Migration, Gender and Care Economy

This volume closely analyses women’s role and experiences in migration (internal and international) and its interlinkages with the care economy in their functions as nurses and paid domestic workers as well as unpaid carers. Bringing together case studies from across India and other parts of the world, the essays in the volume capture the characteristics and specificities of female migration in different settings ― be it for economic or associational reasons, or as left behind members. The book also looks at gender-specific discriminations and vulnerabilities along with the empowering aspects of migration.

This volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of migration, gender studies, sociology, and social anthropology, as well as development studies, demography, and economics.

S. Irudaya Rajan is Professor at the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. He has coordinated seven large-scale migration surveys in Kerala since 1998 (with Professor K. C. Zachariah), as well as the Goa Migration Survey 2008, and the Tamil Nadu Migration Survey 2015. He was also instrumental in conducting the Punjab Migration Survey 2009 and Gujarat Migration Survey 2011. He has published extensively in national and international journals on social, economic, demographic, and political implications on international migration, and he also acted as Chair of the Research Unit on International Migration (RUIM) during 2006–16. He is the editor of the annual series India Migration Report and editor-in-chief of Migration and Development.

N. Neetha is Senior Fellow (Professor) and Deputy Director at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), New Delhi, India. Prior to this, she was Associate Fellow and Coordinator at the Centre for Gender and Labour, V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, Noida, India. Her broad research interests include labour, employment, and migration issues of women. Her current research work focuses on the changing dimensions of women’s employment, gender statistics, and the social, political, and economic dimensions of care work (paid as well as unpaid). She has been engaged in a large-scale study on female migration and is one of the lead authors of the 'Pluralization of Family' chapter in the International Panel on Social Progress Report. She has published in several journals and books.