Abstract
This chapter starts with the life story of Helen, who escaped Eritrea to Sudan when she was 17 years old. Helen’s life story goes against the dominant discourse, which presents migrant girls’ motivations mainly in terms of helping the family, sacrificing themselves for their parents and siblings, or escaping political regimes, and having no other choice. As a result, migrant girls are oftentimes presented as victims of constrained circumstances. Notwithstanding the importance of poverty and human rights violations, the girls’ narratives reveal more complex and multifaceted decision-making processes. They show elements of agency, as well as pressures, in the choice to migrate and in the way the decision to do so is taken. The stories presented and analyzed in this chapter show that girls’ choices can result from diverse factors: the struggle to survive versus following their own aspirations and desires. This chapter contributes to the theoretical debates on children and young people’s mobility and agency.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Ethiopia WIDE is an on-going longitudinal study of 20 rural communities which began in 1994. Subsequent rounds of fieldwork were carried out in 2003 and in three stages between early 2010 and late 2013 (see http://ethiopiawide.net/).
- 2.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/er.html, accessed 12 March 2018.
- 3.
The family visits included those who could afford to pay for their travel, and thus represented the more successful migration experiences.
- 4.
The Amhara region in Ethiopia has the lowest median age at marriage in the country at 14.7 years—significantly below the national figure of 16.5 years—according to the Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey of 2011. This region has one of the world’s highest rates of child marriage though the Family Codes of the Region as well as the country provide that the minimum legal age of marriage is 18 for both sexes. Fifty-six per cent of Ethiopian girls marry before the legal age (see more at: http://www.unfpa.org/news/award-winning-programme-gives-ethiopian-girls-safer-transition-adulthood#sthash.MozypSMH.dpuf ), accessed 29 March 2016.
- 5.
Bhakti kora (express devotion) is the Bengali term that best expresses the kind of respect and hierarchical love due to parents and elders by young people, and to her husband by his wife, while in return elders, parents and husbands are expected to provide guidance and economic support to their inferiors.
- 6.
The term samsara (pl. samsari ) in Arabic refers to agents, middlemen, but also middlewomen and intermediaries. The English version of samsara was used differently by research participants, and in the book, we use it interchangeably.
References
Amin, S., Diamond, I., Naved, R. T., & Newby, M. (1997). Transition to Adulthood of Female Factory Workers: Some Evidence from Bangladesh (Population Council Paper No. 102). New York: Population Council.
Amin, S. (Ed.). (2015). Urban Adolescents Needs Assessment Survey in Bangladesh. Dhaka: BIED, BRACU, and Population Council.
Andom, N. (2015, November). Demystifying Irregular Youth Hemorrhage from Post-2000s Eritrea: Driven by Politics or Economics. In Conference Paper for Migration and Exile in the Horn of Africa: State of Knowledge and Current Debates (pp. 16–18). Khartoum: CEDEJ.
Atnafu, A., Oucho, L., & Zeitlyn, B. (2014). Poverty, Youth and Rural-Urban Migration in Ethiopia (Migration out of Poverty Working Paper No. 17). Brighton: University of Sussex.
Bailey, Adrian. (2009). Population Geography: Life Course Matters. Progress in Human Geography, 33(3), 407–418.
Banbeis. (2014). Bangladesh Educational Statistics 2014.
Bastia, T. (2005). Child Trafficking or Teenage Migration? Bolivian Migrants in Argentina. International Migration, 43(4), 57–87.
Belloni, M. (2015). Cosmologies of Destinations: Routes and Routes of Eritrean Forced Migration to Europe. Ph.D. thesis, University of Trento.
Bernal, V. (2001). From Warriors to Wives: Contradictions of Liberation and Development in Eritrea. Northeast African Studies, 8(3), 129–154.
Boyden, J., Pankhurst, A., & Tafere, Y. (2012). Child Protection and Harmful Traditional Practices: Female Early Marriage and Genital Modification in Ethiopia. Development in Practice, 22(4), 510–522.
Burman, E. (1996). Local, Global, or Globalised: Child Development and International Child Rights Legislation. Childhood, 3(1), 45–66.
Carter, B., & Rohwerder, B. (2016). Rapid Fragility and Migration Assessment for Ethiopia (Rapid Literature Review). Birmingham: GSDRC, University of Birmingham.
Comenetz, J., & Caviedes, C. (2002). Climate Variability, Political Crises, and Historical Population Displacements in Ethiopia. Environmental Hazards, 4(4), 113–127.
de Block, L., & Buckingham, D. (2007). Global Children, Global Media: Migration, Media and Childhood. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Del Franco, N. (2012). Negotiating Adolescence in Rural Bangladesh: A Journey through School, Love and Marriage. New Delhi: Zubaan Books.
Dom, C. (2017). Migrating for Work from Rural Communities (2010–2013). In A. Pankhurst (Ed.), Change and Transformation in 20 Rural Communities in Ethiopia: Selected Aspects and Implications for Policy. WIDE: Addis Ababa.
Durham, M. G. (2004). Constructing the “New Ethnicities”: Media, Sexuality, and Diaspora Identity in the Lives of South Asian Immigrant Girls. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 21(2), 140–161.
Elder, G. H. (1985). Perspectives on the Life Course. In Elder, Jr., G. H. (Ed.), Life Course Dynamics: Trajectories and Transitions, 1968–1980 (pp. 23–49). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Emirie, G. (2005). Early Marriage and Its Effects on Girls’ Education in Rural Ethiopia: The Case of Mecha Woreda in West Gojjam, North-Western Ethiopia. Ph.D. thesis, University of Göttingen.
Erulkar, A. (2013). Early Marriage, Marital Relations and Intimate Partner Violence in Ethiopia. International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 39(1), 6–13.
Erulkar, A., Mekbib, T., Simie, N., & Gulema, T. (2006). Migration and Vulnerability Among Adolescents in Slum Areas of Addis Ababa. Ethiopia. Journal of Youth Studies, 9(3), 361–374.
Feldman, S. (2001). Exploring Theories of Patriarchy: A Perspective from Contemporary Bangladesh. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 26(4), 1097–1127.
Fernandez, B. (2013). Traffickers, Brokers, Employment Agents, and Social Networks: The Regulation of Intermediaries in the Migration of Ethiopian Domestic Workers to the Middle East. International Migration Review, 47(4), 814–843.
Findlay, A., McCollum, D., Coulter, R., & Gayl, V. (2015). New Mobilities Across the Life Course: A Framework for Analysing Demographically Linked Drivers of Migration. Population, Space and Place, 21(4), 390–402.
Gardner, K. (2009). Lives in Motion: The Life-Course, Movement and Migration in Bangladesh. Journal of South Asian Development, 4(2), 229–251.
Ghorashi, H. (2008). Giving Silence a Chance: The Importance of Life Stories for Research on Refugees. Journal of Refugee Studies, 21(1), 117–132.
Girls Not Brides. (2015). Fact Sheet: Ethiopia’s National Strategy and Action Plan on Harmful Traditional Practices.
Global Campaign for Education. (2012). Gender Discrimination in Education: The Violation of Right of Women and Girls. A Report Submitted to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
Hareven, T. K. (2000). Families, History, and Social Change: Life Course and Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Honwana, A. (2005). Innocent and Guilty: Child Soldiers as Interstitial and Tactical Agents. In A. Honwana & F. de Boeck (Eds.), Makers and Breakers: Children and Youth in Post-colonial Africa (31–52). Oxford: James Currey.
Huijsmans, R. (2012). Beyond Compartmentalization: A Relational Approach Towards Agency and Vulnerability of Young Migrants. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 136, 29–45.
Huijsmans, R. (2014). Becoming a Young Migrant or Stayer Seen Through the Lens of ‘Householding’: Households ‘in Flux’ and the Intersection of Relations of Gender and Seniority. Geoforum, 51, 294–304.
Huijsmans, R. (2015). Children and Young People in Migration: A Relational Approach. In C. Ní Laoire, A. White, & T. Skelton (Eds.), Movement, Mobilities and Journeys. Singapore: Springer.
Huijsmans, R. (2018). Transnational Childhoods. In H. Montgomery & M. Robb (Eds.), Children and Young People’s Worlds. Cambridge: Policy Press & Open University.
Kabeer, N., & Mahmud, S. (2004). Globalization, Gender and Poverty: Bangladeshi Women Workers in Export and Local Markets. Journal of International Development, 16(1), 93–109.
Kibreab, G. (2009). Forced Labour in Eritrea. Journal of Modern African Studies, 47(1), 41–72.
Kibria, N. (1995). Culture, Social Class and Income Control in the Lives of Women Garment Workers in Bangladesh. Gender and Society, 9(3), 289–309.
Klocker, N. (2007). An Example of “Thin” Agency: Child Domestic Workers in Tanzania. In R. Panelli, S. Punch, & E. Robson (Eds.), Global Perspectives on Rural Childhood and Youth: Young Rural Lives (pp. 83–94). New York and London: Routledge.
King, R., Thomson, M., Fielding, T., & Warnes, T. (2004). Gender, Age and Generations (State of the Art Report Cluster 8), IMESCO, Sussex Centre for Migration and Population Studies, University of Sussex.
Mains, D. (2012). Hope Is Cut: Youth, Unemployment and the Future in Urban Ethiopia. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Montgomery, M. R., Balk, D., Liu, Z., Agarwal, S., Jones, E., Adamo, S. (2016). Urban Migration of Adolescent Girls: Quantitative Results from Developing Countries. In J. Michael (Ed.), International Handbook of Migration and Population Distribution (573–604). Dordrecht: Springer.
Plan International. (2018). Girls’ Rights Are Human Rights: An In-depth Study of the Status of Girls in the International Human Rights Framework (Report Girls’ Rights Platform). Woking, UK: Plan International.
Punch, S. (2001). Negotiating Autonomy: Childhoods in Rural Bolivia. In L. Alanen & B. Mayall (Eds.), Conceptualising Child-adult Relations (23–36). London: Routledge Falmer.
Punch, S. (2015). Possibilities for Learning Between Childhoods and Youth in the Minority and Majority Worlds: Youth Transitions as an Example of Cross-world Dialogue. In J. Wyn & H. Cahill (Eds.). Handbook of Children and Youth Studies (689–701). Singapore: Springer.
Punch, S. (2016). Exploring Children’s Agency Across Majority and Minority World Contexts. In F. Esser, Meike S. Baader, T. Betz, & B. Hunderland (Eds.), Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood: New Perspectives in Childhood Studies (183–196). London: Routledge.
Tadele, G. (2006). Bleak Prospects: Young Men, Sexuality and HIV/AIDS in an Ethiopian Town. Leiden: African Studies Center.
Temin, M., Montgomery, M. R., Engebretsen, S., & Barker, K. M. (2013). Girls on the Move: Adolescent Girls and Migration in the Developing World. A Girls Count Report on Adolescent Girls. New York: Population Council.
Treiber, M. (2014). Becoming by Moving: Khartoum and Addis Ababa as Migratory Stages Between Eritrea and ‘Something’. In M. Abdalla, D. Dias Barros, & M. Berthet Ribeiro (Eds.), Spaces in Movement: New Perspectives on Migration in African Settings (pp. 189–205). Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
UNFPA. (2012). Child Marriage Profile: Eritrea, Report. New York: United Nations Populations Fund, UNFPA.
Van Reisen, M. (2012). Human Trafficking: Sinai and Beyond. European External Policy Advisors. Tilburg: Tilburg University.
Van Reisen, M., Mawere, M. (Eds.). (2017). Human Trafficking and Trauma in the Digital Era: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Trade in Refugees from Eritrea. Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG.
Vertovec, S. (2004). Trends and Impacts of Migrant Transnationalism. Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (Working Paper No. 3). University of Oxford.
WHO. (2016). Eritrea Launched Campaign to End Child Marriage (Report). Asmara: WHO.
White, S., & Choudhury, S. (2010). Children’s Participation in Bangladesh: Issues of Agency and Structures of Violence. In B. Percy-Smith & N. Thomas (Eds.), A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation (39–50). London: Routledge.
Whitehead, A., Hashim, I., & Iversen, V. (2007). Child Migration, Child Agency and Intergenerational Relations in Africa and South Asia. Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty (Working Paper). Brighton: University of Sussex.
Willemse, K. (2014). “Everything I Told You Was True”: The Biographic Narrative as a Method of Critical Feminist Knowledge Production. Women’s Studies International Forum, 43, 38–49.
World Bank. (2017). Export Competitiveness for Jobs (P156113). Combined Project Information Documents /Integrated Safeguards Datasheet (PID/ISDS). Washington, DC: World Bank.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Grabska, K., de Regt, M., Del Franco, N. (2019). Becoming a Migrant, Becoming a Refugee. In: Adolescent Girls' Migration in The Global South. Palgrave Studies on Children and Development. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00093-6_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00093-6_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-00092-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-00093-6
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)