Is Transnational Labour Migration Empowering for Women? Re-evaluating the Case of Married Sri Lankan Domestic Maids

Abstract

The empowerment potential of transnational labour migration by women has been debated in the field of women’s migration studies. This paper examines the case of women from Sri Lanka, a key home country of low-skilled female labour migrating to the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Using the methodological approach of the case study, the survey found that labour migration does ensure that access to productive resources leads to a measure of economic empowerment in the household. Yet, many women migrants faced intra-household socially disempowering experiences that in turn downplayed their economic contributions. Empowerment as a consequence of migration rested upon a complex interplay of economic factors and contextspecific non-economic factors; the latter were found to be more powerful determinants of women’s empowerment.

Editorial introduction: Situated agency in the context of research on children, migration, and family in Asia

“…Second, by studying children's migration experience as they unfold in a familial context, these papers address the centrality of family in shaping individual well‐being in Asian societies. Third, by proposing to understand the experiences of children in migration through the conceptual lens of situated agency, this themed section avoids the overemphasis of disempowerment of migrant families and their members in Asia (Handapangoda, ; Stalker, ) and provides a framework for scholars to simultaneously address structural barriers and agentic endeavours in the context of migration.…”

Embodied Experience of Gender and Self in Transnational Migration from Nepal

“…In many ways, it has questioned the customary gender stereotype of migrants, and in a number of other instances, the basic idea of international mobility is based on its very foundation. As demonstrated by Handapangoda's (2014) research, foreign migration gave female Sri Lankan domestic maids the agency they needed to take part actively in decisionmaking. They achieved the ability to make decisions within their households through labor migration.…”

Bangladeshi women migrants amidst the COVID‐19 pandemic: Revisiting globalization, dependency and gendered precarity in South–South labour migration

“…At origin: how women migrants are recruited and placed in specific occupations is a subject of long‐standing debate. The immigration policy, gender‐segregated recruitment process and the conditions associated with it coalesce so that women have limited scopes to migrate and have a say about the terms and conditions regarding their overseas employment (Hennebry, 2017 ; Handapangoda, 2014 ). The dominant perception of Bangladeshi migrant workers about their inherent qualities of being easily controlled and less assertive often place them at the bottom of the labour hierarchy, where they are easily exposed to precarious and exploitative work.…”

“…Notwithstanding, since its inception, transnational labour migration in the South Asia‐Gulf corridor has long been considered as contract labour, which is all about ‘taking the labour but resisting the labourer, in classic guest worker mode’ (Pettman, 1998 , p. 397). Along these lines, labour migration, particularly women, largely remains disempowering, deskilling and entangled in unfreedom (Davidson, 2015 ; Handapangoda, 2014 ). The COVID‐19 pandemic and its multifarious consequences are simply the continuation of this precarious and uncertain journey.…”