Social Barriers to Female Migration: Theory and Evidence from Bangladesh

Amrit Amirapu, M Asadullah and Zaki Wahhaj

No 692, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: Traditional gender norms can restrict independent migration by women, thus preventing them from taking advantage of economic opportunities in urban non-agricultural industries. However, women may be able to circumvent such restrictions by using marriage to engage in long-distance migration - if they are able to match with migrating grooms. Guided by a theoretical model in which women make marriage and migration decisions jointly, we hypothesize that marriage and labour markets will be inextricably linked by the possibility of marital migration. To test our hypotheses, we use the event of the construction of a major bridge in Bangladesh - which dramatically reduced travel time between the economically deprived north-western region and the manufacturing belt located around the capital city Dhaka - as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in migration costs. Our empirical ffndings support our model's main predictions and provide strong evidence for the existence of social barriers to female migration.

Keywords: migration; marriage markets; female labour force participation; gender norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J16 J61 O15 O18 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-lab, nep-mig, nep-ore, nep-soc and nep-ure
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Journal Article: Social barriers to female migration: Theory and evidence from Bangladesh (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:692

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