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The main challenges of gender based international labor mobility: Transnational migrant families from Georgia
Abstract
The goal of the paper is to shed light on gendered nature of labor migration in the post-Soviet Georgian transitional families. Based on qualitative research methods, this study tries to identify how both, an immigrant wife and her husband left in Georgia conceptualize their gender roles and functions toward family members amid existing challenges. Our research showed that the both financial and emotional burdens of the family are on the part of immigrant women mainly. In few families, fathers take care of children, but in most cases mother’s role is played by a grandmother. Even though almost all respondents noted improvement of economic conditions, the temporary separation of the family members is seen as a social loss. The vast majority of families have not invested remittances in small businesses. It indicates the stagnation of the process of economic and social development in Georgia that restricts the migrants’ way back to home.
... In numerous instances, the role of a migrant has become increasingly relevant for women, partially due to prevailing macro trends in Western nations, such as population ageing and women's active participation in the skilled labour market. The process is often referred to as the feminisation of migration (Iashvili et al., 2024). Liszewski (2006) argues that the establishment of an authentic tourist-recreational area primarily implies the "occupation" of geographical space. ...
... Despite a significant enhancement in the quality of material interactions, the prolonged separation of married couples creates substantial issues in both marital dynamics and the dependency between parents and children. The division of the family is frequently perceived as a social cost among the transnational household members (Iashvili et al., 2024). Undocumented status also contributes to the presence of Georgians in the host country and the uncertainty surrounding their repatriation. ...
The concept of space has a multifaceted meaning in geographical science, ranging from the physical location of a place to its political, socio-economic and cultural dimensions. Migration creates new social space while transforming the social, economic, political, institutional, psychological or physical environment. Our research aims to explore how international mobility transforms and restructures the social spaces of Georgian labor migrants at their immigration destination. This change has been examined across multiple dimensions: the socio-economic transformation and economic disparity, migration trends and patterns, transnational connections and social networks, household structure and gender roles, as well as cultural, linguistic, ethnic, religious and institutional affiliation. The primary objective is to determine the types of spaces that can emerge because of Georgian labor migration, considering it as a dynamic process that fundamentally shapes the nature of transformation. Our study employs qualitative research methods, utilizing semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted both in person and online. The desk research method is employed to analyze secondary data, whereas discourse analysis method has been used for interviews. The research spans the period from 2010 to 2024. The target groups are Georgian migrants residing in the USA and in some EU countries. The survey’s main findings highlighted the heterogeneity of immigrant social spaces and the active participation of Georgian migrants through various activities within these spaces, namely: the space where labor activity is transformed (downgraded) professionally, the diasporic space consisting of Georgian congregations in Georgian Orthodox churches, the ethnic-religious and recreation space with the solemn celebration of national or religious holidays, the cultural-educational space with Sunday schools and Georgian cultural centers and the virtual communication space with family members left behind. The results acquired will contribute novel insights to the research on Georgian labor migration, which remains relatively limited.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Georgia became a country of intensive emigration. However, the last decade has marked a notable change in the country’s migration profile due to the inflow of immigrants. This is a new challenge for contemporary Georgia, especially in terms of immigrant integration. The purpose of this paper is to identify the main features of labour migrants’ integration into Georgian society. The research findings are mostly based on the results of a qualitative sociological research, employing in-depth interviews with migrant workers residing in Georgia, and experts of the field. Lack of complete legislation and sound policies is the main characteristic feature of labour immigration management in Georgia; therefore, the migrant integration process goes spontaneously: one group of migrants, namely English- and Russian-speakers, as well as skilled workers still feel comfortable, and they keep intense communication with the local population. Another part of migrants who is denied state support in studying Georgian remains isolated from the host society.
The article aims to show the main political-geographic trends of the 2020 parliamentary elections in Georgia. The political systems of the post-Soviet counties are still imperfect and fragile. Although international observers recognised the vote results in Georgia as legitimate, many opposition parties boycotted the parliament for almost six months. It took several western officials to engage in regulating the post-election crisis. The work focuses on analysing turnout and voting patterns pointing to the changes that occurred in the last decade. A geographical study of elections enables one to identify the merits and drawbacks of the electoral process from the regional standpoint. The findings of the work underline the complexity of the election outcomes. While certain legal and political changes bring Georgia closer to European democracies, the country still lags in terms of several electoral/geographical features.
As the world rapidly becomes a different place for migrants and non-migrants alike, this article asks whether transnational migration scholars have an adequate conceptual toolkit to address the temporal dimensions of mobility regimes. The article notes the way those who initiated the transnational framework for the study of migration conceptualised temporality, critiques the failure of subsequent researchers to adequately address the rapidly altering conditions of migration and offers a concept of multiscalar conjunctural transformation. A multiscalar conjunctural approach allows researchers to address both time and space. It highlights emergent processes of capital accumulation by dispossession and the ways in which such processes are culturally, politically, socially and spatially constituted as people around the world respond to multiple forms of displacement and reconstitute their lives.
Contemporary immigrants can not be characterized as the "uprooted'. Many are transmigrants, becoming firmly rooted in their new country but maintaining multiple linkages to their homeland. In the US, anthropologists are engaged in building a transnational anthropology and rethinking their data on immigration. Migration proves to be an important transnational process that reflects and contributes to the current political configurations of the emerging global economy. In this article, the authors use studies of migration from St. Vincent, Grenada, the Philippines, and Haiti to the US to delineate some of the parameters of an ethnography of transnational migration and explore the reasons for and the implications of transnational migrations. The authors conclude that the transnational connections of immigrants provide a subtext of the public debates in the US about the merits of immigration. -Authors
This article surveys contemporary theories of international migration in order to illuminate their leading propositions, assumptions, and hypotheses. It hopes to pave the way for a systematic empirical evaluation of their guiding tenets. The authors divide the theories conceptually into those advanced to explain the initiation of international migration and those put forth to account for the persistence of migration across space and time. Because they are specified at such different levels of analysis, the theories are not inherently logically inconsistent. The task of selecting between theories and propositions thus becomes an empirical exercise, one that must occur before a truly integrated theoretical framework can be fully realized. -Authors
Emigration and immigration are phenomena as old as history but the accelerating globalisation has made international migration visibly present in practically all nations and regions, bringing with it global and local social transformations as well as novel challenges for national welfare states. While both migration and welfare states have been popular research topics for a long time, the same cannot be said about their intersection. In particular, discussions concerning patterns of migration in connection to patterns of care have gained researchers’ attention only within the last ten years. This article aims to outline the different ways how the two major social issues of migration and care are, particularly under the ongoing worldwide ageing of the population, closely interrelated and argue for an analysis that focuses simultaneously on both.
Migrating people are not just labour force. They have lives and families of their own. Migration touches more and more families all over the globe and all of them are faced by questions concerning care: when migration separates family members geographically from one another, how can care and support be provided and maintained for those who need it, that is, children as well as older and/or disabled family members? It has even been said that care is a pivotal issue in both affecting the decision to migrate and in shaping transnational life. Skilled migrating professionals are often better resourced to arrange care for their family members than less skilled labour migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Many families find themselves in situations where, despite of difficulties, it is necessary to provide ‘transnational care’, that is, care for family members across national borders. Absence of the members of working age generations is especially problematic in societies where the care of children, disabled and older persons depends mainly on the family and public systems for care are not available.
Whilst the literature on international migration expands at a seemingly exponential rate, significant statements about the theorisation of migration are much less common; probably they are hindered by the increasing diversification of types of migration. This paper first reviews the various types of migration, and emphasises the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the study and theorisation of migration. In the main part of the paper I provide a personalised overview of theories of international migration, divided into the following sections: push-pull theory and the neoclassical approach; migration and development transitions; historical-structural and political economy models; the role of systems and networks; the ‘new economics’ of migration; and finally approaches based on the ‘transnational turn’ in migration studies. In the conclusion I point up some future challenges to theorising migration: the need to embed the study of migration within global processes of social, economic and political transformation and within the biographies of migrants’ lifecourses; the importance of also explaining why people do not migrate, and the notion of access to mobility as a differentiating factor of class and inequality; and the relevance of existential and emotional dimensions of migration. The paper is explicitly aimed at a student audience and is intended as a primer to understanding some of the complexities and challenges of theorising migration.
This volume reflects many scholars efforts to interrogate the role of gender in the processes of creation transformation and also fortification of transnational social spaces--spaces that are anchored in but extend beyond the borders of any one nation-state. To date gender has rarely been a principal focus of studies on transnational spaces and processes including transnational migration and this volume strives to nurture a corrective discourse. The authors hold that bringing a gendered optic to transnational studies benefits both the study of transnational processes and the study of gender. The authors in this volume identify a series of transnational spaces and the processes and ideologies operative within them. The authors examine how and why gender relations are negotiated in transnational contexts and also how gender organizes them. To do so the authors identify where men and women girls and boys are located within these spaces and why. The authors explore the question of gendered agency on a variety of operative geographic and analytic scales that begin with the body and extend across continents. While two of the authors main objectives are describing how gender operates in these transnational contexts and why they also seek to evaluate its effects. Are gender relations and ideologies reaffirmed reconfigured or both across transnational spaces? What measure is meaningful and culturally appropriate to use and at what level or levels should the analysis be applied--individuals organizations states and so on? Finally the editors of this volume have culled ideas from each paper as well as those articulated by additional scholars during a series of conferences and workshops leading up to this volume in an effort to synthesize them and develop a conceptual framework for studying gender in transnational contexts. The authors outline this framework entitled "gendered geographies of power" later on in the volumes introduction. The task the authors set out to accomplish has been daunting and the journey the authors have traveled long bumpy and incomplete but the authors hope to hearten others to take up the call and truly incorporate gender into the study of transnationalism in all its dimensions. (authors)
This article explores the social theory and consequent methodology that underpins studies of transnational migration. First, we propose a social field approach to the study of migration and distinguish between ways of being and ways of belonging in that field. Second, we argue that assimilation and enduring transnational ties are neither incompatible nor binary opposites. Third, we highlight social processes and institutions that are routinely obscured by traditional migration scholarship but that become clear when we use a transnational lens. Finally, we locate our approach to migration research within a larger intellectual project, taken up by scholars of transnational processes in many fields, to rethink and reformulate the concept of society such that it is no longer automatically equated with the boundaries of a single nation-state.
Since the 1990s, Asia has emerged as the major contributor of migration flows into New Zealand. Settler migration, tourism, international business and more recently, international education make up the diverse flows of Asian peoples into the country. This paper explores the changing dynamics of Asian transnational families over the last two decades, with a special focus on the experiences of young people within these families. In the early 1990s, bi-local families were commonly known as "astronaut" families, in which one or both parents returned to their countries of origin to work, leaving their children to be educated in New Zealand. Over time the structures of these families have changed, as many young migrants relocated back to their former homeland or re-migrated to a third country, while "astronaut parents" rejoined their spouses either in the origin or destination. More recently, the educational migration of international students from countries in Asia has given rise to another form of transnational family, in which young people enter New Zealand as international students and some subsequently become residents. In this paper, the experiences of these young people are explored within the wider context of family strategies for maximising benefits through spatially extended networks on the one hand, and government initiatives and immigration policy changes that have been taking place in New Zealand since the 1990s on the other.
This article stems from a gender-specific examination of migration decision-making and remittance behavior as a proxy for the creation of gendered transnational spaces when faced with macro-economic challenges in Europe. The research is quantitative and includes the analysis of 2,702 Latvian migrants in receiving countries. Gendered transnational spaces for women manifest themselves in remittance behavior and are influenced more by emotional attachment; in contrast, men are more inclined to send monetary remittances. Prior supervenience stems from emigration decision-making, where economic issues, the search for opportunities, and family and education-related aspects are all relevant to men and women respectively.
In the early 1990s, all-embracing crisis in Georgia and catastrophic decline in living standards have led to radical intensification of the population territorial mobility and significant social-demographic changes. The retrospective assessment of the events that took place over a quarter century is based on accurate information and generalization of many studies. The article critically discusses the migration situation created in Georgia's annexed regions and points out the inaccurate information. Intensified emigration, which still continues, has significantly reduced the number of population and changed Georgia's ethnic structure. The final outcome of permanent emigration is the obvious increase in the share of autochthonic population in the remaining population in Georgia. Ethnic cleansing in the annexed regions and the critical reduction of labor potential has further destroyed the economy, which is evident in the indicators published by the separatist statistical bodies. It seems that the efforts of the international community over the course of the last quarter century have become weak for IDPs to return to their homes and need new initiatives. Retrospective discussion shows that the previous phase of permanent immigration is mostly labor emigration. It represents the positive socio-economic phenomenon, together with remittances, creates a real threat to permanent emigration and threatens to the restoration of normal demographic situation in the country. It is necessary to achieve the formation of so-called “circular migration” regime when mainly legalized managed streams enter the international labor market. Until then, the process of compatriots return to their homeland is to be activated. In the post-soviet period, internal migration took the form of unsystematic nature in the conditions of economic chaos. Due to the destruction of the urban-producing base, the process of urbanization could not be sustained. The population movement from rural to urban areas and the urban population growth had not an economic basis. Effective organized settlements were also discontinued. The demographic donor regions turned out in the depopulation situation themselves. The issue of provision of important new construction projects of Georgia with local labour force has become a problem. Although migration management programs have been created recently, I think they are lacking to be based on deep analytical researches, which is an urgent task for our science.
Immigration from Eastern Europe to the United States has grown significantly in the last few decades. While Asian and Latin American immigrations have been central to the discourse of migration to the US, the rapid growth of Eastern European immigrants has received insufficient attention. Robila fills this gap by presenting key issues related to immigration from Eastern Europe, such as child-rearing beliefs and practices, cultural beliefs, second-generational conflicts, as well as the challenges faced by Eastern European immigrants as they immigrate around the world.
In reviewing the expanding body of work on the linkages between gender, mobility, migration and transnationalism in Gender, Place and Culture over the last decade, this article highlights three significant contributions. First, through critical engagement with transnationalism studies, the journal has produced a sophisticated and variegated strand of work on gender politics and multiple forms of migration and mobility. In this article, we focus primarily on mobility in terms of human movement across national borders, rural–urban migration, as well as the ‘to-ing and fro-ing’ that inform the embodied experiences of being here and there simultaneously as iterated in transnationalism studies [L. Basch, N.G. Schiller, and C.S. Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States. London: Routledge, 1994]. A second area of strength lies in the coalescence of work providing insights into the connections between social reproduction in a globalising world and intimate forms of global mobility and migration. A third highlight relates to the mutually constitutive relationship between the construction of masculinities and masculinist ideologies, on the one hand, and migration, mobility and transnationalism, on the other. The article concludes with a discussion of two more embryonic areas which merit further development in the journal: the first concerns the social and geographical (im)mobilities implied in cross-border reproductive care1 and the global mobility and assemblage of body parts, while the second relates to the distinctive role that feminist geographers interested in migrations and mobilities can play in working collaboratively and transnationally across different worlds.
The paper addresses the distinctiveness of migration flows in the post-Soviet space east of the European Union: the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Georgia. Population mobility within this region is hypothesized to differ from extra-regional population movements due to the common institutional past of these states, all of which were once the USSR republics. It has been claimed that CIS countries form a distinct post-Soviet migration system. Within the framework of the migration systems theory, this paper offers a quantitative analysis of the scale and mechanics of cross-border population mobility in the region. By means of network analysis, it examines the intensity and distinctiveness of intra-regional migration flows relative to those between the region and third countries. We have also used an econometric gravity model to identify the main drivers of migration flows in the region. The resultant findings show that the existence of the post-Soviet migration system is questionable and should not be treated axiomatically. This is because the mobility of people from and to the CIS region is relatively high, and the region is increasingly integrated into the international division of labor through trade and capital mobility. The cross-border mobility of people also reflects this globalization trend.
In this article I analyse how socioeconomic constraints structure the geographical mobility of Latvian migrant women working on the island of Guernsey. A shifting notion of gendered care is revealed through a time-geographic investigation of distant emplacements of workplace and home, and through the neoliberal-informed evaluations by the mothers themselves. Their justifications emphasise the belief that care from a distance should be prioritised over physical proximity to those in need of care. With examples from interviews with mothers who have provided care during their movements between Latvia and Guernsey, I demonstrate how the outcomes of shifting notions of gendered care are placed within a wider context of the gender regime in a transforming Latvia. A specific version of a neoliberal mother, shaped by gender regimes in post-socialist Latvia and a demand for female labour in Western Europe, emerges among women with care responsibilities.
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This paper provides an empirical assessment of the prevalence and determinants of cross-state social exchanges and attachments among Latin American immigrants living in the United States. As we shall show, using data from a recent survey of Latin American migrants living in the United States, migrant cross-state social action comes in a variety of types, with the direction of conditioning factors differing from one type to another. Moreover, social and political incorporation in the United States reduces affective ties and provision of material support, all the while facilitating other forms of cross-state social action. Consequently, while international migrants regularly engage in trans-state social action, the paper shows that neither transnationalism as condition of being, nor transmigrants, as distinctive class of people, is commonly found.
Massey et al. (1994) is a ground-breaking paper in the migration literature that discusses and unifies different migration theories. However, their review and synthesis is incomplete and fairly brief for researchers interested in a deeper understanding of the migration theory literature. This paper therefore aims to review the complete spectrum of economic migration theory from the 1950s until today and to show the differences and complementarities between the different approaches.
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