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Sri Lankan female domestic workers overseas: mothering their children from a distance

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Abstract

Sri Lanka is one of three countries in Asia, along with the Philippines and Indonesia, where women migrants constitute between 60 and 70% of legal migrants; these female migrants are mainly employed overseas as domestic workers. Since the 1980s, the out-migration of Sri Lankan females for employment abroad surpassed that of males and the major destination has been countries in the Middle East. The majority of these women are married and have at least one child; they leave their children in the care of other family members in their absence. While they usually make arrangements to accommodate the spatial separation forced by migration, their migration poses many challenges to themselves and their children left behind. Recently, the issue of children left behind by migrant mothers has attracted growing attention from policy makers in Sri Lanka. Since the social and emotional ramifications of mothering from a distance and how these mothers cope with them are inadequately investigated, this article uses data collected from a 2008 survey of 400 Sri Lankan female migrant families to examine the effects of mothers’ migration on how they are mothering their children from a distance, and how they perceive the effects on their children. The article concludes with some suggested policy recommendations.

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Notes

  1. Families whose core members are located in at least two nation-states are considered as transnational families. Members in these families belong to two households, two cultures and two economies simultaneously. These take many forms and are marked by changing heads of household—including grandmothers and youth who take charge of children while the parents are away (UNFPA 2006, p. 15).

  2. Contract migrants, otherwise termed ‘guest workers’, are defined as those who cross international boundaries in securing employment with no initial intention of permanently settling in the country of employment (Bohning 1984, p. 50).

  3. Returning at some time within the last decade.

  4. Behavioural changes of children in the absence of mothers were assessed through subjective responses to specific question asked, and did not involve rating scales.

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Acknowledgments

The author is a PhD student at the University of Adelaide, Australia. This article is based on her doctoral research which was conducted under the supervision of Prof. Graeme Hugo and Dr. Dianne Rudd. The fieldwork for this study was partly funded by an Australian Population Association Caldwell Grant.

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  1. Department of Demography, University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka

    Swarna Ukwatta

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Correspondence to Swarna Ukwatta.

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Ukwatta, S. Sri Lankan female domestic workers overseas: mothering their children from a distance. J Pop Research 27, 107–131 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12546-010-9035-0

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