Why Ethiopian women migrate to the Middle East

• In Event: 4349 - Migratory Aspirations: How Aspiring Migrants and Refugees Decide to Leave

Abstract

This paper examines how young women in one rural region of Ethiopia make the decision to migrate as domestic workers to the Middle East. It examines the forces shaping their aspirations and capabilities to migrate, providing empirically grounded insights that challenge an overarching narrative of trafficking, deception and victimization. I further develop the aspiration-capability framework and show why this conceptual framework is well suited to analyze more precarious forms of migration like the migration of adolescents and young women to the Middle East. Using survey data and in-depth interviews, I show why migration aspirations arise at a particular moment in the life-course, as adolescents transition into adulthood, and how migration aspirations relate to a broader set of capabilities young women have (or lack) to realize the lives they value (Sen 1999). I show the ways in which this migration can be reasonable and capabilities-enhancing for young women, while at the same time, a response to a critical lack of capabilities in other domains of their lives.

Authors

• Kerilyn Schewel, University of Amsterdam

• Tilah Alemayehu, Sher Ethiopia PLC