By Dorte Thorsen
Over
the past months I have enjoyed working with the authors of the new Migrating outof Poverty Working Paper which addresses how
international migration and the availability of remittances shape left-behind rural
youths’ ideas of what a good future involves and how it can be pursued. The
paper takes a step further than previous analyses and explores the cultural, social and economic dimensions underpinning
youth aspirations and pathways. It demonstrates that gender and
generational inequality impact on youths' capacity to aspire and that all
youths do not benefit equally from the opportunity spaces created by
remittances.
Remittance-education-gender linkages
Youths’
opportunity for pursuing education is influenced by a number of factors. In
Tangail, education is seen as a means to upward social mobility and youths -
irrespective of their age, gender and economic circumstances - aspire to complete
higher secondary school. They are much less interested in higher education.
This is often because it is more difficult to access and because youths are
under pressure 'to be established'.
The
economic standing of households and the perception that education equates
social mobility affects youths’ ability and interest in pursuing education. The
investment of remittances enables youths from migrant household to attend
school, at least until they have completed higher secondary school and
sometimes also in higher education. But the opportunity space for education is
also determined by norms outlining men’s and women’s social positions and
responsibilities in adult life. Male youth are to become breadwinners and, eventually,
heads of households, while young women are to become care-givers and
home-makers.
Male youths
The
gender norms related to male youths can enable access to education if school
certificates and diplomas have been a pathway to secure employment for others. However,
gender norms can also be constraining if parents are pushing for their son to
become established as a breadwinner. The opportunity space for education
intersects with concerns about the temporality of migration in a complicated
manner. The preference for education can be underpinned by a desire for the longer-term
security of regular payment, pension schemes etc. associated with government
employment. The choice to leave education can also be rooted in the stopping of
remittances or the need for a son to replace an ailing migrant father or mother
by travelling for work.
Perceptions of social and economic status affect male
youths’ educational and occupational choices. Government jobs are popular
because they are perceived to offer long-term security, whereas migration is often
seen as a temporary income. Again, opportunity spaces grow and shrink as a
result of migration and remittance sending. On the one hand, remittances may
allow youths to pursue the pathway(s) they desire the most by allocating money
to education and the bribes necessary to land a government job. Remittances
also allow youths to migrate. On the other hand, the experiences passed on by
migrants about the hardships of migration affect youths’ perception of
desirable destinations and migrant occupations and may sway their preference
towards government jobs.
Female youths
Female youths’ future role as care-givers is intimately
connected to marriage. In a setting where daughters are married off when they are
15-19 years old, female youths rarely have space to continue education beyond
higher secondary school. An interesting point emerging from the research is
that educated women are considered better mothers. So even if the role as
care-giver limits the length of time spent in education, it consolidates the
opportunity space for female youths to complete higher secondary school.
Opportunity spaces for youth to make choices about their
occupation are closely linked with cultural and social constructions of what
type of work is suitable for female and male youths. The emphasis on women’s
care-giving responsibilities in the home and the idea that they are unable to
make decisions and need protection shrinks the opportunity spaces for rural female
youths. They rarely pursue jobs within Bangladesh and they do not become
migrants. Only divorced and widowed women and women whose husband does not meet
his economic responsibilities go abroad to work. The desired pathway for female
youths is marriage, and only marriage failure opens other opportunity spaces.
That said remittances do shape female youths’ marriages. They allow for a wider
choice of marriage partners if remittances are allocated to pay the dowry and
they may allow for a marriage to break down because the family can support a
divorced daughter and her children. Yet, the reliance on remittances to pay the
dowry may also push for an earlier marriage if remittances are soon to dry up.
Through its intriguing combination
of
Appadurai's
concept of the capacity to aspire and feminist approaches to understanding intra-household
behaviour, the paper exposes ways in which the cultural and socio-economic
dimensions of migration can be enabling and constraining at the same time, in
different ways for female and male youths. It is this analysis that has brought
out fresh insights into the conundrums of how remittances affect female and
male youths’ life paths.
