Abstract
Gender plays a crucial role in understanding the causes and consequences of international migration. In this chapter, we look at migration from a gendered perspective. In contrast to the assumptions that most migrants are men and women are their dependents, statistics and several new studies on women have increasingly recognised women as being independent and as a major part of globalised movement. While men migrate into a variety of economic sectors, women migrant workers are mainly concentrated in the services sector. This chapter utilises the dataset from a survey conducted in five cities in India, which records the experiences, activities and suggestions of highly skilled return migrants. The first section of the chapter focuses on the factors that cause women to migrate internationally and the differences between men and women in terms of migratory behaviour. Does the economic status of migrant women affect their social status, decision-making and opportunities? An even more worrying issue is the fact that most of these skilled migrants leave to find better-paid jobs abroad but end up in occupations below their skills level. It is in this context that the next section examines the challenges and opportunities and their impact on the role of women. The current debate about the linkage between migration and development has led to the realisation that women migrants are emerging as a new target group to initiate development processes in their home countries, and they can become active agents of change. Accordingly, the final section presents the vital contribution and experiences provided by skilled women returning to India, mainly from developed countries. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the nexus between the return migration of skilled women and development, and it raises additional questions for discussion.
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Notes
- 1.
International Migration stock: 2008 revision, http://esa.un.org/migration/p2k0data.asp.
- 2.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2009). Trends in International Migrant Stock: The 2008 Revision (United Nations database, POP/DB/MIG/Stock/Rev. 2008).
- 3.
Social capital here refers to social relations, group memberships and to the extent to which they can be mobilised to gain access to other resources (such as financial means, jobs, knowledge; see Bourdieu 1986). Social capital is dependent on the extension of an individual’s social network, the strength of ties and relationships (e.g. weak vs. strong; Granovetter 1973) and on the resources that the respective persons and groups have at their disposal.
- 4.
The Hindu, 27 January, 2010.
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Kumari, J., Sharma, R. (2014). Gender Migration, Return and Development: Emerging Trends and Issues with Special Reference to India. In: Tejada, G., Bhattacharya, U., Khadria, B., Kuptsch, C. (eds) Indian Skilled Migration and Development. Dynamics of Asian Development. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1810-4_13
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