Aspiring for Change: Ethiopian Women’s Labor Migration to the Middle East
Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title>
<jats:p>This paper examines why young women in rural Ethiopia decide to migrate as
domestic workers to the Middle East. Based on survey data and 84 in-depth interviews,
it explores the forces shaping young women’s aspirations and capabilities to migrate,
challenging the dominant narratives of trafficking, deception, and victimization that
surround this migration corridor. It finds, first, that migration to the Middle East
is one migration trajectory embedded within a broader urban transition occurring across
Ethiopia. For rural women, labor emigration is often a long-distance, short-term strategy
to access the capital needed to realize a long-term, short-distance move to town.
Second, the aspiration to migrate emerges at a particular moment in the life course,
as young women transition from adolescence into adulthood and when local opportunities
do not provide promising pathways to achieve their life aspirations. This paper shows
why labor emigration can simultaneously be a reasonable, capabilities-enhancing choice
for young women and a response to a critical lack of capabilities in other domains
of their lives. Finally, through applying an aspiration–capability framework, this
paper advances a theoretical approach that avoids the common binary between “forced”
and “voluntary” migration and thus contributes to advancing research on other forms
of precarious migration occurring under highly constrained conditions.</jats:p>
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/23704Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1093/sf/soab051Publication Info
Schewel, K (n.d.). Aspiring for Change: Ethiopian Women’s Labor Migration to the Middle East. Social Forces. 10.1093/sf/soab051. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/23704.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Kerilyn Daniel Schewel
Lecturing Fellow in the Sanford School of Public Policy

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