Abstract
Migration from Nepal to India, a major issue in contemporary Nepal, has a wide range of consequences, including significant implications for the performance of masculinity. Remittances, and the associated pressures to send or bring money home, form a central part of the gendering of such migration, but many men are unable to remit to the levels expected of them. Consequently, this overshadows the cost/benefit analysis of migration for many families and brings into question the extent to which migration remains a viable income diversification strategy. The article, based on a multi-methods approach within an ethnographic framework, examines the potential range of effects that migration trajectories may have on males that migrate and are then finding themselves under pressure to remit and perform locally specific forms of masculinity.
References
Adhikari J., Hobley M. (2011) Everyone is Leaving—Who Will Sow Our Fields? The Effects of Migration from Khotang District to the Gulf and Malaysia. Kathmandu: SDC. Google Scholar | |
Almeida M. (1996) The Hegemonic Male: Masculinity in a Portuguese Town. London: Berghahn. Google Scholar | |
Basnett Y., Henley G., Howell J. (2014) Structural Economic Transformation in Nepal. London: ODI. Google Scholar | |
Breman J. (1996) Footloose Labour: Working in India’s Informal Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar CrossRef | |
Broughton Chad (2008) ‘Migration as Engendered Practice: Mexican Men, Masculinity, and Northward Migration’, Gender & Society, 22(5): 568–89. Google Scholar Link | |
Butler J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge. Google Scholar | |
Campbell H., Bell M.M. (2000) ‘The Question of Rural Masculinities’, Rural Sociology, 64(4): 532–46. Google Scholar | |
Central Bureau of Statistics Nepal (2002) Population Census 2001: National Report. Kathmandu: Government of Nepal. Google Scholar | |
Central Bureau of Statistics Nepal (2005) National Living Standard Survey, 2003–2004. Kathmandu: Government of Nepal. Google Scholar | |
Charsley K. (2005) ‘Unhappy Husbands: Masculinity and Migration in Transnational Pakistani Marriages’, Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, 11(1): 85–105. Google Scholar | |
Chopra R. (2004) ‘Encountering Masculinity: An Ethnographer’s Dilemma’. In Chopra R., Osella C., Osella F. (Eds), South Asian Masculinities: Context of Change, Sites of Continuity (pp.36–59). New Delhi: Women Unlimited/Kali for Women. Google Scholar | |
Chopra R., Osella C., Osella F. (Eds) (2004) South Asian Masculinities: Context of Change, Sites of Continuity. New Delhi: Women Unlimited/Kali for Women. Google Scholar | |
Chowdhry P. (2005) ‘Crisis of Masculinity in Haryana: The Unmarried, the Unemployed and the Aged’, Economic & Political Weekly, 40(49): 5189–98. Google Scholar | |
Connell R.W. (2005) Masculinities, 2nd Edition. Cambridge: Polity Press. Google Scholar | |
Connell R.W. (2009) Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press. Google Scholar | |
Connell R.W., Messerschmidt J.W. (2005) ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept’, Gender & Society, 19(6): 829–59. Google Scholar Link | |
Cornwall A., Lindisfarne N. (1994) Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies. London: Routledge.Google Scholar | |
de Haan Arjan (1999) ‘Livelihoods and Poverty: The Role of Migration—A Critical Review of the Migration Literature’, The Journal of Development Studies, 36(2): 1–47. Google Scholar CrossRef | |
Ghaill M.M. (1994) The Making of Men: Masculinities, Sexualities and Schooling. London: Open University Press. Google Scholar | |
Hausner S.L. (2005) The Movement of Women: Migration, Trafficking, and Prostitution in the Context of Nepal’s Armed Conflict. Kathmandu: Save the Children-US. Google Scholar | |
Hausner S.L. (2007) ‘Border Towns in the Tarai: Sites of Migration’, Occasional Papers in Sociology and Anthropology, 10: 107–23. Google Scholar | |
Hearn J. (1999) ‘A Crisis in Masculinity or New Agendas for Men?’. In Walby S. (Ed.), New Agendas for Women (pp. 148–68). London: Macmillan. Google Scholar CrossRef | |
Herzfeld M. (1985) The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar | |
Inhorn M.C., Wentzell E.A. (2011) ‘Embodying Emergent Masculinities: Men Engaging with Reproductive and Sexual Health Technologies in the Middle East and Mexico’, American Ethnologist, 38(4): 801–15. Google Scholar CrossRef | |
Jeffrey C. (2010) ‘Timepass: Youth, Class, and Time among Unemployed Young Men in India’, American Ethnologist, 37(3): 465–81. Google Scholar CrossRef | |
Jeffrey C., Jeffery P., Jeffery R. (2005) ‘When Schooling Fails: Young Men, Education and Low-caste Politics in Rural North India’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 39(1): 1–38. Google Scholar Link | |
Lokshin M., Glinskaya E. (2009) ‘The Effect of Male Migration on Employment Patterns of Women in Nepal’, The World Bank Economic Review, 23(3): 481–507. Google Scholar CrossRef | |
Lusher D., Robins G. (2009) ‘Hegemonic and Other Masculinities in Local Social Contexts’, Men and Masculinities, 11(4): 387–423. Google Scholar Link | |
Maharjan Amina S., Bauer Knerr B. (2012) ‘Do Rural Women Who Stay Behind Benefit from Male Out-migration? A Case Study in the Hills of Nepal’, Gender, Technology and Development, 16(1): 95–123. Google Scholar Link | |
Maycock M. (2012) Masculinity, Modernity and Bonded Labour: Continuity and Change amongst the Kamaiya of Kailali District, Far-West Nepal. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of East Anglia, School of International Development, Norwich. Google Scholar | |
Maycock M. (2014) ‘“From the Outside Looking In”: Living Besides a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Cantonment in Far-West Nepal’, European Bulletin of Himalayan Research, 44(Spring–Summer): 65–85. Google Scholar | |
Maycock M. (2017) ‘Hegemonic at Home and Subaltern Abroad. Kamaiya Masculinities and Changing Mobility in Nepal’, Gender, Place and Culture, 24: 1–11. (Online First). Google Scholar | |
Maycock M., Sharma J.R., Brethfeld J. (2014) How Can You Be Marda if You Beat Your Wife? Notion of Masculinities and Violence in Eastern Nepal. Kathmandu: Saferworld. Google Scholar | |
McDuie-Ra D. (2011) ‘Leaving the Militarized Frontier: Migration and Tribal Masculinity in Delhi’, Men and Masculinities, 15(2): 112–31. Google Scholar Link | |
Mosse D., Gupta S., Mehta M., Shah V. (2010) ‘Brokered Livelihoods: Debt, Labour Migration and Development in Tribal Western India’, The Journal of Develoment Studies, 38(5): 59–88. Google Scholar CrossRef | |
Osella F., Gardner K. (2004) Migration, Modernity, and Social Transformation in South Asia. New Delhi: SAGE. Google Scholar | |
Osella F., Osella C. (2000) ‘Migration, Money and Masculinity in Kerala’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 6(1): 117–33. Google Scholar CrossRef | |
Osella F., Osella C. (2006) Men and Masculinities in South India. London: Anthem Press. Google Scholar | |
Regmi Kapil D. (2016) ‘The Political Economy of 2015 Nepal Earthquake: Some Critical Reflections’, Asian Geographer, 33(2): 77–96. Google Scholar CrossRef | |
Sapkota C. (2013) ‘Remittances in Nepal: Boon or Bane?’, The Journal of Development Studies, 49(10): 1316–31. Google Scholar CrossRef | |
Seddon D., Adhikari J., Gurung G. (2002) ‘Foreign Labor Migration and the Remittance Economy of Nepal’, Critical Asian Studies, 34(1): 19–40. Google Scholar CrossRef | |
Sharma J.R. (2007a) Movement and Masculinity: The Case of Nepali Male Labour Migrants to the Indian City of Mumbai. Edinburgh: Himalayan Conference Paper. Google Scholar | |
Sharma J.R. (2007b) Mobility, Pathology and Livelihoods: An Ethnography of Forms of Human Mobility in/from Nepal. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. Centre for South Asian Studies. Google Scholar | |
Smith-Estelle A., Gruskin S. (2003) ‘Vulnerability to HIV/STIs among Rural Women from Migrant Communities in Nepal: A Health and Human Rights Framework’, Reproductive Health Matters, 11(22): 142–51. Google Scholar CrossRef, Medline | |
Sunam Ramesh (2014) ‘Marginalised Dalits in International Labour Migration: Reconfiguring Economic and Social Relations in Nepal’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40(12): 2030–48. Google Scholar CrossRef | |
The World Bank (2015) Personal Remittances, Received (% of GDP). URL (consulted 25 July 2015), from http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS Google Scholar | |
Thieme S., Wyss S. (2005) ‘Migration Patterns and Remittance Transfer in Nepal: A Case Study of Sainik Basti in Western Nepal’, International Migration, 43(5): 59–98. Google Scholar CrossRef | |
West Lois A. (2001) ‘Negotiating Masculinities in American Drinking Subcultures’, Journal of Men’s Studies, 9(3): 371–92. Google Scholar |
Matthew Maycock is currently conducting research at the Scottish Prison Service College, focusing on academic processes and staff development. He has previously undertaken postdoctoral research at the Social and Public Health Scientist Unit of Glasgow University in the Settings and Organisations Team, where his research focused on masculinity and health in prisons, with particular attention to the adaption of health promotion interventions delivered in a number of secure institutions in Scotland.
Address: Scottish Prison Service College, Polmont, Falkirk, FK2 0AD, Scotland, UK. [e-mail: matthewmaycock@hotmail. com]