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Abstract

Based on an ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the lives of women domestic workers who have migrated from Kerala to the United Arab Emirates, this article attempts to examine the broad institutional framework within which transnational migration is negotiated. The article focusses on the negotiating practices women adopt while moving between different legal systems within the institutional framework that defines their nature of migration. This article analyses the life-story narratives of women domestic workers and tries to understand the construction of their particular gendered subject positions within the transnational activities. The purpose is to move beyond the binary logic of legal and illegal migration to understand the grey areas of transnational migration. Is it possible to move beyond the state when state and non-state activities are not clearly demarcated and not mutually exclusive? How do we study the non-state activities which contribute to the construction of particular gendered subjects along with the state’s own production of gendered subjects and citizenship?

Keywords

Transnational migration labour mobility emigration women domestic workers

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The Blurred Boundaries of Migration: Transnational Flows of Women Domestic Workers from Kerala to UAE

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