Beyond Money : Does Migration Experience Transfer Gender Norms? Empirical Evidence from Kerala, India
This paper examines the impact of return migration from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf on the transfer of gender norms to the Indian state of Kerala. Migration to countries in the Middle East has led to significant remittance flows and economic prosperi...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Washington, DC: World Bank
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/174061647271379501/Beyond-Money-Does-Migration-Experience-Transfer-Gender-Norms-Empirical-Evidence-from-Kerala-India http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37154 |
| Summary: | This paper examines the impact of
return migration from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf on the
transfer of gender norms to the Indian state of Kerala.
Migration to countries in the Middle East has led to
significant remittance flows and economic prosperity,
although the effects on social norms and attitudes remain
largely unexplored. The paper finds that returning migrants
from Saudi Arabia tend to exhibit conservative values
regarding gender-based violence and extreme attitudes
pertaining to the perpetration of physical violence against
women. Compared with those who have no migration experience,
the attitudes of returning migrants from Saudi Arabia toward
gender-based violence were more conservative by three
standard deviations, while the attitudes of those returning
from the Gulf were less conservative by 0.5 standard
deviation. Similarly, compared with those with no migration
experience, returning migrants from Saudi Arabia were more
conservative by 2.6 standard deviations regarding extreme
attitudes related to gender norms, such as sexual assault,
while those returning from the Gulf were less conservative
by 0.7 standard deviation. These results show that migration
experience can have a substantial impact on the gender
attitudes of returning migrants, with potential implications
for migration and gender policies in Kerala and for
countries that send a large share of temporary migrants
overseas for work. |
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