engleski

Neither here nor there: experiences of discontinuity in women’s circular labour migrations

Paid care work in the private household, seasonal work in agriculture and in the hospitality and tourism industry are typical sectors for women’s employment through international circular labour migration. These three sectors are examples of non-standard employment, but they greatly differ in the organization of work, most notably exhibited through differences in the duration and rhythm of migrants’ circularity. Additionally, recent research on social reproduction shows that the organization of unpaid work helps shape the organization of employment and the labour supply, not only vice versa as has been posited thus far (Rubery and Hebson, 2018). Therefore, the different organization of non-standard employment in these sectors create a distinct lens to examine the ways in which the processes of social reproduction and the labour process are interlinked. The aim of this paper is to show how such linking occurs in the migrant women’s work and life experiences while especially bearing in mind the possibilities of maintaining transnational ties in the context of contemporary migration. For this purpose, twenty-five narrative interviews were conducted with women of various ages and family structures from the Croatian region of Slavonija who circulate for low-skilled employment in care work, agriculture and hospitality and tourist industry to Austria, Italy, and Germany. The interview analysis reveals that circular labour migrations create discontinuities in women’s work-life experiences regardless of their age and family structure, which are manifested through periods of concentrated paid and unpaid labour. During their employment abroad in all three sectors, work becomes an all-pervading and intensified element in their experience, with limited possibilities for the migrant’s immersion in the receiving society. Their presence abroad is manifested only through their work, and not any other social activity. Transnational contact with the migrants’ domicile region has become easy and affordable due to mobile telephone technology, but also draws them into performing some aspects of invisible housework while abroad. Notwithstanding differing lengths of employment and stays in the domicile region in these three sectors, the migrant women’s immediate return to their domicile region, as well as their departure abroad, is characterized by the period of intense housework, childcare or elderly care. Due to their migration, such work becomes imperative for them in order to restore the household, and family and kin relations to regular life or prepare them for another cycle of their absence. This way, women as circular labour migrants are never here, at home, nor there, at work, since they are either immersed in non-standard employment, or are involved in personally carrying out or remotely managing theirs home life. Such concentration of labours creates discontinuities in circular migrant women’s work-life experiences. Thus, the findings of this paper aid the understanding of how paid and unpaid labour is organized and experienced in the lives of circular migrant women.

care work, seasonal work, circular labour migration, narrative research

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