Back and forth with hopes and fears: Sri Lankan men's narratives on gender and mobility in transnational livelihoods

Abstract

Although in the past Sri Lanka has had a higher number of women migrant workers, recent statistics show that the gap between the percentages of female and male migrants is decreasing. Since 2007, male migrants have outnumbered female migrants. The article explores how Sri Lankan men have responded to the increased economic needs of their families and lack of proper income-generating activities within the country by engaging in transnational livelihoods, as well as how their roles and identities are contested and negotiated through labour migration. The study is based on men's narratives on their reasons for migration and their experiences of transnational labour migration. The concepts of hope and life course are used to analyse the intertwined relationships of gender and mobility in transnational livelihoods. The author identifies that men's mobility is motivated by their hopes of fulfilling traditional gender norms as providers and protectors of their families in combination with their new identity as successful men. Further, the study provides evidence that men's mobility is not only gendered but also a repeated act during their life course. The study contributes to strengthen research on mobility and gender by adding men's perspectives on transnational labour migration.

Keywords:

• Gender
• masculinity
• mobility
• Sri Lankan men
• transnational livelihoods

Acknowledgements

I thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and Catriona Turner for corrections to the English language.

Notes

1 In 1989, the government attempted to ban migration to Kuwait and Lebanon, due to the civil war in Lebanon and several reported cases of abuse in Kuwait. However, the ban was not effective because the workers were repatriated following the outbreak of civil war in Sri Lanka (Oishi 2005).

2 All citations have been translated from Sinhalese to English by the author.

3 The custom of celebrating girls’ first menstruation is still a highly regarded tradition in Sri Lanka.