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«I lifted an anchor by coming here» An analysis of how gender influences perceived options for adaptive migration in a Bangladeshi community
Abstract
In view of rising climate change, migration is increasingly perceived as a potential adaptation strategy to more intense and frequent environmental stressors. When investigating situations of environmental stress, gender analyzes tend to focus on how women are more vulnerable than men, and are inclined to portray women as victimized and passive, trapped in unfavorable social structures of female seclusion. While not questioning the findings of such research, it may have caused a blindness to female agency, causing women to be overlooked as active agents in environmental migration literature. This study shows that women do migrate when environmental stressors impoverish the livelihoods of their household. Aiming to investigate how and why this happens, the study is guided by the question of how gender influences the process of migration, and further what implications such influences have on the potential for utilization and efficiency of migration as an adaptation strategy to environmental stressors. Employing an analytical framework which focuses on how individuals perceive their potential responses to threatened livelihoods, the study explores how gendered drivers of economic incentives and cultural constraints are negotiated at the individual and household level. Qualitative fieldwork from a Dhaka slum and three villages in Southern Bangladesh’s Bhola district revealed that women utilize the option to migrate when they perceive it as most likely that their male guardian will not be able to provide for the household when environmental stressors threaten livelihoods. Creating great social costs, perceptions of appropriate gender roles negatively effect the utilization and efficiency of female migration as an adaptive response to environmental stressors. This should not lead to dismissal of active female migration in the context of environmental stress, however. Rather, because women are often found to be more vulnerable to environmental stressors than men, it is important that the role and status of women in migration processes is addressed for a better understanding of how their adaptive potential can be enhanced.
... (3) Study examples from the interviews in Bhola Slum are actively being used by the UCL and WHO lead Lancet Countdown: Tracking Climate Change and Health expert group, in which SAK is a co---author for WG2 (see Watts et al. 2016). (4) Other external research studies have been directed and received support from the Gibika team to carry out their studies resulting in one peer review journal article (McNamara et al. 2015), two Masters (Evertsen 2015, Roth 2016) and the University of Sussex, Durham and SOAS lead 'Migrants on the Margins' project picking it up as a project site in late 2016. This is only a beginning but the research team is confident that by the end of the Gibika project, we will see good list of strong research outputs on Bhola Slum. ...
The field data collected during the 2014 field work aimed to deeper the qualitative understanding of the diverse impacts of environmental stress on peoples’ livelihood resilience in each project site. The 2015 field work aim was strongly focused on community-based action needs and institutional presence to ensuring a smooth action handover. The 2016 field work, therefore, expanded the 2014-2015 field work and focused on enhancing a deeper scientific understanding of why people do not evacuate or migrate away from environmental stressors and shocks.
The final mixed-method set of field work carried out in October to November 2016 consisted of an ambitious methodological research plan carried out in the coastal cyclone affected study sites Dalbanga South, Mazer Char and Gabtola, as well as the urban project site Bhola Slum.
This chapter argues that the effacement of gender in macro-analyses of internal migration in India is based on the collective inability to delineate the contours of female labour migration from the official databases. While critiquing the monocausal approach to migration which overwhelmingly privileges social over economic reasons in female migration, the chapter essays a gendered macro-view of labour migration in India, for which new methods of approaching the data of the most recent macro-survey on migration in India (2007–08) are applied. The authors argue that the migration pattern is enhancing structural gender inequalities in the labour market. While the domination of services and industry in male migrant employment has contributed to a degree of diversification in the structure of the male workforce away from agriculture, the same is not the case for the female workforce. Drawing on primary surveys conducted across 2009–2011, the chapter argues that a meso-level view shows a predominantly long- and medium-term migratory pattern among upper-caste women to have brought hitherto home-bound women into diversified employment in more white-collar services. On the other hand, short-term and circulatory migration involving hard manual labour with limited scope for social advancement predominates among women from traditionally disadvantaged castes/tribes. A distinctively gendered process of concentration among migrant women in paid domestic work, however, cuts across caste hierarchies. While women workers’ involvement in family decisions to migrate and ‘autonomous’ migration by women is not insignificant, a broad tendency towards their concentration in a narrow range of occupations is identified. It is argued that the temporary nature of much of employment leads to a pullback to villages, despite agrarian crisis. In foregrounding the intersections between caste, class, and gender inequalities, and arguing that such inequalities are being reconfigured through migration, the chapter draws on the perspective of the women’s movement in India. It is argued that the absolute reduction in employment for women during the most distinctive phase of high GDP growth in India posits the need for more redistributive and equalizing growth as the path forward for social justice.
This chapter argues that the effacement of gender in macro-analyses of internal migration in India is based on the collective inability to delineate the contours of female labour migration from the official databases. While critiquing the monocausal approach to migration which overwhelmingly privileges social over economic reasons in female migration, the chapter essays a gendered macro-view of labour migration in India, for which new methods of approaching the data of the most recent macro-survey on migration in India (2007–08) are applied. The authors argue that the migration pattern is enhancing structural gender inequalities in the labour market. While the domination of services and industry in male migrant employment has contributed to a degree of diversification in the structure of the male workforce away from agriculture, the same is not the case for the female workforce. Drawing on primary surveys conducted across 2009–2011, the chapter argues that a meso-level view shows a predominantly long-and medium-term migratory pattern among upper-caste women to have brought hitherto home-bound women into diversified employment in more white-collar services. On the other hand, short-term and circulatory migration involving hard manual labour with limited scope for social advancement predominates among women from traditionally disadvantaged castes/tribes. A distinctively gendered process of concentration among migrant women in paid domestic work, however, cuts across caste hierarchies. While women workers' involvement in family decisions to migrate and 'autonomous' migration by women is not insignificant, a broad tendency towards their concentration in a narrow range of occupations is identified. It is argued that the temporary nature of much of employment leads to a pullback to villages, despite agrarian crisis. In foregrounding the intersections between caste, class, and gender inequalities, and arguing that such inequalities are being reconfigured through migration, the chapter draws on the perspective of the women's movement in India. It is argued that the absolute reduction in employment for women during the most distinctive phase of high GDP growth in India posits the need for more redistributive and equalizing growth as the path forward for social justice.
Vulnerability to environmental degradation and natural hazards is articulated along social, poverty, and gender lines. Just as gender is not sufficiently mainstreamed in many areas of development policy and practice, so the potential impacts of climate change on gender relations have not been studied, and remain invisible. In this article we outline climate change predictions, and explore the effects of long-term climate change on agriculture, ecological systems, and gender relations, since these could be significant. We identify predicted changes in natural hazard frequency and intensity as a result of climate change, and explore the gendered effects of natural hazards. We highlight the urgent need to integrate gender analyses into public policy-making, and in adaptation responses to climate change.
Adaptation has emerged as an important area of research and assessment among climate change scientists. Most scholarly work has identified resource constraints as being the most significant determinants of adaptation. However, empirical research on adaptation has so far mostly not addressed the importance of measurable and alterable psychological factors in determining adaptation. Drawing from the literature in psychology and behavioural economics, we develop a socio-cognitive Model of Private
Proactive Adaptation to Climate Change (MPPACC). MPPACC separates out the psychological steps to taking action in response to perception, and allows one to see where the most important bottlenecks occur—including risk perception and perceived adaptive capacity, a factor largely neglected in previous climate change research. We then examine two case studies—one from urban Germany and one from rural Zimbabwe—to explore the validity of MPPACC to explaining adaptation. In the German study, we find that MPPACC provides better statistical power than traditional socio-economic models. In the Zimbabwean case study, we find a qualitative match between MPPACC and adaptive behaviour. Finally, we discuss the important implications of our findings both on vulnerability and adaptation assessments, and on efforts to promote adaptation through outside intervention.
The impacts of climate change are likely to affect population distribution and mobility. While alarmist predictions of massive flows of refugees are not supported by past experiences of responses to droughts and extreme weather events, predictions for future migration flows are tentative at best. What we do know is that mobility and migration are key responses to environmental and non-environmental transformations and pressures. They should therefore be a central element of strategies of adaptation to climate change. This requires a radical change in policy makers’ perceptions of migration as a problem and a better understanding of the role of local and national institutions in supporting and accommodating mobility.
This paper proposes frameworks to analyze the gender dimensions of climate change-induced migration. The experiences, needs and priorities of climate migrants will vary by gender and these differences need to be accounted for if policies are to be inclusive. Among the vulnerable groups, women are likely to be disproportionately affected due to climate change because on average women tend to be poorer, less educated, have a lower health status and have limited direct access to or ownership of natural resources. Both the process (actual movement) and the outcomes (rural–rural or rural–urban migration, out-migration mainly of men) of climate change-induced migration are also likely to be highly gendered.
Bangladesh has recently experienced a number of high-profile disasters, including devastating cyclones and annual floods. Poverty is both a cause of vulnerability, and a consequence of hazard impacts. Evidence that the impacts of disasters are worse for women is inconclusive or variable. However, since being female is strongly linked to being poor, unless poverty is reduced, the increase in disasters and extreme climate events linked with climate change is likely to affect women more than men. In addition, there are some specific gender attributes which increase women's vulnerability in some respects. These gendered vulnerabilities may, however, be reduced by social changes.
In this article, the author argues that we need to conceptualize gender as a social structure, and by doing so, we can better analyze the ways in which gender is embedded in the individual, interactional, and institutional dimensions of our society. To conceptualize gender as a structure situates gender at the same level of general social significance as the economy and the polity. The author also argues that while concern with intersectionality must continue to be paramount, different structures of inequality have different constructions and perhaps different influential causal mechanisms at any given historical moment. We need to follow a both/and strategy to understand gender structure, race structure, and other structures of inequality as they currently operate while also systematically paying attention to how these axes of domination intersect. Finally, the author suggests we pay more attention to doing research and writing theory with explicit attention to how our work can indeed help transform as well as inform society.
This paper draws on case studies in Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania and Vietnam to explore the different ways in which migration intersects with the changing relations between rural and urban areas and activities, and in the process transforms livelihoods and the relations between young and older men and women. Livelihood strategies are becoming increasingly diverse, and during interviews people were asked to describe their first, second and third occupations, the time allocated to each and the income that each produced. In all study regions, the number of young people migrating is increasing. This is influenced not only by expanding employment opportunities in destination areas but also by power inequalities within households, which means limited opportunities at home. It is increasingly common for young women to migrate, in part because they have no land rights and few prospects at home, in part because of more employment opportunities elsewhere. Young women also tend to move further than young men and for longer, and also remit a higher proportion of their income. Older men expect young men to migrate but often criticize young women for doing so, although women’s migration is more accepted as their remittances contribute more to household income. However, if young women had better prospects at home, it would limit their need to move to what is often exploitative and insecure work.
The views expressed in this paper are entirely the responsibility of the author and in no sense represent official positions of the Department for International Development (DFID). The paper has benefitted from comments provided by Dan Coppard, Vegard Iversen and two reviewers.
While there is a recognised need to adapt to changing climatic conditions, there is an emerging discourse of limits to such
adaptation. Limits are traditionally analysed as a set of immutable thresholds in biological, economic or technological parameters.
This paper contends that limits to adaptation are endogenous to society and hence contingent on ethics, knowledge, attitudes
to risk and culture. We review insights from history, sociology and psychology of risk, economics and political science to
develop four propositions concerning limits to adaptation. First, any limits to adaptation depend on the ultimate goals of
adaptation underpinned by diverse values. Second, adaptation need not be limited by uncertainty around future foresight of
risk. Third, social and individual factors limit adaptation action. Fourth, systematic undervaluation of loss of places and
culture disguises real, experienced but subjective limits to adaptation. We conclude that these issues of values and ethics,
risk, knowledge and culture construct societal limits to adaptation, but that these limits are mutable.
{textlessptextgreatertextless}br/textgreaterAs the challenges and opportunities posed by climate change become increasingly apparent, the need for facilitating successful adaptation and enhancing adaptive capacity within the context of sustainable development is clear. With adaptation high on the agenda, the notion of limits and barriers to adaptation has recently received much attention within both academic and policymaking spheres. While emerging literature has been quick to depict limits and barriers in terms of natural, financial, or technologic processes, there is a clear shortfall in acknowledging social barriers to adaptation. It is against such a backdrop that this paper sets out to expose and explore some of the underlying features of social barriers to adaptation, drawing on insights from two case studies in the Western Nepal. This paper exposes the significant role of cognitive, normative and institutional factors in both influencing and prescribing adaptation. It explores how restrictive social environments can limit adaptation actions and influence adaptive capacity at the local level, particularly for the marginalised and socially excluded. The findings suggest a need for greater recognition of the diversity and complexity of social barriers, strategic planning and incorporation at national and local levels, as well as an emphasis on tackling the underlying drivers of vulnerability and social exclusion.textless/ptextgreater
A retrospective assessment of 100 consecutive accepted referrals to a crisis intervention centre was undertaken. Successful outcome and a good level of previous coping were most likely amongst those not exposed to any of the Brown and Harris vulnerability factors, although there was no evidence for an additive effect for those experiencing more than one vulnerability factor. A significantly greater number of clients without a confidante showed a poor level of previous coping but none of the other vulnerability factors individually had a major influence on coping or outcome. The implications of the findings are discussed.
The implications of environmental change for migration are little
understood. Migration as a response to climate change could be seen as a failure of
in situ adaptation methods, or migration could be alternatively perceived as a
rational component of creative adaptation to environmental risk. This paper frames
migration as part of an adaptation response to climate change impacts to natural
resource condition and environmental hazards. Thresholds will be reached by
communities after which migration will become a vital component of an effective
adaptation response. Such changes to migration patterns have the potential to
undermine migration policy unless appropriate preparations are undertaken. This
paper describes an approach to assist researchers to frame how climate change will
influence migration by critically analysing how thresholds of fundamental change to
migration patterns could be identified, primarily in relation to two case studies in
Nepal and Thailand. Future policy for internal and international migration could be
guided by the analysis of such thresholds of non-linear migration and resourced
effectively to ensure that socio-economic and humanitarian outcomes are
maximised.
Research into the climate change and migration nexus has often focussed solely on how people move in response to the impacts of variability and change in climate. This notion often ignores the nature of migration as a tried and tested livelihood choice amid a variety of socio-economic and environmental opportunities and limitations. This paper closely looks at the behavioural aspects of migration decision-making in Bangladesh in the context of changes in its economy, and, increasingly, exposure to the impacts of climate variability and change. We find that villagers in areas particularly affected by increasing climatic stresses and shocks are diversifying their traditional livelihood strategies by migrating. Environmental factors, including climatic stresses and shocks, often make such shifts even more necessary. Although the migrants’ primary motivation is better income, in effect, migration becomes an effective form of adaptation. Based on a qualitative study in three geographically distinct places of Bangladesh, we propose that migration is a socially acceptable behaviour that occurs in the context of perceived environmental change and climate variability. Migration decisions are mediated by a set of ‘behavioural factors’ that assesses the efficacy of different responses to opportunities and challenges, their socio-cultural acceptance and the ability to respond successfully. This understanding has policy relevance for climate change adaptation, in terms of both how migrants are perceived and how their movements are planned for.
This paper aims to further discussions on access to “foreign” worlds, limits in knowledge production, and the role of gender relations in field research. What follows is an engagement with arguments developed by Hanna Papanek and Carroll Pastner in this journal some decades ago. They both drew on fieldwork experiences in Pakistan to argue that foreign women fieldworkers can (sometimes) take advantage of ambiguities in the social structures of Purdah societies, that is, societies characterized by “sexual segregation and the seclusion of women” (Pastner 1982:262), to flexibly position themselves and to be able to interact with both men and women. This paper rethinks their arguments and evaluates the current situation on the basis of fieldwork experience as a foreign woman in Pakistan in the late 2000s. It argues that possibilities for foreign women to get physical access to men’s worlds, although still available, remain limited and in some ways have become more restricted (including access to women’s worlds) due to political developments in recent decades. The paper also argues that, irrespective of the feasibility of physical access to other gender’s worlds, it is necessary to reflect on subjectivities through which access to “foreign” worlds is mediated and knowledge is produced.
This paper, based on a sample study of female migrant workers in Tamil Nadu, highlights the trends, pattern and nature of female migration in Tamil Nadu; the push and pull factors of migration and finally the role of migration as a livelihood strategy. The major push factor was lack of employment opportunities in the place of origin caused by drought and the pull factor was a favourable employment situation in the destination areas. After migration there seems to be a sizeable improvement in self-employment and regular salaried jobs for women. But the concentration of women in the informal sector to the extent of 82 per cent is an indication of their disadvantaged position in the urban labour market. Weighing the gains and losses, the study concludes that migration has helped migrant households avoid hunger, starvation and death, though it has failed to improve the economic well-being of about 43 per cent of the families, particularly the female headed households. To alleviate poverty, the government's attention should be directed towards combating population movement via rural development and also improving the living conditions of those who had already moved.
This Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) has been jointly coordinated by Working Groups I (WGI) and II (WGII) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report focuses on the relationship between climate change and extreme weather and climate events, the impacts of such events, and the strategies to manage the associated risks. This Special Report, in particular, contributes to frame the challenge of dealing with extreme weather and climate events as an issue in decision making under uncertainty, analyzing response in the context of risk management. The report consists of nine chapters, covering risk management; observed and projected changes in extreme weather and climate events; exposure and vulnerability to as well as losses resulting from such events; adaptation options from the local to the international scale; the role of sustainable development in modulating risks; and insights from specific case studies. (LN)
Désaccord au niveau de la production: ravaux, famille et politiques au sein d'une société paysanneL'article se penche sur le caractère en pleine mutation des travaux à la ferme dans une société paysanne de la Gambie. Le travail à la ferme a été transformé par l'arrivée des techniques tout à fait nouvelles et par une modification des relations sociales de production en raison de l'émergence de la culture associée mécanisée dans des rizières irriguées. La culture associée irriguée en matière de production de riz demande beaucoup de travail et par conséquent elle constitue un fardeau supplémentaire pour le foyer, désormais considéré comme une source de main d'oeuvre. Mais c'est entre hommes et femmes que se livre le principal combat, au niveau des droits de propriété des terres; cette lutte se traduit par des conflits d'ordre domestique, des batailles juridiques en cas de divorce et la renégociation du contrat de mariage. L'article examine les politiques au sein des foyers d'une rizière de Jahaly-Pacharr, et passe également en revue les résultats médiocres des programmes de cultures irriguées gambiens au cours des quarante dernières années.
Marriage negotiations for Bangladeshi Muslims involve various financial transactions including primarily the religiously sanctioned dower (mahr). Added to mahr, the practice of dowry or joutuk, demands made by the husband’s side to the bride’s side, have in the last few decades become a widespread practice supported neither by state law nor personal laws, but apparently designed to strengthen traditional patriarchal assumptions. Based on detailed fieldwork, this article discusses the historical assimilation of dowry practices in Bangladesh, including debates regarding its social ramifications on women’s rights in Bangladesh, linked now to growing evidence of dowry-related violence. The existing dowry practices, despite legal intervention, continue to compromise women’s rights in Bangladesh.
Most policy makers and practitioners have now started to recognise the different ways in which climate change impacts on poor, vulnerable, and socially excluded women and men. However, making adaptation policies and programmes sensitive to gender issues does not simply mean 'adding on' a concern for women. It also requires a nuanced understanding of gendered forms of vulnerability, and a stronger commitment of resources - financial, technical, and human - to address specific gendered priorities. Drawing on insights from coastal Gujarat, in India, this article illustrates how researchers and practitioners can collaborate to strengthen learning across communities and regions. Simple and practical tools for assessing vulnerability, as well as empirical research and documentation, can further and support advocacy on climate-resilient development policies.
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This paper argues for treating gender as a key category in the understanding of migratory processes. Starting with an illustration of the absence of women in mainstream migration research, it presents the debate on this phenomenon and its development from a focus on women to one on gender. Through discussion of the debate on current migration phenomena it is demonstrated how gender can be used in a conceptual framework which includes various levels (micro, meso and macro). The paper advocates the analysis of migratory processes within a broader framework of social change.
Purdah, meaning curtain, is the word most commonly used for the system of secluding women and enforcing high standards of female modesty in much of South Asia. Purdah is an important part of the life experience of many South Asians, both Muslim and Hindu, and is a central feature of the social systems of the area. The crucial characteristic of the purdah system is its limitation on interaction between women and males outside certain well-defined categories, which differ among Muslims and Hindus. Muslim purdah restrictions do not apply within the immediate kin unit,but only outside it, while Hindu purdah is based on a set of avoidance rules between a woman and her male affines. Muslim seclusion begins at puberty, Hindu seclusion strictly speaking begins with marriage.
Global environmental change, including climate change, is increasingly affecting ecosystems and the communities who rely on them. Reflecting on the manner in which the environment changes can help provide insights into the different mechanisms by which humans respond and adapt to deal with the environmental stress they face. When it comes to migrating as a response strategy to environmental stress, the pace of change in the environment will have a significant influence on the mode of displacement and migration-related decisions. Determining the exact extent that environmental stresses play in forcing people to move is complex for at least two reasons. First, deciphering which of several push and pull factors influence a decision to move is difficult as multiple factors (e.g., social, political and economic factors) often act simultaneously. Second, environmental degradation processes are often a consequence of the degradation of social, economic and political conditions and vice versa. Reflecting on the concept of social-ecological systems and the notion of ecosystem services is useful for understanding this complexity and can help in determining the extent to which ecosystem degradation plays a role in forcing people to migrate. An attempt is made to address the gap in conceptualising environmental change and migration by sketching a decision framework for categorising people moving due to environmental stressors. The approach examines the circumstances leading to a decision to move, including the state of the environment and coping capacities / adaptive abilities of those individuals or communities affected. This conceptualisation is not a final scheme but rather, a point of departure for debate and discussion. It is hoped that, following in-depth discussions and improvements of such a framework, it will become a useful tool for operational agencies that have to provide support to people who are displaced or migrate because of environmental stresses.
Trends in poverty, working through changing roles of women in income generation, have been advanced as one explanation of changing fertility in Bangladesh. This paper examines women's work patterns in two rural villages in northern Bangladesh and finds little evidence of increasing workforce participation, despite high contraceptive use rates. Observation of women's work patterns suggests that purdah, the practice of female seclusion, influences and conditions women's decisions regarding roles they assume, and remains a dominant influence in women's lives, showing little evidence of responsiveness to poverty.
This paper explores the complex relationship between structure and agency and the way it has been incorporated into migration theory. It argues that attempts to develop a coherent and robust body of migration theory have been thwarted by a structure– agency impasse: some approaches lean too close to functionalism while others veer into structuralism. Those who search for middle ground have tended to draw on Giddens' notion of structuration as a way of articulating the balance between structure and agency in migration processes. The article shows that while structuration is beguiling, it has failed to offer any significant advances for migration theory. This is a result of theoretical weaknesses in structuration theory rather than a failure of its application; this argument is based on a critical realist critique of the dualism inherent in structuration. It is suggested that critical realism offers a fruitful avenue for a more sophisticated analysis of structure and agency in migration processes. The article ends with a brief outline of a critical realist approach to migration theory and argues that this may offer a way around the structure–agency impasse.
This paper reviews the concept of adaptation of human communities to global changes, especially climate change, in the context of adaptive capacity and vulnerability. It focuses on scholarship that contributes to practical implementation of adaptations at the community scale. In numerous social science fields, adaptations are considered as responses to risks associated with the interaction of environmental hazards and human vulnerability or adaptive capacity. In the climate change field, adaptation analyses have been undertaken for several distinct purposes. Impact assessments assume adaptations to estimate damages to longer term climate scenarios with and without adjustments. Evaluations of specified adaptation options aim to identify preferred measures. Vulnerability indices seek to provide relative vulnerability scores for countries, regions or communities. The main purpose of participatory vulnerability assessments is to identify adaptation strategies that are feasible and practical in communities. The distinctive features of adaptation analyses with this purpose are outlined, and common elements of this approach are described. Practical adaptation initiatives tend to focus on risks that are already problematic, climate is considered together with other environmental and social stresses, and adaptations are mostly integrated or mainstreamed into other resource management, disaster preparedness and sustainable development programs.
A review of the sociological research about gender and migration shows the substantial ways in which gender fundamentally organizes the social relations and structures influencing the causes and consequences of migration. Yet, although a significant sociological research has emerged on gender and migration in the last three decades, studies are not evenly distributed across the discipline. In this article, we map the recent intellectual history of gender and migration in the field of sociology and then systematically assess the extent to which studies on engendering migration have appeared in four widely read journals of sociology (American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Demography, and Social Forces). We follow with a discussion of these studies, and in our conclusions, we consider how future gender and migration scholarship in sociology might evolve more equitably.
This paper aims to clarify the meaning, and explain the utility, of the case study method, a method j often practiced but little understood. A "case study," I argue, is best defined as an intensive study of a single unit with an aim to generalize across a larger set of units. Case studies rely on the same sort of covariational evidence utilized in non-case study research. Thus, the case study method is correctly understood as a particular way of defining cases, not a way of analyzing cases or a way of modeling causal relations. I show that this understanding of the subject illuminates some of the persistent ambiguities of case study work, ambiguities that are, to some extent, intrinsic to the enterprise. The travails of the case study within the discipline of political science are also rooted in an insufficient appreciation of the methodological tradeoffs that this method calls forth. This paper presents the familiar contrast between case study and non-case study work as a series of characteristic strengths and weaknesses - affinities -rather than as antagonistic approaches to the empirical world. In the end, the perceived hostility between case study and non-case study research is largely unjustified and, perhaps, deserves to be regarded as a misconception. Indeed, the strongest conclusion to arise from this methodological examination concerns the complementarity of single-unit and cross-unit research designs.
Labor markets are gendered institutions operating at the intersection of the productive and reproductive economies. Participation in labor markets does not automatically empower women. Reduction in gender differentials in earnings may be the result of harmonizing down rather than up. Discrimination against women may persist because, in the absence of institutional changes, it is profitable. It is important to distinguish between static and dynamic, and micro- and macro-efficiency. Labor market regulation has an important role to play in the institutional transformation needed to reconcile goals of efficiency and equality.
Mobility can bring opportunities for coping with environmental change,
say Richard Black, Stephen R. G. Bennett, Sandy M. Thomas and John R.
Beddington.
Losses due to natural hazards (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes) and technological hazards (e.g., nuclear waste facilities, chemical spills) are both on the rise. One response to hazard-related losses is migration, with this paper offering a review of research examining the association between migration and environmental hazards. Using examples from both developed and developing regional contexts, the overview demonstrates that the association between migration and environmental hazards varies by setting, hazard types, and household characteristics. In many cases, however, results demonstrate that environmental factors play a role in shaping migration decisions, particularly among those most vulnerable. Research also suggests that risk perception acts as a mediating factor. Classic migration theory is reviewed to offer a foundation for examination of these associations.
We review census data to assess the standing of five Latin American nations on a gender continuum ranging from patriarchal to matrifocal. We show that Mexico and Costa Rica lie close to one another with a highly patriarchal system of gender relations whereas Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic are similar in having a matrifocal system. Puerto Rico occupies a middle position, blending characteristics of both systems. These differences yield different patterns of female relative to male migration. Female householders in the two patriarchal settings displayed low rates of out-migration compared with males, whereas in the two matrifocal countries the ratio of female to male migration was much higher, in some case exceeding their male counterparts. Multivariate analyses showed that in patriarchal societies, a formal or informal union with a male dramatically lowers the odds of female out-migration, whereas in matrifocal societies marriage and cohabitation have no real effect. The most important determinants of female migration from patriarchal settings are the migrant status of the husband or partner, having relatives in the United States, and the possession of legal documents. In matrifocal settings, however, female migration is less related to the possession of documents, partner's migrant status, or having relatives in the United States and more strongly related to the woman's own migratory experience. Whereas the process of cumulative causation appears to be driven largely by men in patriarchal societies, it is women who dominate the process in matrifocal settings.
This article examines data from a study on garment-factory workers in Bangladesh to explore the implications of work for the early socialization of young women. For the first time, large numbers of young Bangladeshi women are being given an alternative to lives in which they move directly from childhood to adulthood through early marriage and childbearing. Employment creates a period of transition in contrast to the abrupt assumption of adult roles at very young ages that marriage and childbearing mandate. This longer transition creates a period of adolescence for young women working in the garment sector that is shown to have strong implications for the women's long-term reproductive health.
"This paper reviews the literature on the neglected role of women in migration. It argues that focusing on gender and the family can provide the necessary linkage of micro and macro levels of analyses. Striving to contribute to a gendered understanding of the social process of migration, the review organizes the literature along these major issues: How is gender related to the decision to migrate--i.e. what are the causes and consequences of female or male-dominated flows of migration? What are the patterns of labor market incorporation of women immigrants--i.e. what accounts for their participation in the labor force and their occupational concentration? What is the relationship of the public and the private--i.e. what is the impact of work roles on family roles and of the experience of migration on the immigrants themselves? Throughout, the necessity to understand how ethnicity, class, and gender interact in the process of migration and settlement is stressed."
This paper examines how recent and long-term female migrants find paid work when they arrive in Dhaka, including how long it takes to do so, the work they find, the income they receive, the extent to which they retain control over the income they earn and their work satisfaction. The paper also considers their intention to work, when moving to Dhaka and their work preferences on arrival. It highlights the importance of women's contribution to household income.
Data from a survey carried out by the author are used to analyze aspects of rural-urban migration in Bangladesh. The survey comprised 710 migrants and nonmigrants living in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The focus of the analysis is on the motives and conditions affecting the migration of both men and women. It is explored how women migrants cope with the demands and stresses of urban living in unfavorable socioeconomic conditions, and how migration affects the well-being of migrants and their families. Policy implications are also examined.
Gender dimensions of labour migration in Dhaka city's formal manufacturing sector. Women's Employment in the Textile Manufacturing Sectors of Bangladesh and
- R Afsar
Afsar, R. (2002). Gender dimensions of labour
migration in Dhaka city's formal
manufacturing sector. Women's Employment in
the Textile Manufacturing Sectors of
Bangladesh and Morocco. S. Miller & J.