Migration as a Disaster Recovery Strategy in Post-Earthquake Nepal: Challenges and Vulnerabilities for Young Women Migrants

• In Event: 549 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 14. Migration Motivations

Abstract

Historically, foreign labor migration has been a common livelihood strategy for young Nepali men. Increasingly, young women have migrated abroad for work as well in spite of a number of gender discriminatory migration laws that limit women’s access to legal labor migration channels. To what extent out-migration will be employed by women as a livelihood strategy in the post-earthquake context remains to be seen. This paper focuses specifically on young women’s migration decision-making in the immediate aftermath of the April/May earthquakes. Using survey data collected from two districts in July 2015 – one severely earthquake-affected district and one less-affected district – the research is guided by a vulnerabilities approach to disasters. This paper considers how the April/May earthquakes have affected young women migrants’ decision-making processes around future migration as a livelihood strategy and how the current gender discriminatory migration laws may exacerbate women labor migrants’ existing vulnerability.

Author

• Babs Grossman-Thompson, California State University Long Beach