Yorke, Louise;
Gilligan, Robbie;
Alemu, Eyerusalem;
(2023)
Moving towards empowerment? Rural female migrants negotiating domestic work and secondary education in urban Ethiopia.
Gender, Place & Culture
10.1080/0966369x.2022.2164560.
(In press).
Preview |
Text
Yorke_Moving towards empowerment Rural female migrants negotiating domestic work and secondary education in urban Ethiopia.pdf Download (1MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Increasing numbers of rural girls and young women in Ethiopia are migrating to urban towns and cities and taking up employment as domestic workers, some of whom continue their education by attending evening classes. For urban households, rural migrants help to fill the domestic work gaps created by the entry of urban women into employment. For rural young women, migrating as a domestic worker is an important strategy for achieving social mobility and empowerment. However, domestic workers are vulnerable and largely hidden in the city and we know little about their lived experiences. In this paper, we start to address this gap, drawing on interviews with eight rural female migrants who are working as domestic workers in the city and attending evening classes in urban secondary schools. Informed by a critical framing of empowerment, we explore the extent to which intersecting inequalities in rural areas disempower these young women, and how migration and education become important strategies for improving their lives. We show how the support of social network members is crucial in enabling participants’ migration, yet how this also leads to power asymmetries and exploitation. We reflect on how the ability of rural young women to achieve better futures is limited due to their status as poor, rural, female migrants, yet how many wait in the city in the hope of a better future. Our analysis demonstrates the importance of critical approaches to female empowerment that includes a focus on structural inequalities and power imbalances.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Moving towards empowerment? Rural female migrants negotiating domestic work and secondary education in urban Ethiopia |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/0966369x.2022.2164560 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2022.2164560 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
| Keywords: | Domestic workers; rural-urban migration; secondary education; empowerment; intersectionality |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Learning and Leadership |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10163960 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
