Talk about 'Migration and Aspirations for Youth' at the University of East Anglia on the 8 November

On Wednesday the 8 November our colleague Dorte Thorsen will be speaking at a seminar at the University of East Anglia in the School of International Development.

In her talk on Migrating out of Poverty? Linkages between Migration and Aspirations for Youth, Dorte will explore the question of whether migration makes migrants and their families better off.

This assessment often focuses on a relatively synchronic assessment of migrants’ living conditions or the remittances they send home. Drawing on research carried out in Bangladesh, Ghana, Indonesia and Rwanda by partners in the Migrating out of Poverty Research Consortium, she will explore the ways in which migration and remittances shape both migrants and non-migrants’ social positions in ways that will have long-term implications on gender and generational relations within families. She will look at how relationships between adults shift over time in order to tease out the ways in which subtle changes may slowly empower women to have more say in decisions concerning family matters. By examining the impact of remittances on the schooling of the next generation, she will explore how women make sense of and influence decisions about their children’s education and how young people seek to assert their own aspirations for the future as sons and daughters of migrants and as migrants. Dorte argues that the size and temporality of migrant earnings create barriers for upward social mobility for the next generation in highly gendered ways.

If you are interested in attending, please contact Paul Clist (paul.clist@uea.ac.uk).