Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Migrant Remittances, Population Ageing and Intergenerational Family Obligations in Sri Lanka

  • Chapter
Transnational Labour Migration, Remittances and the Changing Family in Asia

Part of the book series: Anthropology, Change and Development Series ((ACD))

Abstract

In the early decades of the 21st century, countries are increasingly participating in the global economy. Many developing nations, such as Sri Lanka, send not only goods but also labourers into international markets. Since the late 1970s, working-class Sri Lankans have sojourned in West Asia as guest workers in ever-growing numbers.1 In 2009, when the data that are analysed here were gathered, Sri Lanka had a population of 20 million, and roughly 1.8 million transnational migrants worked abroad (SLBFE, 2010: 4, 142). Migrants thus constituted 9 per cent of the population, and over half of themigrants were women (SLBFE, 2010: 6). Some 89 per cent of these sojourner women worked as domestic servants, most of them in the Gulf (SLBFE, 2010: 11). Female migrants’ most often stated goal was to earn money abroad, buy land and build a house in Sri Lanka and improve their family’s status. Recently, members of the younger generation (often well-educated children of the older labour migrants) have been going abroad, heading not only to the Gulf but also to more desirable destinations, such as Korea, Cyprus, Malaysia, Israel and Italy, sometimes with the hope of settling permanently in their host country.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Ahmad, Attiya (2010) “Migrant Domestic Workers in Kuwait: The Role of State Institutions”, in Viewpoints: Migration and the Gulf. Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, pp. 27–28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Athauda, Thamara, D. Fernando and A. Nikapotha (2000) “Behavioral Problems among the Pre-school Children of Migrant Mothers in Sri Lanka”, Journal of the College of Community Physicians of Sri Lanka 5: 14–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brickell, Katherine and Brenda S. A. Yeoh (2014) “Geographies of Domestic Life: ‘Householding’ in Transition in East and Southeast Asia”, Geoforum 51: 256–261.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, Bernardo (2011) “Indifference with Sri Lankan Migrants”, Ethnology 50(1): 43–58.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chang, Grace (2000) Disposable Domestics: ImmigrantWomenWorkers in the Global Economy. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, Jennifer and Deborah Durham (2007) Generations and Globalization: Youth, Age, and Family in the New World Economy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, Jeffrey E. and Sally S. Booth (2007) Dirty Work: Immigrants in Domestic Service, Agriculture, and Prostitution in Sicily. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cronk, Lee (2008) “Reciprocity and the Power of Giving”, in J. Spradley, D. W. McCurdy (eds.) Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, 13th ed. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, pp. 157–163.

    Google Scholar 

  • Department of Census and Statistics – Sri Lanka (2007) Household Income and Expenditure Survey – 2006/07. Colombo: Department of Census and Statistics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Department of Census and Statistics – Sri Lanka (2011) Sri Lanka Labour Force Survey: Annual Report – 2010. Colombo: Department of Census and Statistics, http://www.statistics.gov.lk/samplesurvey/LFS_Annual%20Report_2010.pdf, accessed on 28 January 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Silva, W. Indralal (2007) Beyond Twenty Million: Projecting the Population of Sri Lanka 2001–2081. Colombo: Institute of Policy Studies.

    Google Scholar 

  • Douglass, Mike (2014) “Afterword: Global Householding and Social Reproduction in Asia”, Geoforum 51: 313–316.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eelens F., T. Mook and T. Schampers (1992) “Introduction”, in F. Eelens, T. Schampers and J. D. Speckmann (eds.) Labor Migration to the Middle East: From Sri Lanka to the Gulf. London: Kegan Paul International, pp. 1–25.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ehrenreich, Barbara and Arlie Russell Hochschild (eds.) (2002) Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy. New York: Metropolitan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gamaniratne, Nirosha (2007) Population Ageing, Policy Responses and Options to Extend Retirement Coverage: Case Study of Sri Lanka. Colombo: Institute of Policy Studies.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gamburd, Michele Ruth (1998) “Absent Women and Their Extended Families: Sri Lanka’s Migrant Housemaids”, in Carla Risseeuw and Kamala Ganesh (eds.) Negotiation and Social Space, A Gendered Analysis of Changing Kin and Security Networks in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. New Delhi: Sage Publications India, pp. 276–291.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gamburd, Michele Ruth (2000) The Kitchen Spoon’s Handle: Transnationalism and Sri Lanka’s Migrant Housemaids. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gamburd, Michele Ruth (2004) “Money That Burns Like Oil: A Sri Lankan Cultural Logic of Morality and Agency”, Ethnology 43(2): 167–184.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gamburd, Michele Ruth (2008) “Milk Teeth and Jet Planes: Kin Relations in Families of Sri Lanka’s Transnational Domestic Servants”, City and Society 20(1): 5–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gamburd, Michele Ruth (2013) “Care Work and Property Transfers: Intergenerational Family Obligations in Sri Lanka”, in J. Danely and C. Lynch (eds.) Transitions and Transformations: Cultural Perspectives on Aging and the Life Course. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 151–167.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gold, Ann Grodzins (2010) “New Light in the House: Schooling Girls in Rural North India”, in D. P. Mines and S. Lamb (eds.) Everyday Life in South Asia, 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 80–93.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hewamanne, Sandya (2008) Stitching Identities in a Free Trade Zone: Gender and Politics in Sri Lanka. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette (2007) Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huijsmans, Roy (2013) “ ‘Doing Gendered Age’: Older Migrants and Migrant Daughters Negotiating CareWork in Rural Lao PDR and Thailand”, Third World Quarterly 43(10): 1986–1910.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huijsmans, Roy (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.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ibarra, Maria de la Luz (2002) “Transnational Identity Formation and Mexican ImmigrantWomen’s Ethics of Elder Care”, Anthropology of Work Review 23(3–4): 16–20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jayaweera, Swarna, Malsiri Dias and Leelangi Wanasundera (2002) Returnee Migrant Women in Two Locations in Sri Lanka. Colombo: Centre for Women’s Research (CENWOR).

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaiser, Marvin A. and Sandeep Chawla (1994) “Caregivers and Care Recipients: The Elderly in Developing Countries”, Ageing International 21(2): 42–49.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kapadia, Karin (1993) “Marrying Money: Changing Preference and Practice in Tamil Marriage”, Contributions to Indian Sociology 27(1): 25–51.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Randall (2005) “A Longitudinal Analysis of Health and Mortality in a Migrant-sending Region of Bangladesh”, in Santosh Jatrana, Mika Toyota and Brenda S. A. Yeoh (eds.) Migration and Health in Asia. London: Routledge, pp. 177–208.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lamb, Sarah (1997) “The Making and Unmaking of Persons: Notes on Aging and Gender in North India”, Ethnos 25(3): 279–302.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lamb, Sarah (2000) White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender, and Body in North India. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lamb, Sarah (2009) Aging and the Indian Diaspora: Cosmopolitan Families in India and Abroad. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Liu, Jieyu (2014) “Ageing, Migration, and Familial Dupport in Rural China”, Geoforum 51: 305–312.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lloyd-Sherlock, Peter and Catherine Locke (2008) “Vulnerable Relations: Life-Course, Wellbeing, and Social Exclusion in Buenos Aires, Argentina”, Ageing and Society 28(6): 779–803.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Locke, Catherine, Janet Seeley and Nitya Rao (2013a) “Migration, Reconfigurations of Family Relations, and Cocial (In)Security: An Introduction”, Third World Quarterly 34(10): 1872–1880.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Locke, Catherine, Janet Seeley and Nitya Rao (2013b) “Migration and Social Reproduction at Critical Junctures in Family Life Course”, Third World Quarterly 34(10): 1881–1895.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Locke, Catherine and Peter Lloyd-Sherlock (2011) “Qualitative Life Course Methodologies: Critical Reflections from Development Studies”, Development and Change 42(5): 1131–1152.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lynch, Caitrin (2007) Juki Girls, Good Girls: Gender and Cultural Politics in Sri Lanka’s Global Garment Industry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Magazine, Roger and Martha Areli Ramirez Sanchez (2007) “Continuity and Change in San Pedro Tlalcuapan, Mexico: Childhood, Social Reproduction, and Transnational Migration”, in Jennifer Cole and Deborah Durham (eds.) Generations and Globalization: Youth, Age, and Family in the New World Economy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 52–73.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marecek, Jeanne and Udeni Appuhamilage (2011) “Present but Unnamed: Feminisms and Psychologies in Sri Lanka”, in A. Rutherford, R. Capdevila, V. Undurti and I. Palmary (eds.) Handbook of International Perspectives on Feminism. New York: Springer, pp. 315–334.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Morrison, Barrie M. (2004) “Overwhelming Change and Faltering Institutions, 1948–2002”, in S. H. Hasbullah and Barrie M. Morrison (eds.) Sri Lankan Society in an Era of Globalization: Struggling to Create a New Social Order. New Delhi: Sage Publications, pp. 25–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Näre, Lena (2010) “Sri Lankan Men Working as Cleaners and Carers: Negotiating Masculinity in Naples”, Men and Masculinities 13: 65–86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Naufal, George and Ali Termos (2010) “Remittances from the GCC Countries: A Brief Outlook”, in Migration and the Gulf (February 2010): 37–41, http://www.mei.edu/Portals/0/Publications/Migration%20Gulf.pdf, accessed on 10 October 2010.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nicholson, Melanie (2006) “Without Their Children: Rethinking Motherhood Among Transnational Migrant Women”, Social Text 24(3): 13–33.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ortner, Sherry B. (2006) Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Parrenas, Rhacel Salazar (2002) “The Care Crisis in the Philippines: Children and Transnational Families in the New Global Economy”, in Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (eds.) Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy. New York: Metropolitan, pp. 39–54.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parrenas, Rhacel Salazar (2005) Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sassen, Saskia (2002) “Global Cities and Survival Circuits”, in Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (eds.) Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy. New York: Metropolitan, pp. 254–274.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sri Lankan Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) (2010) Annual Statistical Report of Foreign Employment 2009. Battaramula, Sri Lanka: SLBFE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sri Lankan Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) (2012) Annual Statistical Report of Foreign Employment 2009. Battaramula, Sri Lanka: SLBFE, http://www.slbfe.lk/article.php?article=106, accessed on 22 September 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stone, Linda (2010) Kinship and Gender: An Introduction, 4th ed. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thiranagama, Sharika (2014) “Making Tigers from Tamils: Long-Distance Nationalism and Sri Lankan Tamils in Toronto”, American Anthropologist 116: 265–278.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trager, Lillian, Ed. (2005) Migration and Economy: Global and Local Dynamics. Oxford: AltaMira Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wanasundera, Leelangi (2001) Migrant Women Domestic Workers: Cyprus, Greece and Italy. Colombo: Centre for Women’s Research (CENWOR).

    Google Scholar 

  • Waxler-Morrison, Nancy (2004) “Who Will Care for Those Left at Home? The Effect of New Opportunities for Work on Families in Sri Lanka”, in S. H. Hasbullah and Barrie M. Morrison (eds.) Sri Lankan Society in an Era of Globalization: Struggling to Create a New Social Order. New Delhi: Sage Publications, pp. 241–253.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weerakoon, Nedra (1998) “Sri Lanka: A Caste Study of International Female Labour Migration”, in S. Sta. Maria Amparita, J. J. Balisnono, R. Plaetevoet and R. Selwyn (eds.) Legal Protection for Asian Women Migrant Workers: Strategies for Action. Makati City, Philippines: Ateneo Human Rights Center, pp. 97–118.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whitehead, Ann, Iman M. Hashim and Vegard Iversen (2007) “Child Migration, Child Agency and Inter-generational Relations in Africa and South Asia”, Sussex Centre for Migration Research, Working Paper T24, http://www.migrationdrc.org/publications/working_papers/WP-T24.pdf, accessed on 22 September 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • World Bank (2008) “Sri Lanka: Addressing the Needs of an Aging Population”, Report No. 43396-LK. Human Development Unit, South Asia Region, http://go.worldbank.org/I14DRI6CS0, posted 28 May 2008, accessed on 15 November 2008.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Michele Ruth Gamburd
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Melbourne, Australia

    Lan Anh Hoang (Lecturer in Development Studies) (Lecturer in Development Studies)

  2. National University of Singapore, Singapore

    Brenda S. A. Yeoh (Professor of Geography) (Professor of Geography)

Copyright information

© 2015 Michele Ruth Gamburd

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Gamburd, M.R. (2015). Migrant Remittances, Population Ageing and Intergenerational Family Obligations in Sri Lanka. In: Hoang, L.A., Yeoh, B.S.A. (eds) Transnational Labour Migration, Remittances and the Changing Family in Asia. Anthropology, Change and Development Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137506863_6

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation