Sri Lankan female domestic workers overseas mothe

Authors: Swarna Ukwatta

Publish Date: 2010/07/14

Volume: 27, Issue: 2, Pages: 107-131

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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 outmigration 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 recommendationsThe 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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