Women's Lived Experiences: Global Crisis of Migration

Abstract

Poverty, lack of employment opportunities and conflict displace millions of people across the globe. In the past three decades, the number of people migrating internationally for employment has more than doubled worldwide. The vast majority of people leave their families through lack of employment opportunities in their home country, and such migration impacts on the economic and cultural life of home and host societies. Nepal, a developing country in South Asia, have become heavily dependent on income derived from labour migration to the Gulf States, with more than one million able-bodied men going there in the past twenty years. This migration is a continuing crisis for the wives left behind, who struggle in poverty throughout their working lives with the little hope of a better future. The impact of this particular type of migration is explored in a recent study into the lived experiences of the left-behind wives. This research was conducted using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The quantitative results, using health related Millennium Development Goals show that the left-behind women are significantly worse off than other Nepalese. The qualitative results show that migration is: i) a desperate act rather than an active lifestyle choice; ii) young wives struggle for years to survive while their husbands are away; and iii) after about five years the left-behind wives experience some marginal positive benefits. There are opportunities to learn from these results and to improve the quality of lives of these women. The findings offer theoretical insights to expand the interrelationships between migration and patriarchy to minimise the suffering of the left-behind wives; and suggest practical flexible development strategies to address the implications of the global crisis of male migration on the wives left behind.