 of educated white-collar workers, which has been well documented in academic writings on migratory movements from Kerala (Joseph, 1988; Kurien, 2002). The predominantly male migrants often took their spouses and young children with them, while the school going children were sent back home to the grandparents or to boarding schools to complete their schooling and for higher education. These early phases of transnational migration were not permanent; they were embarked upon with an intent to consolidate one’s financial position back home and then to return permanently. The next major movement from Tirunadu was to the Gulf countries, which happened in two major phases: a large outflow at the end of the Second World War followed by a mass migration which began in the 1960s and continued strongly for a couple of decades (Kurien, 2002) before weakening. Significantly, the Gulf migrants from this region were not unskilled labour migrants, unlike from certain other parts of Kerala, and were mostly semi-skilled workers

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who went on regular work visas.10 Later, around the 1970s, migration to the United States and the United Kingdom picked up in the region. Unlike earlier streams of migration, migration to the United States and the United Kingdom tended to be permanent. Over the decades, a host of new destinations were added to the existing stream of migration, like other parts of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, amongst others. Significantly, these later phases of transnational migration from the region had certain distinct gender specificities. Migration from the state to the Gulf countries had been largely dominated by men with low levels of education employed in semi-skilled and technical work (particularly among the Mappila Muslims of the north and Ezhava Hindus of the south) (Zachariah and Rajan, 2004, Kurien, 2002). Among the Syrian Christians from the south-central Travancore region, both men and women migrated to find jobs as clerks, semi-professionals, and professionals based on their professional and higher education and managed to take their immediate family along11 (Kurien, 2002). A significant gender characteristic of these later phases of migration to the Middle East and the United States was also that a substantial proportion of the migrant women were either primary migrants or were able to find jobs in their host countries after arriving there with their spouses (ibid). Particularly, several women from the region migrated to the Middle East and the United States to meet the huge demand for nurses during the mid-seventies, often becoming the primary income earner in their families. Thus, remarkably, a large number of well-educated and professionally qualified women had migrated, particularly in the latter streams of migration (Kurien, 2002). This was in stark contrast to the gender pattern of international migration from the rest of Kerala, particularly to the Gulf countries. Migration from the region was not a predominantly male migration. Moreover, women migrated not just as dependents but also as primary migrants and working spouses, which enhanced their position within their family and community. These specific gender characteristics of transnational migration involving the large-scale permanent migration of young working women has had specific implications for the care provision of the fast-ageing population in the region.12 Most obviously, it resulted in the absence of women and not just men, unlike other parts of the state. Since women are closely associated with the caring role within the family, their absence created the need for

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extra familial care services for the older persons staying behind in Tirunadu. Further, the nature of the economically successful migration from the region provided the material resources to a larger section of the population to seek market alternatives for the provision of eldercare. These gender specificities of transnational migration shaped the organization and provision of eldercare in Tirunadu.

Gendered (re)organization of eldercare Among the patrilineal and patrilocal Syrian Christians, commonly the older sons were expected to move out of the house one by one as they got married and set up a separate household, often in their share of the patrilocal property. In turn, the youngest son, who remained behind with the parents, inherited the kudumbhaveedu (family house) (Visvanathan, 1989) and along with it the chumadala (responsibility) to care for the parents in their old age. However, in the context of intensive transnational migration among the Syrian Christian community, the decision regarding which son receives the inheritance and responsibility to care for the parents in old age was much negotiated and depended on the availability and convenience of the sons to take up the care responsibility. Once the question of inheritance was settled, then for the parents, the migration status of the son and daughter-in-law who have the responsibility to care for them had the most consequence for their care in their old age. However, more than the migration of the male kin (sons), it was the migration of the female kin (daughters-in-law) which begot changes and modifications to the care arrangements of the older persons staying behind. While sons have the responsibility to care for their parents, in practice it was their wives or the daughtersin-law who looked after the parents in the old age. Women are the caregivers of the family and their movement had greater implication for the actual provision of care within the family. Not surprisingly, thus, older parents with migrant sons but co-residing daughters-inlaw did not require much modification in their care arrangements, unlike elderly parents ‘living alone’13 (that is, those living without co-resident children, whether single or as a couple). However, the migration of married daughters was seen to have little consequence for the care organization of their parents, since their care responsibilities were only towards their own parents-in-law. Significantly, both men and women from the community migrated, and due to the importance of the nuclear family and

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conjugal relationship, they also took their spouses along after marriage or sought marriages between migrants (Kurien, 2002). This gender pattern of large-scale migration from the region resulted in the absence of a significant number of women, the primary caregivers of the family, and shaped the organization of care for the older persons staying behind. Different phases of migration from the region, however, saw different ways of organization of eldercare. The initial phases of migration to Singapore, Malaysia, and Africa predominantly followed the male breadwinner and dependent spouse model. Women in those generations were usually not the primary migrants or earners of the family and their migration was also rarely permanent. Consequently, it was common for a daughter-in-law (usually the wife of the son responsible to care for his parents) to return to look after the old parents-in-law when they became frail or once they lost their spouse. While the migrant daughters-in-law returned to look after the parents-in-law in their old age, the sons would stay back and provide for them from a distance. Thus, in the early phase of migration there was little reorganization of eldercare despite considerable movement of both men and women. However, during the later phases of migration, as large numbers of women started migrating as the primary migrants (often as nurses) or as gainfully employed spouses, their position within the family and community was strengthened in a community which highly valued the creation of wealth (ibid). Moreover, as more and more families started settling abroad permanently with often both the spouses in secure jobs, there was no longer an expectation for the daughter-in-law to return to look after their elderly parentsin-law. Given the more permanent absence of female kin and the improved financial resources post–international migration, the care for the middle- and upper-middle-class Syrian Christian older persons staying behind was reorganized. In the latter phases of migration, increasingly the migrant daughtersin-law along with the sons took on the overall responsibility for the care for the older parents while the hands-on tasks of care were delegated to paid care workers. The migrant son and daughter-inlaw would arrange paid care for the elderly parents staying behind, at times by hiring and managing multiple care workers through a placement agency or through personal contacts. Thus, migrant women in the later phases, much like the migrant men, would provide ‘care from a distance’ by remaining responsible for eldercare without actually doing the work of caring.

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In this transnational care arrangement, the actual hands-on work of caring for the older persons staying behind was delegated to predominantly female local paid care workers. Female domestic workers, personal carers, or home nurses, both as resident and non-resident care workers, were hired as part of the transnational eldercare arrangement among the middle- and upper-middle-class Syrian Christians in Tirunadu. Depending on the care needs of the elderly person and the availability of local assistance, various combinations of care arrangements were employed involving a resident or part-time domestic worker (for elderly people in relatively good health) or a live-in domestic worker, home nurse and resident male helper, or caretaker (for very old and frail elderly people). In this reorganization of eldercare, a predominantly female workforce of lower-class and lower-caste women were drawn in to fill the gap in care provisioning created by the absence of upper-class and uppercaste migrant women.

Care hierarchies and transnational reorganization of care Next the chapter examines how care hierarchies based on certain aspects of differentiation have shaped and determined the transnational (re)organization of eldercare. Notably, a structure of care hierarchy separates caring at the top of the hierarchy (involving the nurturing aspects of care like attentiveness and responsibility) from caring at the bottom of the hierarchy (involving the nonrelational reproductive aspects of care like domestic and personal care services) on the basis of the power and influence over the caring process (Fisher and Tronto, 1990; Duffy, 2005). Just like how the various aspects of care are assigned unequal value or worth in the society, the type of care carried out by a person or group of persons is closely associated with their value or position within this hierarchy of meanings (Tronto, 1993). Thus, caring at the top of the hierarchy (‘attentiveness’ and ‘responsibility’) are associated with the powerful while caring at the bottom of the care hierarchy (care provisioning) is left to the less powerful. Remarkably, in the transnational reorganization of eldercare it was only the care services or the hands-on care work which was delegated to the largely female lower-class and lower-caste paid care workers. Care services were in fact the least valuable aspect of caring, generally associated with the non-relational tasks of cooking,

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cleaning, washing, laundry, and other household chores, and the hands-on physical care work of bathing, toileting, washing, cleaning, lifting, and so on. By contrast, the most valuable or nurturing aspects of caring, like being attentive to care needs and taking responsibility, are associated with relationality, concern, affection, and responsibility; all the nurturing aspects of care were retained by the upper-class and upper-caste migrant men and women, even from a distance. Hence, those who are the least well-off, in terms of gender, class, or caste, are disproportionately those who do the work of care provisioning (caregiving work), and the best-off members of the society are often able to use their positions of superiority to pass caring work off to others. Tronto (1993) termed those who get their basic caring work needs met by others as ‘privileged’ on the basis of gender, class, race, and caste privilege. Being in a privileged position, the powerful tend to control the valuable aspects of care work whereas the least valuable are left for the less powerful, where the actual ‘doing’ of care takes place. One of the significant aspects of such differentiation is gender. Care is highly gender-differentiated work and men and women do not share this work equally. Men and women have definitive gendered roles and responsibilities, which shapes the organization of care as well as the experience of transnational caring for male and female migrants. The various aspects of care are associated with different gendered roles which have greater or lesser power, respectively. For instance, ‘responsibility’, associated with the top of the care hierarchy, is a masculine role and usually sons are expected to take responsibility to care for their ageing parents. They would take the responsibility to fulfil their old parents’ material needs, and they do it through being in paid employment and getting command over resources to meet the care needs (Tronto, 1993). Men’s care role is that of the breadwinner who has the responsibility to ensure care, hence their absence does not influence the care for those staying behind. As discussed in the previous section, across various phases of migration, they continued to fulfil their role of a provider and caretaker from a distance. By contrast, provision of care services, associated with the bottom of the care hierarchy, is seen as a feminine role, and women (wives and daughters-in-law among Syrian Christians) are expected to look after the older persons in the family by providing them with domestic and personal care services. Care provisioning, which

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is largely thought of to be women’s work,14 by its very nature requires proximity and cannot be provided from a distance. Hence, the migrant women were required to overcome the distances or negotiate the terms of their gendered care role. Notably, as discussed previously, in the earlier phases of migration, the absence of migrant daughters-in-law used to be addressed by their return (without their spouses) to Tirunadu to look after their ageing parents-in-law. However, during the latter phases of migration, as the Syrian Christian migrant women grew in power, they delegated their caregiving work to local paid care workers while getting more involved in the masculine domain of taking responsibility for care and well-being. The transnational reorganization of care also emphasizes the intersectionality of gender, class, ethnicity, and caste, by revealing how multiple aspects of differentiation such as class, ethnicity, and caste along with gender influence the organization of care. Since there can never solely be a ‘migrant woman’ or a ‘migrant man’, s/he is always positioned in the matrix of class, ethnicity, and caste relations (Szczepaniková, 2006) which determines their place in the care hierarchy. To illustrate, among the middle- and upper-middleclass Syrian Christian community, the (re)organization of eldercare has involved a gendered reorganization of eldercare wherein the migrant women from the community almost completely withdrew from the feminine role of eldercare provisioning and began sharing the masculine aspects of eldercare. Further, the organization of the eldercare market and distribution of eldercare work in and around Tirunadu revealed that predominantly poor Dalits, Dalit Christians, and other lower-caste women were drawn into the lowest hierarchies of home-based paid eldercare work. This exemplified a class- and caste-based reorganization of care which involved delegation of less valuable eldercare work from the middle- and upper-middle-class homes to the lower-class and lower-caste workers. Hiring of lower-caste servants was not entirely a new thing in the middle-class Indian households (Lamb, 2009). However, transnational migration resulted in the near complete absence of the upper-class and upper-caste migrant woman from the eldercare provisioning role. Moreover, lower-class and lower-caste workers were hired to provide eldercare services including intimate personal care services as well as domestic work like cooking, which was previously not considered appropriate for delegation to lower-caste

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workers due to notions about purity and pollution. Migration has, thus, catalyzed changes in the organization of eldercare based on gender-, class-, and caste-based differentiation.

Conclusion This chapter illustrated how transnational migration’s influence on the organization of eldercare is structured by a hierarchy which separates caring at the top of the hierarchy from caring at the bottom of the hierarchy. The reorganization of care across the transnational space was shaped by the care hierarchy wherein those who were ‘privileged’ were able to control the valuable aspects of care from a distance, while shifting the less valuable aspect of care provision work to the less powerful others. The least well-off, in terms of gender, class, and caste (poor Dalits, Dalit Christians, and other lowercaste women), were disproportionately those who were drawn into the provisioning of care, while the best-off members (upper-class Syrian Christian men and women) were often able to use their positions of privilege to pass caregiving work off to others. Even as migrant women from the upper class and caste moved to the top of the care hierarchy, local women from a lower class and caste were incorporated into the provision of hands-on paid care work at the bottom of the hierarchy. Thus, the transnational (re)organization of care and the system of who is cared for by whom shapes and is shaped by the pattern of gender, class, and caste-based subordination existing in the society.

Notes 1 Syrian Christians are an ethnic religious group in Kerala. Syrian Christians popularly believe that they are the descendants of high-caste (Brahmin) converts of Thomas, the Apostle of Christ, thought to have arrived in Malabar on his apostolic mission in AD 52 (Visvanathan, 1989). They are a high-status, affluent minority community forming a small percentage of the population. The principal Syrian Christian denominations are the Orthodox Syrian, Jacobite Syrian, Syro-Catholic, and Mar Thoma Syrian. 2 As per the Kerala Migration Survey, among all the districts in the state, Pathanamthitta, which has the highest proportion of Syrian Christians (Zachariah, 2001), also has the third-highest proportion of emigrants per 100 households at 43, after Malappuram and Kannur (Zachariah and Rajan, 2015).

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3 Early feminist scholarship on care had emphasized making visible the critical role of domestic labour and social reproduction as the foundation of wage employment. In a critique of Marxist economics, the unpaid domestic work of a housewife was shown to be necessary to ensure the daily maintenance and ongoing reproduction of the labour force. From an initial focus on the unpaid work of women, later feminists were able to expand the focus to include paid care work. 4 Tirunadu is a social village, not an administrative one, in the Pathanamthitta district. Although located in a rural area, due to the rural-urban continuum in Kerala, the rural and urban areas are not drastically different from each other. The name of the place used throughout the chapter is a pseudonym, to protect the privacy of the community involved. 5 Pathanamthitta has the highest percentage of Syrian Christians in its population, 49 per cent as per KMS 1999. 6 Syrian Christian Mar Thoma is the reformed Syrian Christian denomination that was formed in 1889. The region around Tirunadu is the centre of the Mar Thoma denomination. Starting with the Church Missionary Society (early nineteenth century), Plymouth Brethern Church (turn of twentieth century) and later American missionaries from the Church of God and the Pentecost churches have been active in the region over the years. The region became a base for many of these missionaries and also benefited from the educational and occupational opportunities created by the development of these Christian institutions. 7 Kerala, hailed for its ‘model’ development experience at low levels of income, has immensely benefited through large-scale Gulf migration and migrant remittances (Prakash, 1998), described as the positive outcome of the Kerala model of development (Zachariah, Mathew, and Rajan, 2003). In this context, much attention has been drawn to the migrant remittances received by the state over the years. It has been estimated that the total remittances received by the state was around Rs. 71,000 crore for the year 2014, nearly double the remittances received back in 1998 (Zachariah and Rajan, 2015), which makes up a striking 20 per cent of the net state domestic product. 8 The first large-scale migration out of this region was to Malaysia and Singapore during the Great Depression. Most went as supervisors, clerks, compounders, and tea tasters (Kurien, 2002). Kurien (2002) noted that the English-educated villagers benefited from their association with the missionaries (like the Noels and others) who used their contacts to help them find jobs in Malaysia and Singapore. However, the migration to these countries came to an abrupt halt with the outbreak of the Second World War (Joseph, 1988). 9 Post–Second World War migration of educated professionals to Africa picked up (Joseph, 1988; Kurien, 2002). 10 See Kurien (2002) for a detailed discussion on the several educational and other institutions which sprang up in Tirunadu to train and aid migrants. 11 As per the SMS 2004, among all the districts in the state, Pathanamthitta, which has the highest proportion of Syrian Christians, also has the second-highest proportion of emigrants per 100 households at

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44.3 per cent after Malappuram (45 per cent). Unlike the general pattern of migration from the state, which has been predominantly male migration to the Gulf countries, migration from Pathanamthitta district has included both male and female migration. Initially, this was mainly to the Gulf countries, but in recent years it has been diversified to countries like the USA, Australia, UK, etc., which are preferred for family migration. For instance, 12 per cent of the emigrants from Pathanamthitta migrated to the USA as per the KMS 1998 survey. 12 Pathanamthitta district in the Central Travancore region, for instance, has one of the highest migration rates in the state, and also has the highest proportion of elderly, at 21 per cent in 2004 (Rajan and Aliyar, 2004). Some pockets of this region are conspicuous for their high density of older population, as many stay behind while the young working-age population migrates to countries abroad or places within the country. 13 Interestingly, older persons who were living without adult children often spoke of themselves as living ‘alone’ (Lamb, 2009) (ottakku or thaniye) even when they resided with a spouse or servant. Hence, the older person’s living arrangement is regularly thought of with reference to co-residence with children, revealing its significance to the very idea of old age in India. 14 Men usually do not get involved in the female domain of provision of care services, with the exception of more physically demanding handson care work which also attracts higher pay. Male home nurses are paid higher wages than the female home nurses.

References Cancian, F.M. and S.J. Oliker (2000). Caring and Gender. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Duffy, M. (2005). Reproducing Labor Inequalities: Challenges for Feminists Conceptualizing Care at the Intersections of Gender, Race, and Class. Gender Society, 19(1), 66–82. Fisher, B. and J. Tronto (1990). Towards a Feminist Theory of Caring. In Emily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson (Eds.), Circles of Care: Work and Identity in Women’s Lives (pp. 35–62). Albany: State University of New York Press. Glenn, E.N. (1992). From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor. Signs, 18(1), 1–43. Gulati, L. (1993). In the Absence of Their Men: The Impact of Male Migration on Women. New Delhi: Sage. Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. (2000). Feminism and Migration. Annals of the American Academy, 571, 107–120. Joseph, K.V. (1988). Migration and Economic Development of Kerala. New Delhi: Mittal Publications.

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Kannan, K.P. and K.S. Hari (2002). Kerala’s Gulf Connection: Emigration, Remittances and Their Macroeconomic Impact, 1972–2000. Centre for Development Studies, Working Paper No. 328. Kurien, P.A. (2002). Kaleidoscopic Ethnicity: International Migration and the Reconstruction of Community Identities in India. NJ: Rutgers University Press. Lamb, S. (2009). Aging and the Indian Diaspora: Cosmopolitan Families in India and Abroad. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Osella, F. and C. Osella. (2000). Migration, Money and Masculinity in Kerala. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 6(1), 117–133. Prakash, B.A. (1998). Gulf Migration and Its Economic Impact: The Kerala Experience. Economic and Political Weekly, 33(49), 3209–3213. Rajan, S.I. and S. Aliyar. (2004). Gender Ageing and Social Security. Samyukta, Women’s Initiatives, 4(2), 68–87. Rajan, S.I. and D. Narayana. (2010). The Financial Crisis in the Gulf and Its Impact on South Asian Migrant Workers. Centre for Development Studies, Working Paper No. 436. Szczepaniková, A. (2006). Migration as Gendered and Gendering Process: A Brief Overview of the State of Art and a Suggestion for Future Directions in Migration Research. Migration Online. Last accessed April 2, 2017. Tronto, J.C. (1993). Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. London: Routledge. Visvanathan, S. (1989). Marriage, Birth and Death: Property Rights and Domestic Relationships of the Orthodox/Jacobite Syrian Christians of Kerala. Economic and Political Weekly, 24(24), 1341–1346. Zachariah, K.C. (2001). The Syrian Christians of Kerala: Demographic and Socioeconomic Transition in the Twentieth Century. Centre for Development Studies, Working Paper No. 322. Zachariah, K.C., E.T. Mathew and S.I. Rajan. (2003). Dynamics of Migration in Kerala: Dimensions, Differentials, and Consequences. New Delhi: Orient Longman. Zachariah, K.C. and S.I. Rajan. (2004). Gulf Revisited Economic Consequences of Emigration from Kerala, Emigration and Unemployment. Trivandrum: Centre for Development Studies, Working Paper No. 363. Zachariah, K.C. and S.I. Rajan. (2012). Kerala’s Gulf Connection, 1998– 2011: Economic and Social Impact of Migration. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Zachariah, K.C. and S.I. Rajan. (2015). Dynamics of Emigration and Remittances in Kerala: Results from the Kerala Migration Survey 2014. Centre for Development Studies, Working Paper No. 463.

Chapter 12

Domestic worker mobility to mobilization A case for closer engagement with civil society and local actors in policy and praxis S. Irudaya Rajan and Jolin Joseph

Migration to the Gulf presents an important avenue of employment for Indian women (Thimothy and Sasikumar, 2012). However, migration from the state – particularly that of women and domestic workers – is framed in terms of management, (de)regulation, or governance, and is heavily restricted through age- and gender-based migration controls and regulated recruitment processes (Rajan, Varghese and Jayakumar, 2009, 2010a, 2010b, 2011; Varghese and Rajan, 2011). Despite academic and activist attention to migrant domestic worker rights, there remains no dedicated policy that takes into account the specific needs and challenges of these workers. Following calls for the articulation of alternative approaches to labour migration governance (Pittman, 2016; Anderson, 2010; Piper, 2005; Basok and Piper, 2012; HRW, 2013; Kumar and Rajan, 2014), this chapter considers the efficacy of initiatives to protect and promote migrant rights that are premised primarily on state responsibility, and whether closer engagement with civil society and local actors can enhance policy objectives. Drawing on ethnographic research and field observations in India and Saudi Arabia, the analysis suggests that bringing non-state actors into the formal migration apparatus may lead to informed and responsive policy, improved outcomes, and advancement of rights.

State actors, non-state actors, and civil society For the most part, state and non-state migration actors (including businesses and civil society) have worked along separate institutional tracks, addressing both complementary and competing

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objectives. The proliferation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), human rights groups, recruiters, and trade and labour unions facilitates the mobility of women as domestic workers on a transnational scale (Tungohan, 2016). Migration and labour laws enacted by migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries, to varying degrees, establish the conditions under which these actors may operate. The working of the state enables and constrains the operation and autonomy of civil society and local actors, and in return, civil society defines the limits of state action in pushing for greater government accountability (Hsu, 2012), while local migration actors operate in a relatively ill-defined grey area between state and market (IWRAW, 2012). This section highlights some contours of migrant civil society and stakeholders in both national contexts, comprising a range of actors, with varied scope and scale of activities and agendas. While there is a lack of coalition, cooperation, and participatory mechanisms to coordinate state and non-state migration activities and service delivery, forging institutional relations between migrant and migrant-serving organizations and governments may help to overcome the blind spots that occur from working in separate silos. In recent years, the state-wise pattern of international migration flows from India has seen substantial shifts; established migrantsending states such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu have been ousted by Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (Rajan and Joseph, 2018). Despite the changing state-wise migration patterns, the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have maintained, and indeed strengthened, their position as major contributors to Indian emigration (MOIA, 2015; Rajan and Joseph, 2018). Significantly, according to data captured by the eMigrate system,1 almost all women migrants from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana granted emigration clearance2 between 2007 and 2014 migrated to the Gulf. Of these, over 99 per cent moved into domestic service positions (MEA, 2016; Rajan and Joseph, 2018). This pattern underscores the salience of Gulf states as the principal destination of women migrants, particularly domestic workers, from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The persistence of women’s migration in the region would imply that Gulf migration is a critical avenue for upward mobility and migration-led development (Rajan and Joseph, 2018). However, much of the potential benefits (for individuals and the state) are eroded by restrictive regulations and weak oversight of recruitment and emigration processes (Varghese and Rajan, 2011). Although

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the Indian government long remained uninvolved in labour migration, it has recently embraced policies for safe, regular, and orderly migration and remittance flows in keeping with labour export programmes of the Philippines and Sri Lanka, and broader neoliberal imperatives (Kumar and Rajan, 2014; Rosewarne, 2012; Rodriguez, 2010). Conversely, Indian state intervention to address women’s migration has taken the shape of regulatory measures and controls on mobility (Kodoth, 2015). While migration management may appear to run counter to a neoliberal agenda, Basok and Piper (2012) suggest that the turn to regulation is premised on the assumption that sending countries best acquire developmentinducing benefits of migration through the promotion of formal and legal flows. As such, the migration of women from India to the Gulf, and gendered state interventions, warrant empirical analysis and policy attention. Rising temporary labour migration of women in this corridor, owing to the commodification of care work and structural demand from Gulf labour markets, has created a profitable niche for private migration mediators to engage in exploitative labour brokerage (Rajan, Varghese and Jayakumar, 2010a; 2010b, 2011; Agunias, 2012). Legislative guidelines under the Indian Emigration Act (1983) prohibit the operation of informal intermediaries within the Indian migration regime; however, there is a host of unauthorized private actors operating in the unregulated space outside legal frameworks. With the stated goals of eliminating exploitative recruitment of women, a recent national ordinance (MEA, 2016) stipulated that emigration of low- and semi-skilled women workers (including nurses) from India was to be channelled solely through six government-run recruitment agencies, one of which is located in Andhra Pradesh and another in Telangana. In practice, the migration of women from India depends largely on local recruitment relationships with networks of sub-agents and social actors (Rajan, Varghese and Jayakumar, 2011). Out of 31 case studies conducted among return emigrants as part of the study, only 2respondents reported having dealt with registered recruitment agents. In the case of current emigrants, an overwhelming majority (86 per cent in Andhra Pradesh and almost 50 per cent in the two states combined) reportedly enlisted the services of informal agents to facilitate their migration. This was primarily due to the familiarity and trust engendered by local sub-agents. The statistical significance of migration supported by informal agents and networks

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speaks to the effectiveness of local actors in propagating migration (Rajan and Joseph, 2018). The proximity of sub-agents to migrant-sending villages is especially relevant given that 61 per cent of the total population in Telangana state (Telangana Social Development Report, 2017) and 70 per cent in Andhra Pradesh (Andhra Pradesh Demography Report 2014) reside in rural areas. Evidence from our fieldwork suggests that networks of sub-agents allow for women in even the remotest villages to access opportunities for overseas employment. From interviews with key informants, it appears that channelling the recruitment of women through a limited number of state agencies may not be sustainable, or in fact desirable, given the composition and volume of these flows (Rajan and Joseph, 2018). State-sanctioned public recruitment agencies (Overseas Manpower Company Andhra Pradesh Limited (OMCAP) in Vijayawada and Telangana Overseas Manpower Company Limited (TOMCOM) in Hyderabad) have been established in urban centres that are geographically far removed from major migrant-source districts and villages, making it difficult for rural women migrants to access their services. Furthermore, the bulk of their programming is restricted to on-site services for emigrants, which leaves out prospective emigrants in villages and which means they do not adequately engage with return migrants in source districts. This narrow reach of recruitment and programming underscores the need for local migrant-serving infrastructure (Rajan and Joseph, 2018). In another targeted intervention to protect women migrants from exploitation, the Indian state prohibits the labour emigration of ‘low-skilled’3 women under 30years to Gulf states and other countries on the Emigration Clearance Required list. Such policies of protection, situated within a wider project of migration management, point to a paternalistic, patriarchal state-structuring of migration, one that pushes women to seek informal pathways, thereby exacerbating the risks associated with migration (Rajan, Varghese and Jayakumar, 2010a; 2010b, 2011; Kodoth and Varghese, 2011; Rajan and Joseph, 2013, 2015, 2018). Placing controls on women’s mobility does not afford effective protection for migrants or adequately address the social and systemic factors that frame these movements. Rodriguez (2010) and Benería, Diana Deera and Kabeer (2012) assert that migration reform in these contexts is often less motivated by intentions to protect migrants than to control them. Mandatory minimum age

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requirements for certain categories of migrants invoke a personal responsibility to guarantee age and educational credentials, effectively ‘illegalizing’ (Bauder, 2013) the migration of particular subgroups of women. This reveals the gendered ways risk is expected to be experienced and individually managed. Women are made accountable and responsible for their own safety by ensuring that they meet stipulated criteria, thereby releasing the state from welfare obligations. With regard to the efficacy of such restrictions, observations from the field suggest that respondents frequently flouted age- and gender-based controls. Among 120 return migrants surveyed, 31 per cent were found to have migrated before the age of 30; case studies of 31 return migrants indicate that 35 per cent were unaware of the minimum age and/or recruiters’ manipulation of their documents. While experiences of exploitation were common, it was difficult to draw direct correlations between age and risk. However, genderdiscriminatory age restrictions were found to be instrumental in producing precarity across the migration cycle (Rajan and Joseph, 2018). Correspondingly, asymmetries in knowledge and the lack of access to social protections and welfare measures emerged as core factors contributing to migrant vulnerability in our study. Evidence from return migrant surveys and interviews point to the role of subagents and civil society actors (many of them return migrants themselves) as critical links to overseas opportunities, and key resources in propelling migration and raising awareness of the culture, customs, and prevailing labour conditions in the Gulf. In this respect, it is essential to acknowledge the contributions of local actors (civil society groups, social networks, and return migrants) in disseminating information and legal support (Rajan, Varghese and Jayakumar, 2011; Rajan and Joseph, 2018) that enable migrants to make informed migration decisions, thereby reducing the risks associated with migration (Williams and Baláž, 2012). Furthermore, in the context of (predominantly illiterate and rural) women’s migration from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, informal sub-agents perform an indispensable role in finding, referring, and actualizing the migration of prospective migrants. While rights violations and recruitment abuses remain very real concerns, impeding the operation of informal intermediaries is likely to drive them further underground, which would make them increasingly challenging to regulate (Agunias, 2012; Rajan and Joseph, 2018).

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In their systematic review of ‘safer migration’ interventions, Zimmerman, McAlpine and Kiss (2016) make a strong case for incorporating community-based migration interventions that mobilize a range of local actors (see also Pittman, 2016). Analogously, in their assessments of recruitment processes, Rajan, Varghese and Rajan (2009) conclude that engaging civil society organizations and inducting sub-agents into the formal migration infrastructure (Agunias, 2012) offer opportunities for effective oversight and recruitment regulation. In 2011, the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE, 2011) mandated the licensing of sub-agents by recruitment agents contracting their services, making both parties jointly liable for recruitment violations. While more research is required in this regard, this presents a promising direction for migration and recruitment governance that is rooted in a recognition of the social relations and stakeholders that organize these labour flows. Examining the contours of recruitment and migration from India can further our understanding of gendered global migration where market imperatives and protectionist impulses shape migration opportunities and trajectories. This offers an opportunity to theorize the dissonance between a neoliberal state agenda to facilitate international labour migration, and restrictions on women’s migration and recruitment that fail to adequately address, or incorporate, the socio-structural processes underlying these movements. In light of the Indian government’s current efforts to frame a new Emigration Management Bill to replace the Emigration Act (1983), it is important to theorize analytical and policy approaches to making domestic work a viable, sustainable, and beneficial opportunity for migrants and states.

Acknowledgements The chapter is based on data collected in India from August to December 2016, as part of a research project, ‘Domestic Workers from India: Study on Recruitment Practices and Reasons for their Emigration from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana’, funded by the India Centre for Migration, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), as well as data collected in Saudi Arabia between April and June 2013, as part of a study, ‘Living and Working Conditions of Low- and Semi-Skilled Indian Migrants in Saudi Arabia’, commissioned by the erstwhile Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA). It also

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draws on broader ongoing work at the Centre for Development Studies, including the Kerala Migration Surveys.

Notes 1 Data compiled from the eMigrate portal, Ministry of External Affairs Overseas Employment Division. 2 Eighteen countries, including all six countries of the Gulf, have been identified as Emigration Clearance Required (ECR) destinations that require migrant workers (without a high school certificate) to obtain an added layer of emigration clearance endorsement prior to deployment, due to higher apparent risks of exploitation and insecure employment conditions. A critique of the ‘ECR country’ list is not within the scope of this paper. 3 Defined as those migrants without a high school pass certificate.

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IWRAW (2012). Exploring Engagement with Non-State Actors Using the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and Other International Standards and Tools. Consultation Report on Migration and Trafficking, December 2012. Kodoth, P. (2015). Stepping into the Men’s Shoes: Emigrant Domestic Workers as Breadwinners and the Gender Norm in Kerala. Chapter 3 in S. Irudaya Rajan (ed.). India Migration Report 2015: Gender and Migration. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Kodoth, P. and Varghese, V.J. (2011). Emigration of Women Domestic Workers from Kerala: Gender, State Policy and the Politics of Movement. CDS Working Paper (No. 445). Kumar, S.K. and Rajan, S.I. (2014). Emigration in 21st-Century India: Governance, Legislation, Institutions. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. MEA (2016). Ministry of External Affairs Circular, August 2 2016. Available at: https://emigrate.gov.in/ext/static/OfficeOrder2Aug16.pdf MOIA (2015). Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, Annual Report 2014– 2015. Available at: www.mea.gov.in/images/pdf/annual-report-2014-15. pdf Piper, N. (2005). Rights of Foreign Domestic Workers: Emergence of Transnational and Transregional Solidarity? Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 14(1–2), 97–119. Pittman, P. (2016). Alternative Approaches to the Governance of Transnational Labor Recruitment. International Migration Review, 50(2), 269–314. Rajan, S.I. and Joseph, J. (2013). Adapting, Adjusting and Accommodating: Social Costs of Migration to Saudi Arabia. Chapter 9, Pp. 139–153 in S. Irudaya Rajan (ed.). Global Financial Crisis, Migration and Remittances: India Migration Report 2013. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Rajan, S.I. and Joseph, J. (2015). Migrant Women at the Discourse: Policy Nexus: Indian Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia. Chapter 2, Pp. 9–25 in S Irudaya Rajan (ed.). India Migration Report 2015: Gender and Migration. New Delhi: Routledge. Rajan, S.I. and Joseph, J. (2018). Domestic Workers from India: Study on Recruitment Practices and Reasons for Their Emigration from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. India Centre for Migration. Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi. Rajan, S.I., Varghese, V.J. and Jayakumar, M.S. (2009). Beyond the Existing Structures: Revamping Overseas Recruitment System in India. Report submitted to the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi. Rajan, S.I., Varghese, V.J. and Jayakumar, M.S. (2010a). Overseas Recruitment in India: Structures, Practices and Remedies. Centre for Development Studies (Thiruvananthapuram) Working Paper No. 421. Rajan, S.I., Varghese, V.J. and Jayakumar, M.S. (2010b). Looking beyond the Emigration Act 1983: Revisiting the Recruitment Practices in

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India. Chapter 12, Pp. 251–287 in S. Irudaya Rajan (ed.). Governance and Labour Migration: India Migration Report 2010. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Rajan, S.I., Varghese, V.J. and Jayakumar, M.S. (2011). Dreaming Mobility and Buying Vulnerability: Overseas Recruitment Practices and Its Discontents in India. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Rodriguez, R.M. (2010). Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rosewarne, S. (2012). Temporary International Labor Migration and Development in South and Southeast Asia. Feminist Economics, 18(2), 63–90. Telangana Social Development Report (2017). Deccan Chronicle, May 9 2017. Available at: www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/ 090517/hyderabad-has-30-per-cent-of-telanganas-urban-population. html Thimothy, R. and Sasikumar, S.K. (2012). Migration of Women Workers from South Asia to the Gulf. Uttar Pradesh: V.V. Giri National Labour Institute and UN Women. Tungohan, E. (2016). Intersectionality and Social Justice: Assessing Activists’ Use of Intersectionality through Grassroots Migrants’ Organizations in Canada. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 4(3), 347–362. Varghese, V.J. and Rajan, S.I. (2011). Governmentality, Social Stigma and Quasi-Citizenship: Gender Negotiations of Migrant Women Domestic Workers from Kerala. Chapter 7, Pp. 224–250 in S.I. Rajan and M. Percot (eds.). Dynamics of Indian Migration: Historical and Current Perspectives. New Delhi: Routledge. Williams, A.M. and Baláž, V. (2012). Migration, Risk, and Uncertainty: Theoretical Perspectives. Population, Space and Place, 18(2), 167–180. Zimmerman, C., McAlpine, A. and Kiss, L. (2016). Safer Labour Migration and Community-Based Prevention of Exploitation: The State of the Evidence for Programming. In The Freedom Fund and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. London, UK: The Freedom Fund.

Index

Page numbers in italics indicate figures and in bold indicate tables on corresponding pages. Agadjanian, V. 105 age, women left behind (WLB) and 92 agricultural workers 4 Amsterdam School for Social Science Research (AISSR) 84n1 arranged marriages 84n4 Art of Living Foundation (AoL) 74, 84n5 autonomy of women left behind 97–98, 97–98, 104–105, 112–115, 128, 130–132 Banerji, M. 119 Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association (BNWLA) 168 Benería, L. 195 Bertolani, B. 107 bhadramahila 55 Bhasin, K. 169 Bhava, H. K. 139 border crossing see mobility Borders and Crime: Pre-Crime, Mobility and Serious Harm in an Age of Globalization 165 Brah, A. 147 Butalia, U. 166 Canada, Indian-Hindu women migrants to see narratives of migrant women

care work: domestic workers (see domestic workers); eldercare (see eldercare); feminist scholarship on 189n3; global care chain in 47–52; hierarchies of 185–188; impact of migration on gender roles and 14–17; migration and 10–12; nursing (see nursing labour); nurturing care and reproductive labour in 178–179; stigmatized labour and marginalized identities in 54–64 caste-based servile labour 54–55, 61 Centre for Women Development Studies (CWDS) 3 cooking fuel 95 cultural prejudice 35; stigmatized labour and marginalized identities with 57–64 Davis, K. 125 decision making: behind labour migration 23, 23–25, 26; by women left behind 130–132 Derrida, J. 58, 68n51 Desai, I. P. 136 Desai, S. 119 development-induced migration 21 Diana Deere, C. 195 displacement 161

202

Index

Doaba region, left behind women of 103–106, 117–120, 120n1; change in household tasks, workload, and stress of 110–112; family decision-making role of 112–115; migration among Punjabis and status of 106–108; position of, in joint and nuclear families 108–110; remittances as emancipation of 115–117 Dogra community see social space of left behind females domestic workers 69–71, 192; accessibility, inclusion, and mobility of 81–84; location of 73–81; spatial stratification of migrant 71–73; state actors, non-state actors, and civil society and migration of 192–197 dominant caste 120n5 Duffy, M. 179 educational attainment: of female migrants 33, 89; General Nursing and Midwifery (GNM) diploma 53–54, 59, 60, 63, 67n37; of women left behind (WLB) 92–93, 93 eldercare 178, 188; care hierarchies and transnational reorganization of 185–188; conceptualizing nurturing care and reproductive labour and 178–179; fieldwork and methodology on 179–181; gendered (re)organization of 183–185; gender specificities of transnational migration and 181–183 employment migration 3–4 ethnography 141–142, 179–181 Express India 51 female migration 1–2; changing demographics of 2–7, 5–6; decision making behind 23, 23–25, 26, 42n18; of domestic workers from the UAE (see domestic workers); educational attainment and 33, 89; informal

economy and 9–10; Keralite (see Keralite migrant women); marital status and 32; narratives of (see narratives of migrant women); for nursing (see nursing labour); returns and 35–36; spatial stratification in 71–73; state actors, non-state actors, and civil society and 192–197; stigmatized labour and marginalized identities and 57–64; see also labour migration feminist scholarship on care 189n3 feminization of migration 1–2, 138 Ferguson, J. 128 fieldwork 179–181 Folbre, N. 133 freedom see autonomy of women left behind gender: impact of migration on care work and roles with 14–17; labour requirements and migration patterns surrounding 7–9; power, mobility, and 162–166; religion and enactment of roles with 152–156; as social construction 125–126 General Nursing and Midwifery (GNM) diploma 53–54, 59, 60, 63, 67n37 Ghosh, J. 38, 40 Giddens, A. 60 global care chain, nurses in the 47–52 Gordon, E. 119 Gulati, L. 104 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) 73, 84n3, 89–90 Gulf region women see Keralite migrant women Gulf wives (GWs) 90 Gupta, A. 128 Gusterson, H. 141 Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. 128, 140 honour: criminalized transborder mobility and 168–175; in South Asian context 166–167 hostels, women living in 62

Index identity politics and affective spaces 57–64, 68n51 income sources for women left behind 96–97 informal economy and female migration 9–10 informal/illegal processes in female migration 37–41, 42–43n19–20 Jammu region women 126–127 Jayakumar, M. S. 197 Kabeer, N. 195 Kanaiaupuni, S. M. 125 Kerala: eldercare workers from (see eldercare); left behind women of (see women left behind [WLB]); women migrants from (see Keralite migrant women) Kerala Migration Survey (KMS) 90–91, 188n2 Keralite migrant women 29–30, 41–42, 89–90; complex network in female emigration state policy and gender politics and 37; destinations of 30–32; educational attainment of 33; growth of informal/illegal processes among 37–41, 42–43n19–20; marital status of 32; as nurses 33–35; returns of 35–36 Khaled, L. 119 Khosravi, S. 161 Kiss, L. 197 Kolkata, nurses from see nursing labour labour migration: among Punjabis 106–108; care work and 10–12; as central livelihood strategy for poor households 21–23; change demographics of female 2–7, 5–6; decisions behind 23, 23–25, 26; by domestic workers (see domestic workers); due to poverty 21–23, 42n18; feminization of 1–2, 138; gender as social construction and its

203

impact on 125–126; gendered labour requirements and impacts on patterns of 7–9; gender roles and care work impact of 14–17; gender specificities of transnational 181–183; impact on women left behind 94–99; linkages between poverty and 26–27; of nurses (see nursing labour); remittances and ‘empowered’ left behind women with 12–14; see also female migration; male migration Lawson, V. A. 140 left behind women see women left behind (WLB) Lofgren, O. 167 Mahler, S. J. 162–163 male migration 2–3; communication between wives and husbands after 96; impact of 127–130; impact on child’s development 132–133; from Kerala 30–32; marital status and 32; remittances and ‘empowered’ left behind women with 12–14; see also labour migration; women left behind (WLB) marriage migrants 3 marriages: arranged 84n4; concerns and challenges of Hindu Canadians over 149–152 Marx, K. 125 Massey, D. 163–164 Mathew, E. T. 90 McAlpine, A. 197 McCulloch, J. 165 Mehotra, M. 138 Menjíver, C. 105 men left behind (MLB) 88, 100 Menon, R. 169 mobility 161–162; of domestic workers from the UAE 81–84; gender-power- 162–166; honor and criminalized transborder 168–175; of nursing labour 52–54, 65n6 Mohanty, C. T. 75

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narratives of migrant women 136–141, 156; on concerns and challenges over marriage 149–152; continuities and dislocations of family in 142–149; on enactment of gendered roles through religion 152–156; locale of study, methodology, and data collection in 141–142 National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) 127 Nawyn, S. J. 138 neo-liberalism 47–48 Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO/ WOTRO) 84n1 Niranjana, S. 164 nursing labour 47–48, 64–65; employment regimes, labour mobility, and 52–54, 65n6; General Nursing and Midwifery (GNM) diploma 53–54, 59, 60, 63, 67n37; in global care chain 47–52; from Gulf countries 33–35; identity politics and affective spaces and 57–64, 68n51; shortages in the West 50–51; unsettling relations between stigmatized labour and marginalized identities in 54–64 nurturing care 178–179

property rights of women left behind 95–97 public versus private spheres 81–84, 108 Punjab see Doaba region, left behind women of Radel, C. 105 Rajan, S. I. 34, 90, 118, 197 Ralston, H. 139 Rao, M. S. A. 136 religion: enactment of gendered roles through 152–156; women left behind (WLB) and 91–92 remittances: as emancipation of women 115–117; ‘empowered’ left behind women and 12–14; global care chain and 47; sent to women left behind 94–95 reorganization of care: care hierarchies and 185–188; conceptualizing care and 178–179; fieldwork and methodology on 179–181; gendered 183–185; gender specificities of transnational migration and 181–183; Syrian Christians as ethnic religious group and 178, 188n1 reproductive labour 178–179 return emigrants (REM) 35–36, 88 Rodriguez 195

objectified female workers 57–64 Papastergiadis, N. 22 patriarchy 61, 104, 105 Pattadath, B. 40 Percot, M. 34 Pessar, P. R. 162–163 Pickering, S. 165 policy, public: female emigration and 37; state actors, non-state actors, and civil society and 192–197, 198n2 polymorphous engagement 141 poverty and labour migration 21–23, 27–28; decisions behind 23, 23–25, 26, 42n18; linkages and challenges in 26–27

safer migration interventions 197 Sassen, S. 137 Schmook, B. 105 sexuality 60–62, 152, 162; honour in the South Asian context and 166–167 Shankar, R. 84n5 Sheel, R. 139 social construction, gender as 125–126 social space of left behind females 124–125, 133–134; gender as social construction and 125–126; impact of father’s absence on child’s overall development and 132–133; impact of male

Index migration on 127–130; social circle and 132; status, decisionmaking, and autonomy in 130–132; women in the Jammu region and 126–127 Srinivas, M. N. 120n5 stigmatized labour and marginalized identities 54–64, 81 Syrian Christians 178, 188n1, 189–190n11, 189n6; see also reorganization of care transgressions of borders 161–162, 175–176; gender-powermobility in 162–166; honor and criminalized transborder 168–175 Tronto, J. 179 United Arab Emirates (UAE) see domestic workers Varghese, V. J. 197 WLBs see women left behind (WLB) women left behind (WLB) 86–89, 100–101; by age 92; autonomy of 97–98, 97–98, 104–105, 112–115, 128, 130–132; change in household tasks, workload, and stress of 110–112; communication with husbands 96; cooking fuel used

205

by 95; defined 90; Doaba region of Punjab (see Doaba region, left behind women of); Dogra community (see social space of left behind females); educational attainment of 92–93, 93; emancipation of, via remittances 115–117; emigration prospects of 100; empowered 12–14; impact of father’s absence on child’s overall development and 132–133; impact of migration on 94–99; position of, in joint and nuclear families 108–110; possession of property by 95–97; problems and prospects of 98–99, 99; by religion 91–92; remittances to 12–14, 94–95, 115–117; role in family decision-making of 112–115; social circles of 132; social space of (see social space of left behind females); source of income for 96–97; status of 130–132 women’s migration see female migration Yabiku, S. T. 119 Zachariah, K. C. 90, 118, 128–129, 136 Zimmerman, C. 197