Women In-between: Gender, Transnational and Rural-Urban Mobility in the Mekong Region

Abstract

Discussions on globalization and gender often adopt a macro economic view in which globalization is seen as a process that is essentially unilinear and driven by the neoliberal logic, directly impacting women, who inevitably gain very little. Similarly, migration in globalizing Southeast Asia has been viewed as increasingly being feminized and largely premised on global economic restructuring. Critics argue that such views ignore other equally important gendered dimensions of globalization and migration.

While there is a need to focus on the macro processes through which the globe is increasingly interconnected, attention must also be given to the manner in which subjects mediate these processes in culturally specific ways that recognize the conjunctural and situated character of globalization. One way of understanding this is by studying migrant women’s sense of ‘in-betweenness’ as they navigate through host societies and retain tight linkages with their places of origin. As a result, migration for women may be fraught with contradictions: on the one hand, opportunity; on the other, reproducing traditional notions of their place in society. This article revisits accumulated studies on transnational and rural-urban migration within Southeast Asia working towards evolving gender perspectives that focus on global processes as they are embedded in the local: where gendered actors make sense of, shape and are simultaneously influenced by such processes that do not just reside ‘out there’ and manipulate their destinies