2.5 Towards comparative co-production of research on migration and displacement
References
3. Situating Girls’ Migration in Three Contexts
3.1 Migration trends
Bangladesh
Ethiopia
Sudan
3.2 Locating adolescent girls’ migration
Bangladesh
Ethiopia
Sudan
3.3 Politics and policies
3.4 City as a space
Dhaka: Exploding with migrants
Addis Ababa: The New Flower is growing
Khartoum: A city with many faces
3.5 Contrasting yet similar settings
References
4. Becoming a Migrant, Becoming a Refugee
4.1 “There is no room to dream”: Helen’s decision to leave
4.2 Researching the motives for migration
4.3 Complexities of migration decision-making
Narrating reasons to move through questionnaires
A life-course approach to studying migration motivations and decision-making
4.4 Beyond human rights discourses
4.5 Underneath the ‘poverty’ discourse
4.6 Gender order and age
4.7 Family circumstances: A social relational approach to decision-making
4.8 Social networks: Beyond trafficking
4.9 Escape, vulnerability or agency?
4.10 The journey and the movement as relational
References
5. Life in the Cities
5.1 “Here there are things going on all the time”: Sharmeen’s encounters with the city
5.2 First impressions and experiences
5.3 Place-making projects in the city
Settling in and housing arrangements
Working and earning
Social life
5.4 Expectations and disappointments
5.5 Carving out a space for herself in the city
References
6. Risks, Threats and Setbacks
6.1 “They used to call us cursed”: Tigist’s story
6.2 Risks and threats
Men and women as threats
Gender and sexuality as sources of risk
Access to education and work at risk
The risk of migration: travelling, working, socializing
6.3 Vulnerabilities
Being alone
Being a migrant girl
6.4 Intersecting vulnerabilities: gender, age and migration
References
7. Being Protected and Protecting Yourself
7.1 “You have to learn how to protect yourself”: Tsirite’s quest for protection
7.2 Governmental and organizational support and protection
7.3 Protecting themselves: Informal sources of protections
7.4 Building social capital
7.5 Locating social protection in trans-local networks
References
8. Surviving, Resisting and Moving Forward
8.1 “If my destiny is to live, I will live abroad, if my destiny is to die, I will die abroad”: Lamia’s story
8.2 Resilience: Capacity to deal with adverse circumstances
8.3 Self-hood and self-confidence: Understanding and learning to take care of oneself
8.4 Moving forward or waiting: Aspirations and frustrations
8.5 “Small things” and “small steps”
References
9. Beyond Survival: The Wider Implications of Girls’ Migration
9.1 “Nothing changed”: Arsema’s life in perspective
9.2 Gradually supporting those left behind
9.3 Investing in the future of others
9.4 Migrant girls’ social status and self-esteem
9.5 Small steps toward social transformation
References
10. Transitions and Transformations
10.1 “I have a responsibility now… I have grown up”: transitions into adulthood
10.2 Adolescence, transitions, life course and migration
Independent migration as a transition into adulthood
Capacity to understand and take decisions as a transition
Education, migration and transitions
Marriage and beyond: alternative ways of becoming an adult
10.3 Migration, transitions and being stuck
10.4 Back to gender relations and the life course: how they matter in the context of migration and transitions
10.5 Is migration good for girls and is this really a good question?
References
Katarzyna Grabska is a social anthropologist and Assistant Professor at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University, The Netherlands. Her research focuses on gender, generation, youth, displacement, refuges, return, and social transformations. Her book Gender, Identity and Home: Nuer repatriation to South Sudan (Brewer and Boydell) received Armory Talbot Prize in 2015. She also makes documentary films, which have also received international recognition in film festivals.
Marina de Regt is Assistant Professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She specializes in gender, labour and migration. She is the author of Pioneers or Pawns? Women Health Workers and the Politics of Development in Yemen (Syracuse University Press 2007) and co-edited with Bina Fernandez Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East: The Home and the World (Palgrave Macmillan 2014).
Nicoletta Del Franco is Social Anthropologist and Researcher with more than 20 years experience of work and research in Bangladesh on young people and adolescents, migration and development, and gender. She has also worked with international NGOs.
This book provides a nuanced, complex, comparative analysis of adolescent girls’ migration and mobility in the Global South. The stories and the narratives of migrant girls collected in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Sudan guide the readers in drawing the contours of their lives on the move, a complex, fluid scenario of choices, constraints, setbacks, risks, aspirations and experiences in which internal or international migration plays a pivotal role. The main argument of the book is that migration of adolescent girls intersects with other important transitions in their lives, such as those related to education, work, marriage and childbearing, and that this affects their transition into adulthood in various ways. While migration is sometimes negative, it can also offer girls new and better opportunities with positive implications for their future lives. The book explores also how concepts of adolescence and adulthood for girls are being transformed in the context of migration.