Changes in Home Societies

The experiences of migrants and the families they left behind varied widely depending on the norms of their home cultures. Migrant laborers were more often male than female, so in some places their migration—whether internal or external—brought a shift in demographics and gender roles in the societies they left. In some societies, males waited to emigrate until a male relative was available to live with and help support the women and children who did not emigrate with the males. In these places, women’s roles were much the same as before their husbands left. However, in other places, women gained some autonomy and authority as they took on responsibilities once filled by their husbands and took a meaningful place in society outside the bounds of family responsibilities. If they later followed their husbands to another country, they often participated more fully, though far from equally, in family decision-making than women who had not been on their own. If their husbands returned, women who had taken up their husbands’ responsibilities sometimes continued to play a role outside of domestic life, while those who had been put in the care of male relatives remained in traditional gender roles.

Most male migrants sent remittances, funds from their foreign earnings, back home. If the remittance were large enough, women often reduced their hours working outside the home and spent more time with family responsibilities while also exercising considerable decision-making power over how the money was spent. In some places, the receipt of remittances correlates to girls’ longer school attendance; in other places boys seem to have been the greater beneficiaries of remittance-supported education.