CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Tchamiashvili, Natalia |
|---|---|
| Title | The Patterns of Narrating Care Work in Transnational Families: The Case of Georgian Migrant Women |
| Summary | The feminization of migration from Georgia creates a care crisis in Georgian transnational families since, traditionally, Georgian women are primarily responsible for care work in families. This research is expectedly centered around migrated Georgian women and care work distribution in their transnational families. This study investigates how Georgian migrant women narrate the care-related task distribution back home, what kind of narrative patterns they portray and why. The possibility of mapping the changes and transformations in traditional families or maintaining traditional gender roles in changing family structures is an opportunity to identify how migration influences gendered family structure and functions within the family. To meet the research goal, I conducted fifteen online oral history interviews with Georgian migrant women with different backgrounds who work as caretakers in different countries, such as Greece, Portugal, Italy, and the United States. As a result of qualitative analysis, I argue that the narratives of my respondents can be classified into five different narrative patterns. Some of these patterns are already identified in the literature on migrant women, and some of them are specific to the Georgian context. None of these narrative patterns challenge gender norms. The narratives of my respondents are constructed for their communities back home which significantly supports transnational families in terms of care in exchange for displaying commonly shared values by the family members, including migrant women. My findings go against well-established argument in academia that transnational families display family-like relationships. I argue that my respondents display family values instead of family-like relationships. |
| Supervisor | Pető Andrea, Alslop Rachel |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/tchamiashvili_natali.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University