Contextualizing Gender and Migration in South Asia: Critical Insights

Abstract

This article critically examines, with the help of an intersectional analytical framework, the gender, space, and mobility debate as reflected in the existing empirical research on gender and migration from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to the Arab states. The article emphasizes that far from the simplistic rational individualistic calculation that underlies both the push–pull theory and the structuralist Marxist deterministic political economic approach, migration trajectory is multilayered and multicausal, which involves complexity, dynamism, and “emancipatory momentum.” All the findings on the gender impact of migration presented in the article echoed contradictory outcomes, which is not new. What distinguishes this article from others are the insights that it has generated and the gender dynamics that it has revealed. These include, for instance, how gender roles and responsibilities influence differential behavior patterns of currently married and never married women and men, reflected in the size of remittances and the number of remitters, as well as spending patterns of remittances. The article argues that whilst migration as a condition affects women and men’s lives differentially, it also enables them to challenge existing relationships of power in various formal and informal settings.

Key Words:

• Gender
• space
• mobility
• South Asia
• social relation
• plurality of identity
• intersectional analytical framework