Transnational Migration, Gender and Sexuality in the Global South

Abstract

Transnational migration reconfigures how we understand gender and migration in the broader field of migration studies. Globally, South to South migration is on the increase, with a decline in South to North migration as the rise in right-wing nationalism, racism and anti-immigration posturing grips nations in the Global North. While the Global North welcomes the migration of specific groups of skilled professionals where prospects offered by the labour markets exist, in contrast, less skilled workers and unskilled workers, actively supported by their governments, migrate to the Global South in the hope of securing employment prospects and education rather than face “underemployment” at home. The increasing mobility of women in South to South migration raises questions concerning how we understand temporal dimensions of mobility, and how migrants reconstitute and renegotiate their gendered identities and roles in their everyday lives.