Meseret’s story: women, work, and betterment in an Ethiopia–Saudi Arabia return labor migration

ABSTRACT

This life-history examines the return migration of Meseret, an Ethiopian woman in her twenties, from Ethiopia to Saudi Arabia as a domestic worker. Meseret's successful labor migration is contextualized in hierarchical local and global economic and political structures as well as her personal goals and familial strategies for betterment or socio-economic improvement. An initial comparison will be made between Meseret's natal family and her affinal Rastafari family (her husband's family) in the Jamaica Safar or Jamaica neighborhood of Shashemene in Ethiopia in terms of livelihood, gender roles, mobility, and status. Meseret's high status as a returnee in urban Ethiopia will be juxtaposed against the low value still accorded to women's paid and unpaid domestic and care work in destination and origin countries. Recognizing structural factors and migrants' subjectivities enriches both qualitative and quantitative analyses, and has the potential to provide the groundwork for equitable migration and labor policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethiopia
• migration
• betterment
• gendered division of labor
• status

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All names throughout this paper are pseudonyms since informants asked me to ensure their anonymity to the best of my ability.

2. However, Marina deRegt draws attention to the other side of increased protection for illegal women migrants by noting that measures meant to protect women from potential traffickers ‘which sometimes help women … may also restrict their choices. Regulation often means more control and is not always to women's advantage (Moors and de Regt 2008, 151; Schrover et al. 2008, 28–29)’ (DeRegt 2010, 241).