Intersectional power dynamics and extended households: Elderly and widowed women's international migration from Armenia

Lloyd F. A.

GENDER PLACE AND CULTURE, cilt.26, sa.3, ss.362-383, 2019 (SSCI) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 26 Sayı: 3
  • Basım Tarihi: 2019
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1080/0966369x.2018.1518315
  • Dergi Adı: GENDER PLACE AND CULTURE
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.362-383
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: Agency, Armenia, extended household, gender, intersectionality, migration decisions, GENDER, MOBILITY, MIGRANT, REMITTANCES, GENERATION, MOTHERS, LABOR, FLUX, AGE
  • Abdullah Gül Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Drawing upon interviews and fieldwork conducted in Armenia and Turkey with 25 Armenian migrant women and their non-accompanying family members, the present article examines how gendered norms intersecting with age, marital and motherhood statuses have structured the migration decision-making process as it occurs at the household level. These migrant women were mostly elderly, widowed and from extended households, where male income support to the family was either insufficient or wholly absent for a variety of reasons. Building on the Household Survival Strategies (HSS) approach, this article examines the dynamism and complex kinship norms in extended-households and how these have led some women to assume the role of migrant labourers in a patriarchal context that would ordinarily deny them mobility. While empirically this study sheds light on women's migration from an understudied geography, it also deepens our understanding of the interplay between patriarchy, intersectionality and women's agency outside of the traditional nuclear household.