Migrant mothers,left-behind fathers: the negotiation of gender subjectivities in Indonesia and the Philippines

The distinct feminization of labour migration in Southeast Asia – particularly in the migration of breadwinning mothers as domestic and care workers in gender-segmented global labour markets – has altered care arrangements, gender roles and practices, as well as family relationships within the household significantly. Such changes were experienced by both the migrating women and other left-behind members of the family, particularly ‘substitute’ carers such as left-behind husbands. During the women’s absence from the home, householding strategies have to be reformulated when migrant women-as-mothers rewrite their roles (but often not their identities) through labour migration as productive workers who contribute to the well-being of their children via financial remittances and ‘long-distance mothering’, while left-behind fathers and/or other family members step up to assume some of the tasks vacated by the mother. Using both quantitative and qualitative interview material with returned migrants and left-behind household members in source communities in Indonesia and the Philippines experiencing considerable pressures from labour migration, this article explores how carework is redistributed in the migrant mother’s absence, and the ensuing implications on the gender roles of remaining family members, specifically left-behind fathers. It further examines how affected members of the household negotiate and respond to any changing gender ideologies brought about by the mother’s migration over time.     

Migration and left-behind parents and children of migrants in Cambodia: a look at household composition and the economic situation

ABSTRACT

This paper examines composition of households formed after the outmigration of a household member in rural Cambodian and correlates household types with indicators of economic condition. The paper focuses on households containing left-behind parents and the children of migrants. Excess mortality in the 1970s due to war suggests the association between migration and economic condition may be gendered. This could be exacerbated when migration leads to a skip-generation household containing a left-behind parent and a child of migrant without an own parent of the child present. Data come from the Cambodian Rural-Urban Migration Project (CRUMP), a project designed to study migration in rural Cambodia. Most households formed after a migration contain a left-behind parent of migrant. While about 22 per cent of these households contain a left-behind child of migrant, the per cent is over 60 per cent when the migrant is themselves a parent. The economic situation tends to be worst for left behind solo mothers (mothers of migrants who do not live with a spouse) and best for left-behind coupled parents of migrants. There is evidence that the combination of left-behind solo mothers living with children of migrants in a skip-generation situation is the most disadvantaged.     

Migrant mothers and the geographies of belonging

Much academic research on migrant mothers focuses on mothers who are separated from their children, often through their integration into global care chains, or on mothers within the context of family migration. This paper argues that co-resident migrant mothers' experiences provide an important window on the complexities of the migration experience. Using a specific case study of Ireland, and drawing from a broader longitudinal research project that focuses on recent migrants, the paper explores migrant mothers' understandings and experiences of belonging and not-belonging. We argue that structural obstacles and cultural understanding of care actively conspire to undermine migrant mothers' potential to develop place-belongingness. Interviewees' discussions of their status as full-time mothers were often framed through images of ideal motherhood, but equally highlighted how the absence of affordable childcare and family members isolates them and prevents them from creating a sense of belonging outside of the process of mothering and the home.     

The impacts of parental migration on children’s subjective well-being in rural china: a double-edged sword

ABSTRACT

The emerging problem of left-behind children has attracted mounting academic and policy attention. Prior studies primarily cast light on left-behind children’s education, health, and behavior, while their subjective well-being is much less understood yet. Based on a nationally representative sample of rural children aged 10–15 in 2014, we examine the impacts of different types of parental migration on children’s subjective well-being and how these affects vary between boys and girls. The results show that parental migration is a double-edged sword: children from both-parent migrant families report compromised life satisfaction and relationship quality compared with those in integral families, and mother-only migration significantly lowers children’s subjective health. On the flip side, father-only migration enhances children’s aspiration for attaining college, an encouraging effect that is even stronger than that of parental education and family income. These effects are heterogeneous by children’s gender: boys seem to be more susceptible to the disruptive effects of both-parent migration; mother-only migration effectively promotes girls’ educational aspiration while father-only migration promotes boys’. This study portrays a comprehensive image of left-behind children. Relaxation of hukou restriction, equal access to education, and revitalization of rural economies are imperative to improve the well-being of left-behind children.

Abbreviations: LBC: Left-behing children; SWB: subjective well-being     

Parental Migration,Intergenerational Obligations and the Paradox for Left-Behind Boys in Rural China

Drawing on in-depth interviews with caregivers of left-behind children (LBC) in rural China, this article seeks to explore their understanding of migration motives and the social process of taking on care-giving roles for LBC. The authors argue that there are underlying socio-cultural explanations pertaining to economic motives for migration; such as, making contributions to social events (weddings and funerals) in village life, and fulfilling social obligations for left-behind sons’ futures. Parents migrate to save for sons’, but not daughters’, adult lives. Grandparents, particularly on the paternal side, are expected to fulfil social obligations to care for left-behind grandchildren, even without immediate financial returns. These suggest that left-behind boys, and in particular boys cared for by paternal grandparents, may be at greater risk than other LBC, as they may receive even fewer resources in the form of remittances from migrant parents in their early childhood.     

Rural-to-urban migration and adolescent delinquent behaviors: evidence from Hunan and Guangdong in China

ABSTRACT

Analyzing data of a merged sample of two Chinese student surveys conducted in two rural counties of Hunan province and in the capital city of Guangdong province, this paper examines the impact of parental migration on rural children’s involvement in delinquent behaviors. We compare delinquency of non-migrant and left-behind children in the countryside, rural-to-urban migrant children, and urban local children. Both rural children left behind by one migrant parent and those left behind by both migrant parents are similar to rural children without parental migration in terms of delinquent involvement. The situation of rural-to-urban migrant children is noticeably worse, as they are more likely to engage in delinquent behaviors than rural children without parental migration. Nevertheless, rural-to-urban migrant children are not more prone to delinquency compared to their urban local peers. We also found an acculturation impact in the study because the odds of engaging in delinquent behaviors first increases and then decreases for rural-to-urban migrant children when they stay longer and learn some local language in the hosting city.     

Family education support to rural migrant children in China: evidence from Shenzhen

Rural migrant children have become a fast-growing population in China as a consequence of the large-scale population flow from rural to urban areas. Besides the dual-structure hukou system, which restrains rural migrants from upward mobility, family capital also plays an important role in providing family educational support to rural migrant children. Using the data from P District and N District of Shenzhen in 2013, this paper explores the present status of three dimensions of family capital and five aspects of family educational support to Chinese rural migrant children, as well as the correlation between family capital and family educational support from perspectives of migration status (hukou), life course (children’s age), and school type. Constrained by inadequate family capital in multiple dimensions manifested by less education, lower income, and limited social networks, etc., parents of rural migrant children provide less family educational support in nearly every aspect compared with parents of urban local children. Among rural migrant children, those in private migrant schools receive the least support from their parents.     

Leaving children behind: a win-win household strategy or a path to pauperization?

ABSTRACT

There has been a scholarly debate on the impact of cityward labor migration on the children left behind in rural China. The present article explains why the attempt by some scholars to normalize the separation of parent and child as a “win-win” household strategy is problematic. Based on scholarly insights into China’s rural–urban dual system, this article clarifies that the emergence of left-behind children in rural China is one of the direct consequences of the dual system imposed upon migrant parents instead of a “voluntary” choice by them. This article contends that even though many rural households benefit from incomes generated through parental migration for the time being, constrained by the dual system, the cost of their children’s lack of secure parent–child bonding, low-quality education, kinship care, and rampant delinquency will eventually outstrip that economic gain in the long run. In particular, in an era that requires ever-updating knowledge and skills, poorly educated left-behind children are likely trapped in the lowest rung of society’s ladder and, therefore, are prone to continue on the path to pauperization.     

From left-behind children to young migrants: the intergenerational social reproduction of rural migrant labor in China

ABSTRACT

Growing in number in the last two decades, rural migrant workers in China have completed intergenerational replacement, and young migrants have become a principal part of the migrant population. However, the process of such intergenerational reproduction has not been thoroughly examined. Based on field studies in the Chinese countryside, this paper analyzes the mechanisms of intergenerational reproduction of rural migrants from the perspective of rural communities, families, and school education. “Left-behind” rural communities, their migration-oriented social culture, and the cognition of rural–urban differences as constructed through migrant parents facilitated a subjective willingness for migration among left-behind children. Exclusion from urban-biased rural education is often the final external thrust for their migration. Having finished the transition, the households of a new young generation of rural migrants are experiencing a different crisis of reproduction. This paper argues that there is a systematic rupture between labor, households, and rural society and that this presents a critical development trap for China.     

Sukli: uneven exchanges of care work of children left behind in Filipino transnational families

ABSTRACT

This article explores the complicated affective realities of children in the Philippines who engage in the labour of caring from the place of being ‘left behind’. I explore how children demonstrate care for their migrant mothers through various schooling tasks, undergirded by emotional dissonance, and often not through an idealized notion of love or tenderness. These acts demonstrate children allocate care work in transnational families in spite of complex emotional underpinnings I argue that the emotionality in those acts may be anger or frustration but children left behind are making sense of their labour through a culturally localized concept called sukli that connotes uneven exchange in care work to maintain the operations of a transnational family. The paper adds to our understanding of children’s affective experiences of migration within an Asian context.     

Parental migration and the educational enrolment of left-behind children: evidence from rural Ponorogo,Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the effects of parental migration on children’s educational enrolment following the recent reforms in Indonesian educational policy. We find that, in general, parental migration has a positive impact on school enrolment, although this varies by the child’s age and the gender of the migrant parent. Parental migration has an adverse impact on the school enrolment of younger children who are eligible for free education, but a positive impact on older children who are no longer able to access state educational support. The gender of the migrant parent matters, as paternal migration appears to have a more positive impact on children’s educational enrolment than maternal migration. Maternal migration is associated with a reduction of younger children’s likelihood of a being in school, while paternal migration makes no difference to their school enrolment. For older children, maternal migration has a lower positive impact compared to paternal migration. Our qualitative interviews also show mixed findings: some children appreciate their migrant mothers’ migration efforts and are motivated to persevere in continuing education, while others are weighed down by their migrant mothers’ sacrifice and develop a sense of obligation to reduce their financial burdens by leaving education early to enter paid employment.     

跨国迁移对农村留守妇女婚姻家庭生活的影响——基于福建省明溪县H村的个案研究

论文基于质性研究方法,以人口国际迁移现象比较突出的明溪县H村为研究个案,从家庭收支特征、家庭地位、婚姻生活状态和社会支持网络等方面考察和分析了丈夫跨国迁移对农村留守妇女婚姻家庭生活的影响。研究结果显示,丈夫出国使家庭条件和物质生活得到改善,推动了农村妇女家庭地位的改善,电话联系弥补了夫妻空间分离造成的负面影响,但丈夫缺位使留守妇女承担了多重责任,婚姻品质和社会生活也因为丈夫出国而改变。与此同时,留守妇女的消费结构和消费观念并没有因为丈夫出国而发生明显的改变,社会生活支持网络并未弱化,仍是传统的亲属网络。     

美国华人移民家庭的代际关系与跨文化冲突

本文旨在研究美国华人移民家庭的代际关系与跨文化冲突问题。作者通过对其本人在洛杉矶和纽约两大华人移民社区所进行的田野调查、个人访谈和实地观察所收集的实证资料的系统分析,着重探讨矛盾重重的华人移民家庭中父母与子女如何处理复杂的、不断变动的家庭关系以及移民父母如何选择轻重缓急的策略,并依靠社区的力量来确保下一代的健康成长。     

Transnational families,religious participation and gender dynamics: Filipino,Sao Tomean and Indo-Mozambican immigrant women in Lisbon,Portugal

In addition to being the object of policy and legal initiatives, families of migrant origin have become a focus of debate concerning differences and its limits. Migrants themselves, however, are also reflecting on how to manage family relationships in a changing world in which migration is mostly transnational. This article aims to discuss the influence of religious participation on the reconfiguration of processes of family dynamics promoted by three groups of migrant women who, while settled in Lisbon, maintain transnational ties with their countries of origin and with various diasporic spaces. Guiding research questions are: to what extent does religious participation provide migrant women with connections, networks and other intangible resources? How are these resources mobilised as ‘bonding' and ‘bridging' social capitals? Can such capitals become a conduit for the redefinition of family relations and female self-narratives? Comparative analysis confirms that the three groups discussed not only mobilise religious belonging and ties to generate resources, but also convert these connections into social (and other forms of) capital, thus triggering desired changes that affect the lives of their children and families in both the short and long term. While migration does not alter long-standing patterns provided by their own respective sociocultural frames of belonging, our findings reveal that the three groups of interlocutors use religious participation to explore tactics, social capitals and mobility spaces and, further, to negotiate, without subverting, specific family inequality dynamics.     

Home divided,home reconstructed: children in rural–urban migration in contemporary China

This article is centred on the geographies of Chinese children in contemporary China – an area which has been problematically overlooked in geographical literature on childhood. In employing unique mobile research methods by tracking migrant children through the migration cycle, the author conducted an extensive ethnographic study of rural migrant children aged 8–17 in China. The article explores rural children's everyday lived experience of migration and how migrant children negotiate and articulate home and belonging while on the move. The study demonstrates the dynamic environment that migrant children inhabit, the fluid, contextual and mobile nature of their life in rural migrant households, their migrancy and their active involvement in homemaking.     

Family caregiving for older adults: gendered roles and caregiver burden in emigrant households of Kerala,India

The Indian state of Kerala leads the demographic transition and characteristically showcases emigration of predominantly male adult children, leaving behind parents, spouses and children. When men emigrate, gendered contexts burden women, especially spouses and daughters-in-law, with caregiving duties including elder care. Employing the social exchange perspective and drawing on in-depth interviews of left-behind caregivers to older adults in emigrant households, we explore reciprocal motives, expectations and perceptions of burden. Findings resonate gendered expectations of care and social sanction that ensure women do much of the caregiving. Daughters-in-law sacrificed careers and endured separation from husbands to transition into caregiving roles, costs borne to effectuate their husband's filial role. Perceived non-reciprocity, unbalanced exchanges and unmet expectations increased perceptions of burden for caregivers. Temporary financial autonomy could hardly alleviate perceptions of burden among women caregivers who perceived emotional and functional support exchanges from husbands, older adults themselves or other family members as supportive.     

Making the emotional connection: transnational eldercare circulation within Sri Lankan-Australian transnational families

The scholarship on care for older parents within transnational families focuses mainly on the experience of unskilled migrants and is presented largely from the perspective of caregivers. Few studies consider the case of affluent, skilled migrants, and their wealthy older parents who also cross borders to visit and provide care for their migrant adult–children. Through Baldassar and Merla’s concept of ‘care circulation’ and the lens of emotional transnationalism, the article illustrates that despite affluent transnational family members’ mobility and access to resources that should facilitate successful circulation of care, care is not easily exchanged at an intimate level. Drawing upon 30 transnational family case studies of skilled migrants residing in Australia and their urban, high to middle-income older parents from Sri Lanka, I argue that older parents construct both caring across distance and in proximity as an attentiveness to their emotional care needs, and the time and effort taken to engage in emotion work; a task that is more challenging for migrant sons than daughters. The article reveals the manner in which gendered care practices both enable and inhibit care circulation between transnational migrants and their older parents.     

Breaking silence: exploring motherhood and social transformation in a participatory action research with Alteñan mothers

In November 2012, a researcher, two social workers and five mothers embarked on a participatory action research (PAR) journey with the aim to develop new ideas for interventions for children and young people in street situations of the city of El Alto in Bolivia. In this article, we attend to the topic of personal and social transformation in PAR. We explore how the mothers of young people in street situations perform and negotiate their subjectivities as mothers in their everyday life; how they create (new) subjectivities in exchange and in interaction with each other during the mother project; and how the performance of their (new) subjectivities can bring social change. The mothers in our group shared stories of being silenced by social services in their everyday lives, as their motherhood is declared not good enough or as they are perceived too guilty to claim for help. It was the first time the mothers shared their stories with other mothers of their lives with their children in street situations. By noticing that they all experienced or heard of similar events that their children were subjected to in the streets, the mothers grew confident enough to talk back. Mothers talked back by denouncing injustice and by transforming doubts into questions, providing them with more knowledge. Finally, as the mothers reached out to social services, mothers’ presence, questions and stories confronted aid workers with their own flaws, and their comfortable discourse of blaming families, creating new paths towards social transformation.     

‘Like it,don’t like it,you have to like it’: children’s emotional responses to the absence of transnational migrant parents in Lombok,Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This article explores the experiences and emotions of children in rural East Lombok, Indonesia, who stay behind with relatives or neighbours while their parents leave the country for work. The article contributes to recent scholarship of children’s experiences of transnational migration in Southeast Asia by drawing out the complex emotions of children who stay behind. Based on research conducted in four ‘sending’ villages, the article describes children’s lived experiences of their parent’s transnational migration, and their intense feelings that whether they ‘like it or don’t like it’, they have no choice but to acquiesce to their parents’ long, often indeterminate absences. The research suggests that stay-behind children are entangled in community anxieties pervading the emotional economy of transnational migration, including the embodied emotion of shame (malu) which shapes children’s responses to parental absence. By focusing on children’s own views and experiences, we contribute to growing debates about the implications of migration for children’s rights and well-being in Southeast Asia.