Karin Astrid Siegmann

Coping on Women’s Backs Social Capital-Vulnerability Links through a Gender Lens

This article aims to conceptualize the gendered interface between social capital and vulnerability. It emphasizes Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of social capital embedded in his Theory of Practice as a fruitful analytical device for this intersection. The authors’ conceptual thoughts are based on a review of the literature on the role of migration-related social networks from mainly diverse Asian contexts and empirical fieldwork in South and Central Asia.Processes of migration are embedded in social networks, more recently conceptualised as social capital, from sending households to migrants’ formal and informal associations at their destinations. These processes are often assumed to reduce individuals, households and economies’ vulnerabilities and thus attract policy-makers’ attention to migration management. The paper aims to conceptualise the gendered interface between social capital and vulnerability. It utilises Bourdieu’s notion of social capital as an analytical starting point. To illuminate our conceptual thoughts we refer to empirical examples from migration research from various Asian countries. Bourdieu’s theory highlights the social construction of gendered vulnerability. It goes beyond that by identifying the investment in symbolic capital of female honour as an indirect investment in social and, ultimately, economic capital. This gender-differentiated unequal investment and these capitals’ incomplete fungibility, though, makes women not just indirect members of social networks but mere objects contributing as ‘symbolic currency’ within them, often without being able to capitalise on the very relations. Based on Bourdieu’s theory, we suggest a shift from the investigation of women’s exclusion from and gender inequality within social networks to an analysis of masculine domination. It appears to be directly associated with the degree of vulnerability that women experience.

Understanding the globalizing precariat: From informal sector to precarious work

Given ongoing changes in the world of work that affect both developing and industrialized countries, we argue that it is time to bring the notions of informal and precarious work together. Work-related insecurities offer a conceptual umbrella for the conditions that a large number of workers in the global North and South experience. They emerge in the context of neoliberal globalization, intersecting with social and political marginalizations. This offers starting points for intervention. For instance, for precarious workers’ struggles to be successful, organizational strength needs to be combined with the forging of coalitions that transcend class identities.

Strengthening Whom? the role of international migration for women and men in Northwest Pakistan

This article investigates the role of international labour migration from Pakistan’s Northwest for the sending communities’ social resilience. It focuses on the implications of male out‐migration for the women who stay behind. This article refers to Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice to shed light on the gendered nature of vulnerability and resilience. Contradictions identified between heightened vulnerability at the level of individual women and strengthened resilience of the household underline the social construction of scale in the analysis of resilience. With his emphasis on material as well as symbolic resources determining opportunities and well‐being, Bourdieu provides an analytical key for the identification of such ‘uncomfortable layers of resilience’.

6 Masculinity at Work: Intersectionality and Identity Constructions of Migrant Domestic Workers in the Netherlands

This chapter contributes to the emerging literature on men who do ‘women’s work’. It focuses on the ‘feminine’ occupation of domestic worker and on how male and female migrant workers balance their gender identities at the intersection of class, race, and immigration status. It addresses the related research gap in the Netherlands by focusing on the situation of migrant domestic workers from the Philippines with irregular status. From the perspective of hegemonic gender identities, male migrant domestic workers, too, are subjected to gender injustices. These injustices are rooted in the devaluation of everything coded as ‘feminine’, including their occupation. The resulting ‘male femininities’ are threatening male domestic workers’ sense of self-worth and their societal recognition. This misrecognition adds to the exploitative economic circumstances that both female and male migrant domestic workers experience and has negative repercussions on male migrants’ access to employment. Ironically, workers themselves contribute to reproducing these symbolic and material injustices and, hence, consolidate them. Redressing these injustices requires changes both in the economic structure and in society’s ordering of status. When the demands for respect for domestic workers and for their labour rights are combined, this necessity is reflected in workers’ national and international campaigns. They need to be complemented by national regulation that will protect all workers effectively, independent of the location of their work, their gender, their race, or their immigration status. Last but not least, given their crucial role in societal reproduction, domestic workers should be included in the categories of migrant workers who are welcome in European labour markets in redefined and relaxed transnational migration regimes.

Foreign capital effects on gender wage differentials in Indonesia

The good news first: The gender wage differential2 in Indonesia declined during the past fifteen years until the Asian financial crisis. Whereas in 1986 women’s monthly wages represented less than 60% of mens’ monthly wages, in 1997 this percentage had risen to more than 70%. The persisting gap has commonly been attributed to the typically longer experience, higher educational attainment and longer hours worked of male workers (Feridhanusetyawan/Aswicahyono 2001, ESCAP 1998, Manning 1998). However, for all levels of educational attainment female earnings remain lower than males. Additionally, the focus on human capital-related causes of gender wage differentials has been criticized for “blaming the victim”: for example, the gap in educational attainment itself being a result of discrimination both inside and outside the labour market (D’Amico 1987).