CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Gurung, Sampreety |
|---|---|
| Title | Between Dissent and Consent: Gendered Negotiations of Nepali Male Migrant Workers in Port Klang, Malaysia |
| Summary | With more than 90% of the world’s cargo traveling through the ocean, port areas and their hinterlands around the world hold enormous economic importance. As a newly industrializing country striving to become a “fully developed nation” by 2020, Malaysia has aggressively pursued foreign investment through the creation of zones and industrial parks, particularly in and around its ports, which rely heavily on foreign migrant labor. This thesis broadly looks at how Malaysia’s world-class city-making aspirations coincide with and diverge from migrant realities influenced by a highly precarious labor regime. Addressing the paradox of why male migrants from Nepal keep going back to Malaysia despite widespread coverage of labor exploitation, this thesis asks the following questions: How do male migrants deal with the disempowerment that may follow varying degrees and forms of marginalization abroad? How might an understanding of gender and male masculinities then allow for a more persuasive account of the sustained rise in male labor migration? The research is based on interviews with and participant observation of migrants working in the zones and industrial parks of Port Klang, one of the world’s largest trans-shipment centers, and its hinterland. This thesis finds male migrants to be constantly negotiating their sense of subordination through gendered narratives and everyday activities that hinge upon ideas of male providership and modernity. I argue that such modes of belonging, however, do not fit neatly within reiterated narratives through which migrants have become legible and knowable as either victims or agents in response to their status as laborers. I argue that while such everyday negotiations may allow migrants to endure various forms of exclusions, they also serve to mask male vulnerabilities and exploitation, thus maintaining both structures of labor exploitation and patriarchal gender ideologies. |
| Supervisor | Fodor, Éva |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/gurung_sampreety.pdf |
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