Contingent breadwinners: Left-behind women and the translocal dynamics of migrant worker precarity

Sallie Yea
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Sallie Yea: Department of Society Inquiry, La Trobe University, Wodonga, VIC, Australia

Environment and Planning A, 2025, vol. 57, issue 6, 704-718

Abstract: Extant research on migrant worker household dynamics tends to focus on the changing gender roles of those left behind and the intra-household dynamics that emerge in the context of the extended absence of a key family member. As provocative and diverse as this literature is, both analytically and geographically, it has yet to fully engage with the challenges to transnational householding presented in cases of extreme migrant worker precarity, including situations of forced labour and human trafficking. This paper examines the contingent roles left-behind mothers and wives perform in the absence of a male migrant relative breadwinner. I argue that the financial and relational effects of migrant worker exploitation produce contingent breadwinning amongst left-behind women. I draw on data from a study of human trafficking and forced labour in the offshore fishing industry in the Philippines to make my arguments.

Keywords: Contingent work; migration financialisation; the Philippines; left-behind families (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:57:y:2025:i:6:p:704-718

DOI: 10.1177/0308518X251348115

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