In the wake of the Gulf War: assessing family spending of compensation money in Sri Lanka

Between 1997 and 2000, the United Nations Compensation Commission delivered US$ 4000 apiece to roughly 87,000 Sri Lankan citizens who suffered displacement and loss of employment due to Iraq’s military actions in Kuwait during the Gulf War. Using qualitative ethnographic data, this essay examines eleven case studies of Kuwait returnees in the village of Naeaegama, in southern Sri Lanka. Like the majority of Sri Lankans caught in the Gulf War, these returnees are women from poor rural families who worked as domestic servants in Kuwait. The essay compares how the eleven households have spent compensation money and migrants’ remittances. Spending choices reveal a clear hierarchy of priorities: buying land and building a house, providing a dowry for unmarried women, and starting a viable business. These goals reflect family-based considerations, and use of the money illustrates the family’s role as an economic as well as a social unit. The essay also explores the role of family in facilitating migration and depressing women’s wages on the global market. Data reveal the local values, motives, and cultural contexts that shape individual and family decision-making on matters of finance and migration. Family choices are products of and adaptations to globalized contexts

Sri Lankan female domestic workers overseas - The impact on their children

Sri Lanka, along with the Philippines and Indonesia, is a major source of migrant domestic workers. There has been little investigation into the impacts of the absence of women on their families and communities left behind. Contract migrant labor in Asia usually means leaving the family behind for two years or even longer. This paper firstly demonstrates how Sri Lankan women are increasingly becoming part of a global care chain. It draws on a survey and qualitative work among families and communities left behind by these migrant workers to explore the impacts on families and children. It examines the ways in which mothers seek to overcome the consequences of their absence on their families and children. A number of policy recommendations are made to ameliorate the negative impacts of the absence of Sri Lankan migrant domestic workers.Graeme Hugo and Swarna Ukwattahttp://www.smc.org.ph/apmj/apmj_details.php?id=104

Migrant Remittances, Population Ageing and Intergenerational Family Obligations in Sri Lanka

As Sri Lanka’s population ages, its migrant women face a difficult choice: should they work abroad to remit money to provision their families, or should they stay at home to look after elderly kin? Although numerous studies have explored migration’s effects on children, fewer works focus on issues of elder care. This essay presents contextualizing information on transnational migration from Sri Lanka and the rapid ageing that is transforming the country’s population structure from a pyramid with many youth and few elders into a column. Using qualitative ethnographic data gathered from a labour-sending village in southern Sri Lanka, this anthropological essay considers social priorities around remittances and intergenerational family obligations for care work. Villagers make decisions about allocating able-bodied family members’ labour based on key concepts of filial duty, combined with an analysis of a family’s financial and social resources and the vulnerabilities of its members based on their gender and age. Critiquing assumptions about elders’ lack of economic activity, the essay notes their key role in facilitating labour migration. The data reveal the importance of gender roles, educational achievements, and generational shifts in evaluating emerging practices. In the future, intergenerational family obligations to mutual care will persist despite population aging. But as extended families shrink and care work grows more demanding, choices between elder care and migrant remittances will become more challenging