International Migration: Calling for a Holistic Approach
Zhang Yali (China)
Ph. D in Political Science, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York / ALFP 2011 Fellow
Human migration, a not new phenomenon, is steadily picking up speed under the deepening globalization. The UN estimates that there were 272 million international migrants in 2019, an increase of 51 million since 2010. In addition to Europe and North America, Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa and Western Asia saw rapid growth of migrant populations. Furthermore, forced migration has grown much faster in recent years than voluntary migration, due to war, conflict and human rights abuse and violations, as we have seen in various parts of the world today, from Syria, South Sudan, and Myanmar to Venezuela.1
Hosting a large number of immigrants challenges a country’s capacity for the provision of a whole range of social services, from law and order to jobs, education and health services. In addition, clashes of culture, values and lifestyle as well as religion create tensions between and among different social groups, causing and catalyzing the differences in societies. The current pattern of uneven distribution of international migrants, the large increase of forced migration and the diversity of immigrants combine to pose new challenges, more than ever, to individuals, societies, policy makers and world leaders.
Closing borders or building a wall will not stop the trend of migration. To address this pressing issue, a holistic approach is needed, requiring coordinated action at the structural, national and societal level.
First and foremost, peace is the only way to stem the rise of forced displacement and to enable orderly migration. From the civil war in Syria to communal conflict in Myanmar, war and conflict devastate a country, destroy people’s lives and generate a large exodus of migrants in search for a future. In a globalized world, no country can escape the impact of war and conflict, which is vividly illustrated by the migration crisis in Europe. Therefore, at the structural level, prevention of conflict, engagement in dialogue for the resolution of conflict, respecting international order, and promotion of international rules and regulations all contribute to reduce war and conflict, hence minimizing the structural cause for irregular migration.
On the other hand, peace and economic development in origin countries could facilitate the voluntary return of migrants. I observed, in the American town where I live, that Japanese mostly emigrated to the United States in the 1980s, followed by Koreans in the 1990s and Chinese in recent years. This pattern correlates with the economic development curve of these countries. The better the origin country’s economy is, the more likely their nationals will choose to return after temporary migration, which is the case of Chinese students in the United States today. Many more Chinese students choose to return to China after their graduation now than twenty years ago.
Realizing the need for collective action, the world’s countries negotiated and adopted the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), an inter-governmental agreement under the auspices of the UN, in 2018. GCM sets up 23 objectives, including ensuring migrant legal identity, decent work and access to basic services as well as their full inclusion and integration in society.2 While 164 countries signed the agreement at its adoption, demonstrating a strong political will, the fact that the major immigrant recipient countries were reluctant to sign the agreement, under the pressure of their domestic constituencies, exposes the deep-seated tension and division within these societies over immigration.3
As the tensions between immigrant groups and host societies in Europe demonstrate, successful immigration policy involves not only opening doors but also efforts to have immigrants truly integrated in a society. Prejudice, discrimination and stigmatization will only prevent immigrants from integrating and identifying with the culture and society where they live. In some extreme cases, they could turn to extremism and terrorism.5 Thus, at the national level, it is important that legislations and policies be put in place to ensure immigrants equal entitlements as any other citizens. To promote non-discrimination, President John F. Kennedy signed the first affirmative action provision in 1961 to ensure minorities be employed and treated equally. Some Asian countries also introduced affirmative action to help disadvantaged social groups, such as the education policy in favor of minorities in China and the standardization policy assisting geographically disadvantaged students to gain higher education in Sri Lanka.6
At the societal level, NGOs could play an important role in helping and facilitating the inclusion and integration of immigrants. I had first-hand experience with a NGO called Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE) in the United States. As its name suggests, AAFE aims at advancing equality in communities. It provides a variety of services, ranging from ensuring the right to decent housing, helping its clients to get social support programs, and providing small loans to providing English as a Second Language courses as well as civil education.7 It organizes activities to celebrate and promote Asian culture, and to promote political participation of Asian immigrants to have their voice and concerns heard and heeded by the government. Through the organization, Asian Americans not only obtain the resources they need for adjusting and adapting to life in a new country, but also find a community they could belong to and rely on.
With accelerated globalization, multicultural coexistence is a reality facing world communities. An influx of immigrants brings challenges as well as opportunities, considering that 74% of migrants are at working age.8 This is particularly true to an aging society where labor resources are much needed. Debate over the “melting pot” approach to immigration, where a common identity is forged through assimilation, or the “salad bowl” approach, which advocates for the retention of separate cultures under the law and the bond of markets, goes on.9 Regardless, both approaches would agree that racism and xenophobia could only breed hostility and distrust, tearing the social fabric and breeding extremism. As UNESCO rightly points out, “cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature.”10
The contents of this article reflect solely the opinions of the author.
The sixth issue of the ALFP e-magazine is now available
The sixth issue of the ALFP e-magazine is now available
We are pleased to announce that the sixth issue of the ALFP e-magazine is now available on our website—with the theme “Migration and Multicultural Coexistence.”
In this issue, four intellectuals/writers from Asia discuss the problems that have arisen from the rapid increase in international migration of the past few decades, while reexamining the experience of multicultural coexistence in ancient times and the present from various perspectives. We hope this edition will help us all think about how we can “make migration and multicultural coexistence a socially enriching force for good, rather than a disruptive force for political conflict.”
Contents of the fifth issue:
Overview by Diana Wong (Dean, Graduate School, New Era University College, Kajang)
Articles contributed by:
● Diana Wong (Dean, Graduate School, New Era University College, Kajang, Malaysia)
● Fazal Khaliq (Reporter, Dawn Media Group / Cultural Activist / Pakistan)
● Nelia G. Balgoa (Associate Professor, Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology / Philippines)
● Zhang Yali (Ph. D in Political Science, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York / China)
When a Hyphen Matters: Identity and the Children of International Marriages
When a Hyphen Matters:
Identity and the Children of International Marriages
Nelia G. Balgoa 1 (Philippines)
Associate Professor, Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology / ALFP 2013 Fellow
I first met 16-year old Takeshi when I interviewed his mother and grandmother, both Filipinas and both former entertainers, in a small café in Osaka sometime in 2010 for data gathering for my Ph.D. dissertation. Takeshi is a quiet boy who shyly admitted that he loves “adobo” (the quintessential “Filipino” food stewed in vinegar, garlic and soy sauce) and goes to a nearby Catholic church every Sunday to hear mass. Linda, his mother, proudly said that Takeshi might change his citizenship from Japanese to Filipino when he turns 20.
Kenji, whose Filipina mother, Chona, I met in a Bible camp organized by a Catholic Church in Nagoya, did not even bother to mask his negative feelings of having a Filipino lineage. His classmates bullied him when they learned that his mother is a Filipina and he does not like going to the Philippines because his relatives would often ask for gadgets and presents from Japan. However, he likes the idea of going to church every Sunday which he associates with his Filipina mother.
Takeshi and Kenji are children of marriages between Filipino women and Japanese men, and such unions, where one of the spouses comes from a different national or ethnic group, are called international marriages. But Takeshi and Kenji’s parents’ marriages are trajectories of international migration, where specifically these Filipina women crossed national borders to seek employment in the entertainment industry in Japan and eventually got married to Japanese men. Thus, within the context of international migration, international marriages go beyond socio-demographic differences of couples and legal aspects of the union and also put into perspective what sociologists Asuncion Freznosa-Flot and Gwenola Ricordeau term as “the dynamic interaction between nation states with diverse migration, citizenship, and family policies shaping the family formation process of couples, their social lives, sense making, and strategies.”2
Family formation and processes manifest the most complex and nuanced dynamics of international marriages. The inevitability of conflicts brought by differences in culture necessitates negotiating, asserting, bargaining or ceding of spaces where cultural encounters happen and where identity is formed or reconstructed. Raising children is one of these most potent spaces and Takeshi and Kenji show the complexities of straddling simultaneously two different cultures, resulting in ambivalence and fluidity of their identity/ies. Takeshi and Kenji’s circumstances are captured in various academic parlance: “children of mixed heritage,” “cross-cultural children,” “children born of/from international marriages.” Derogatory terms, however, have also emerged in Japan to describe Takeshi and Kenji: hafu (half), daburu (double), konketsuji (mixed-blood child). When we describe them as Filipino-Japanese or Japanese-Filipino, the hyphens linguistically indicate how identity is neatly placed in two dichotomies of ethnic groups, but Kenji and Takeshi have shown that this is not the case.
My research on international marriages and family formation, specifically those of Filipino and Japanese, has shown that assimilation processes cannot explain anymore the way migrants cope with and survive the difficulties of living in receiving countries. Globalization and ready access to information have more or less lessened the exilic nature of migration. Transnationalism allows migrants to establish ties, whether political or cultural, not only in the host country but also in the country of origin and thus the idea of home is now multilayered. Alienation has now several dimensions; it is no longer just isolation nor the lack of belongingness but the jolting realization that there is now a disconnected and disassociated relationship between symbols of their identity that were once familiar and their meanings. In the process, migrants look for a space where they can reconfigure their identity, negotiate meanings and make sense of the disjunctions. The Cultural Studies scholar Homi Bhaba calls this the “third space,” an in-between space, a space for negotiation which allows new subject positions to emerge. These positions emerge from the interweaving of the elements of the two cultures, challenging the validity and authenticity of any definitive or essentialist cultural identity. Thus, when Takeshi professes to love being a Filipino because “Filipinos are kinder and happier,” eats “adobo” and is a Roman Catholic, a religion he associates with his mother, and yet holds a Japanese passport, speaks Japanese and goes to Japanese schools, his identity becomes “hybrid”—an identity which is neither Filipino nor Japanese but an identity that is fluid and socially constructed within the context of international migration. What is being an “authentic” Japanese or Filipino is now displaced with “moments” of being Japanese or Filipino. And these moments are never-ending and are always unexpected, thus the disjunction and disconnection. For Takeshi and Kenji, the incommensurability of these “moments” and the constant negotiation is what define them as children of international marriages.
These moments of incommensurability and constant negotiation therefore give a new dimension to how we look at multiculturalism. Takeshi and Kenji’s narratives would tell us that it is in the everyday cultural encounters where multiculturalism is at play—those intimate, small moments interplaying with the social, political, economic or even historical structures which migrants utilize to construct strategies of action to diffuse or solve conflicts. Thus, we cannot reduce multiculturalism to “people of different cultures making beautiful music together” but rather how moments of “third space” and moments of unsettledness are being recognized and addressed by institutional structures and government policies. If this is the case, the hyphen in the identity of Takeshi and Kenji will no longer make sense.
The contents of this article reflect solely the opinions of the author.
Religious and Cultural Tourism to the Ancient Gandhara Region Promotes Multiculturalism, Interfaith Harmony and Peace
Religious and Cultural Tourism to the Ancient Gandhara Region
Promotes Multiculturalism, Interfaith Harmony and Peace
Fazal Khaliq (Pakistan)
Reporter, Dawn Media Group / Cultural Activist / ALFP 2017 Fellow
The Gandhara region in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan was the center of multicultural and multi-religious activities, and people of diverse cultures lived there in harmony about 2000 years ago.
Followers of different religions and cultures like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Persian, Greek and Roman faiths lived peacefully. A place where the concept of religious harmony emerged and developed, Gandhara became the first perfect model of multicultural coexistence on the globe, according to archeologists and cultural experts.
The region was also a busy center of educational, religious, cultural and trade activities between South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and Europe with a continuous stream of people migrating in and out of it. The infusion of ideas helped Gandharan art achieve a matchless identity with its diversity and sublime themes. In short, we can claim that Gandhara was the first region to have international influences of globalization with business and other activities.
Today, parts of the Gandhara region in Pakistan, including Taxila, Peshawar, Charsadda, Mardan, Swat, Buner, Malakand and Dir, contain thousands of sacred archaeological remains of immense importance for Buddhists, Hindus, Persians, Greeks and Romans, as well as Muslims, and people from across the world want to visit the area to view the sites.
However, due to a lack of awareness and misguided religious beliefs, local Muslim communities consider the archeological remains as mere ruins or structures that provide them no benefits.Their lack of knowledge leads to the destruction of priceless artifacts and important sites. Until recently, the lack of understanding, absence of benefits and little government interest in preservation resulted in deterioration at several rich archaeological sites.
These historic sites were also targeted by militants who tried to destroy them, and the defacement of the seventh-century, rock-carved Buddha at Jahanabad was one of their ugliest attempts.
Steps for Protection and Preservation
To protect and preserve the precious archeological and cultural heritage of different religions and nations both in Swat valley and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, I along with some friends established a group and undertook multiple activities.
- Initially, we started a campaign to raise awareness of the importance of archaeological sites in schools, colleges and universities. Our team delivered speeches and presentations and conducted interactive sessions about the importance of this cultural heritage.
- We raised awareness among the general public by holding interactive seminars.
- A media campaign was launched to advocate for protection and preservation of the crumbling archaeological sites. Proper video documentaries, news packages and print and web reports were made to inform and invite international communities, particularly Buddhists, Hindus, cultural heritage lovers, historians and researchers.
- A group, including civil society members and youths, was formed to urge governmental and non-governmental organizations to take solid steps for the protection and preservation of the archeological sites.
- Plans were devised to attract local and international tourists to visit their sacred archaeological sites.
Encouraging Consequences
The entire campaign bore threefold benefits. Firstly, students and youths started taking interest and began respecting these rich cultural heritage sites. Secondly, local communities started realizing benefits from the sites after tourists began visiting them. Thirdly, relevant government organization started protecting the sites in order to escape public criticism.
Today, the situation is different than five years back and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Directorate of Archaeology and Museums reported a more than 50% increase in the influx of tourists to the religious and cultural heritage sites, which also earned foreign exchange for the country.
Thus the centuries-old cultural assets are, at last, producing manifold benefits. With our efforts large numbers of tourists, mainly Buddhists, from across Southeast Asia are now able to visit sacred Buddhists sites for worship, researchers for their inquiries and heritage lovers to quench their thirst. Locals, particularly youths, now feel a sense of ownership for the sites and the general public who live near or around the sites have started protecting them as they receive financial benefits from the sites.
A Step towards Multicultural Coexistence
Perhaps the most important benefit from the cultural and archeological assets is that in their contribution to multicultural coexistence, which came about after pilgrims, tourists and researchers of different nationalities started visiting our country.
The arrival of tourists from multicultural backgrounds brings various benefits to our society.
When locals meet and interact with Buddhist pilgrims from Bhutan, South Korea, Thailand, China and other countries of Southeast Asia, they both learn from each other, develop friendships and start respecting each other’s culture.
The pilgrims and tourists spend money on local transportation, food, lodging and shopping and contribute to the local economy, which financially benefits local residents.
The tourists and pilgrims take part in local functions and cultural events, thus creating mutual respect for each other. This allows both the visitors and the locals to learn about each other’s culture and traditions.
The locals treat the visitors according to their sense of hospitality and serve them food and offer them places to stay. In this way the visitors learn about hospitable culture and our dedication to preserving our shared archeological heritage.
Both the visitors and locals find each other in a different bond, respecting each other and thus creating opportunities for pluralism and coexistence.
The frequent intermingling, learning about each other’s culture and traditions and respecting each other’s norms is the best way to create harmony between different nationalities of multicultural backgrounds. Our cultural assets are now becoming the source of interfaith harmony and durable peace.
The golden era of multiculturalism in Gandhara, when ethnic and religious harmony existed, has returned through tourism and pilgrimages. It is now up to the government of Pakistan to take the necessary steps to promote religious and cultural tourism to the ancient Gandhara region.
The contents of this article reflect solely the opinions of the author.
Multicultural Existence Is a Work in Progress
Multicultural Existence Is a Work in Progress
Diana Wong (Malaysia)
Dean, Graduate School, New Era University College, Kajang, Malaysia / ALFP 1998 Fellow
In Southeast Asia, migration and multicultural existence has been a lived reality for centuries. The maritime worlds of Nusantara and Nanyang met, traded and intermingled in this strategic location between the great civilizations of India and China, and later, in the great port-cities of the colonial world. Migrants and refugees from various corners of Asia, speaking different tongues and practicing different religions, made this into a culturally pluralistic and socially open world with one basic shared belief, that no one owed them a living; as migrants, they owed it to themselves. When Wang Gungwu, later to become a distinguished historian, returned to Southeast Asia after having spent the war years in Nanjing, China, he marveled at the “open” society he found there, as against the closed society of China’s mainland.
There is, however, another portrait of the multicultural reality of immigrant societies in Southeast Asia—Furnivall’s famous depiction of the dysfunctional “plural society” created by uncontrolled immigration under the aegis of a colonial state. In this model of the plural society, different social groups led separate lives, meeting only at the market place, under the watchful eye of the colonial state. This depiction of 19th-century colonial society, however, overlooks the “middle ground” of markets, folk religious festivals, schools, mixed neighborhoods and other spaces where casual encounters did occur and everyday exchanges and adaptations did take place. While this middle ground remained limited by spatial and social barriers outside of which multicultural existence was pursued largely along separate pathways of collective life and habits, its significance as a space of porous borders and social experimentation and change should not be overlooked or underestimated.
Migration in itself tends inherently to assume a collective form, and in search of a new livelihood in a new environment, migrants of necessity seek help from each other and congregate together. Furthermore, it has almost always been state policy to keep migrants apart from the general populace, allotting them special quarters where they were to keep to themselves. This was the case for the Asian empires (Tang China, the Malacca sultanate), as well as the western colonial powers, whose unstated policy regarding their multicultural subject population was to “divide and rule.”
In discussing the Southeast Asian experience of migration and multicultural existence, therefore, there is a danger both in romanticizing the cosmopolitanism of the past, as well as in underscoring the inevitability of social closure and conflict. Malaysia’s recent history as a nation-state shows that multicultural existence is a constant work in progress. As migration led to settlement and colonial status to independence and self-government, the terms of multicultural existence within a sovereign nation-state had to be negotiated. This was no easy undertaking, given the politics and economics of race and religion, and a final consensus remains elusive up to today.
As the global migrations of the past decades have been transforming previously “homogenous” nation-states into political entities more in the mold of the multiethnic “plural” societies of colonial and postcolonial vintage, with its attendant problems, the question of multicultural existence, or more specifically, the terms on which multicultural existence is to be, or can be, based, has acquired universal urgency. I would suggest the following lessons which need to be learnt from each other.
1. Societal Acceptance of Everyday Difference
The historical experience of the “middle ground” in borderland and colonial societies has given rise to a familiarity with, and acceptance of, the social fact and visibility of difference. While this does not preclude prejudice and stereotyping, it facilitates social interaction and exchange in the public square, both of the market and the street. This is a form of sociality not to be belittled or dismissed. Out of such informal interactions arise recognition; the absence of such interactions breeds invisibility, ignorance and contempt. In the absence of such a middle ground, the state’s attempt to regulate the presence of new arrivals through formal legislative instruments highlights public visibility and the fear and rejection this can engender. The excessive legalization of migrant and refugee governance in the OECD countries not merely raises the financial and economic cost of managing migration; by allowing such costs to escalate, it also raises the social cost of migrant reception.
2. State Adoption of Legal Norms and Good Governance
Malaysia practices a liberal policy of low-wage migrant labor recruitment to keep its economy going, to the detriment of domestic wage levels and capital investment. In 2017, foreign labor accounted officially for 12% of the country’s labor force. Given the ubiquity of undocumented workers, a recent paper noted that up to six million foreign workers could be laboring in Malaysia, 2.27 million legally, and another 2.5 to 3.37 million illegally. Neither category of workers enjoys sufficient legal rights and protection. A major part of the problem lies in the fact that foreign worker recruitment, processing and placement is a business worth more than RM 2 billion annually, the proceeds of which go to manpower agencies closely linked to high-ranking government officials. Corruption is rife and exploitation is widespread. There is a crying need for the adoption of transparent legislation and good governance in migration management. The cost paid by the migrants, and the externalized cost to local society, is simply too high.
Human mobility—the ability, willingness and, indeed, often the necessity to move—is integral to the human condition. Migration has always been an opportunity to individuals and societies to reinvent themselves; it has also been a threat to those individuals and societies unable or unwilling to cope with the arrival of new peoples and different ways of life. Today, the challenge of migration and multicultural existence is a global one. It is a profound challenge, one that will not be resolved by goodwill and a well-meaning “culture of reception” alone. Europe’s recent experience with mass immigration has shown the need for measured debate and effective policies before irresponsible demagogues take over and occupy the political stage. All involved—states, civil society and immigrants—have to be willing to learn from past experience, and move to the middle ground.
The contents of this article reflect solely the opinions of the author.
Our office will be closed from 3:00pm, Dec. 27 to Jan. 5
Closed for the holidays
Our office will be closed for the New Year’s holidays from 3:00pm (JST), December 27, to January 5.
During the holidays, we the ALFP Secretariat will not be able to respond to emails or answer the phone. We will be back on Monday, January 6, 2020 at 9:00am.
The fifth issue of the ALFP e-magazine is now available
The fifth issue of the ALFP e-magazine is now available
We are pleased to announce that the fifth issue of the ALFP e-magazine is now available on our website.
The theme of this new issue is “Gender Issues” and three intellectuals/writers from Asia cast light on the problems plaguing not only women but other sectors of society from various perspectives. We hope this edition will help us all think about how we can create a more inclusive, diverse society in which “the binaries of gender and sexuality are replaced by a rainbow coalition of identities working towards a peaceful future.”
Contents of the fifth issue:
Overview by Urvashi Butalia (Writer / Publisher, Zubaan Books)
Articles contributed by:
● Maria Hartiningsih (Writer / Independent Journalist / Indonesia)
● Sawanishi Mikiko (Deputy Executive Head, United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) / Japan)
● Sepali Kottegoda (Director of Programmes, Women and Media Collective / Sri Lanka)
Unpaid Care Work: Why Does It Matter Whose Work It Is?
Unpaid Care Work: Why Does It Matter Whose Work It Is?
Sepali Kottegoda (Sri Lanka)
Director of Programmes, Women and Media Collective / ALFP 2004 Fellow
The conditions of unpaid care work impact how unpaid carers enter and remain in paid work, and influence the working conditions of all care workers. This “unpaid care work–paid work–paid care work circle” also affects gender inequalities in paid work outside the care economy and has implications for gender equality within households as well as for women’s and men’s ability to provide unpaid care work. 1
Caring for household members. Well-being of the family. Putting food on the table. Washing clothes. Making ends meet. Looking after the young, the old and differently-abled family members. These are everyday activities. These are always performed by someone or some people for someone or some people. What we take as accepted norms and practices of everyday life in a household or a family are in fact deeply rooted in the fabric of “social norms.” One can ask, so what? This is how it has been, how it should be and how it will be. Someone has to do these things, and someone always does. The questions to ask (but often are not) are, by whom and why?
The issue here is the fact that the concept of “care” is not necessarily associated with “work.” “Care” is often conflated with notions of altruism or unselfishness and self-sacrifice rooted in the family and related to a gender division of labor where women are seen as the care givers. In mainstream economics as well as in the social perceptions of persons, “work” is understood as activity that brings in monetary income: “having a job,” “looking for or engaged in employment.” There is no questioning or critiquing the social, economic and political factors that underlie the seemingly “natural” division of labor within the household and the family.
In the 19th century Friedrich Engels wrote The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, a pioneering socialist exploration of women’s oppression within the family as the effect of the economic oppression of woman.2 Feminists in the 1980s honed in on the issue of women’s work and labor to critically look at ways in which the global capitalist market requirement for women’s labor for the production of goods falls short of recognizing the value of women’s reproductive roles.3 By the end of the 1990s, there was more interest in developing national accounting processes to measure time use in women’s household work. Feminist economists argued that these measures continued to exclude the social dimensions of unpaid care work within households. Others argued that time-use methodologies must necessarily be formulated to specifically address these gaps for any meaningful change in policy on labor, social support programming and gender equality.4
It is within these debates and discussions that I would like to bring in some dimensions of unpaid care work in Sri Lanka which remain outside the mainstream economic discourse on policy.
To give a quick profile of some economic and social indicators in Sri Lanka, we have an estimated population of 21 million comprising 51% females and 49% males. We have a long record of state provision and extensive outreach of health and education services that are accessed by girls and boys, women and men.5 In 2012 the sex-ratio (the number of men per 100 women) in the total population was 93.8 and in the population 60 years and above it was 79. By 2032 it is projected that this will change to 92 and 78 respectively.6 We have to recognize that Sri Lanka has an ageing population which in the next two decades will comprise significantly more women than men. The implication here is that there will be a large proportion of elderly women in households who will be in need of care.
Sri Lanka offers a worthy example given its record of long years of free education and health programs. However, the labor force participation of women at 34.9 is almost half that of men (73.4).7 Out of an estimated 7.7 million persons categorized as “economically inactive” 74.3% are women. The issue here is that 60.5% of women and 4.9% of men are found to be “engaged in housework.”8
Herein lies a fundamental issue: what criteria and what values (social, economic and political) are embedded in (international definitions) of the concepts of “labor” and “work.” Why is it that work done in the home centering on taking care of household members is not recognized for its economic value? In addition, women who undertake some form of income-earning activities whether in the formal or informal sector also are expected to and do undertake “housework” which is not given economic value. The work undertaken by these women (and men) is also not factored in when policy is directed towards economic development. Is it not time that a feminist discourse is brought in to ensure that work both in the private and public sphere is valued? Is it not time to acknowledge that recognizing, reducing and redistributing unpaid care work is a must if we are to challenge discriminatory gender norms and practices that impede effective policy making and implementation for development for all?
The contents of this article reflect solely the opinions of the author.