Doctoral Dissertation Research: Home Support in Rural-Urban Migration

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While many studies examine people that move to cities from rural communities and how they support family members left behind, this study looks at household life in a community left behind by family members who have moved to cities to become urban workers. As in many such communities, this community has become increasingly integrated into the market economy because of tourism, cash crop production, and improved basic infrastructure. This study examines how economic changes have influenced economic ties between rural family members and urban workers. It also investigates effects on the families left behind, including changes in labor demands and gender relations. Results will be broadly applicable to locations experiencing large scale rural-to-urban migration under similar conditions of economic change. They will be useful to, among others, external analysts trying to make sense of places undergoing economic transformation. This study uses ethnographic fieldwork, oral-history and key-informant interviews, and archival research to address the following research questions: 1) How do the economic changes influence resource transfers between rural family members and urban workers? 2) What are the labor demands on family members who remain in the village, especially on women who engage in subsistence agriculture, commercialized cash crop production, birthing and raising children, and other types of care work? 3) How are gender relations in the households affected? Findings will illuminate changes to community that can result from economic change and will be useful to policy makers trying to influence change or mitigate its consequences, forecasters seeking to anticipate consequences of economic change, and communities trying to make sense of changes that are occurring.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.