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PALGRAVE STUDIES ON CHILDREN AND DEVELOPMENT
Series Editors
Michael Bourdillon
African Studies Centre Leiden
University of Zimbabwe
Harare, Zimbabwe
Jo Boyden
Department of International Development
University of Oxford
Oxford, UK
Roy Huijsmans
Institute of Social Studies
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Den Haag, The Netherlands
Nicola Ansell
Social and Political Sciences
Brunel University London
Uxbridge, Middlesex, UK
The series focuses on the interface between childhood studies and
international development. Children and young people often feature
as targets of development or are mobilized as representing the future
in debates on broader development problems such as climate change.
Increased attention to children in international development policy and
practice is also fuelled by the near universally ratified United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child and the recently adopted
Sustainable Development Goals.
Nonetheless, relatively little has been written on how the experience
of childhood and youth is shaped by development as well as how young
people as social actors negotiate, appropriate or even resist development
discourses and practices. Equally, the increased emphasis in research
on children and young people’s voices, lived experiences and participa-
tion has yet to impact policy and practice in substantial ways. This series
brings together cutting-edge research presented in a variety of forms,
including monographs, edited volumes and the Palgrave Pivot format;
and so furthers theoretical, conceptual and policy debates situated on
the interface of childhood and international development. The series
includes a mini-series from Young Lives, a unique 15-year longitudinal
study of child childhood poverty in developing countries. A particular
strength of the series is its inter-disciplinary approach and its emphasis
on bringing together material that links issues from developed and devel-
oping countries, as they affect children and young people. The series will
present original and valuable new knowledge for an important and grow-
ing field of scholarship.
Adolescent Girls’
Migration in The
Global South
Transitions into Adulthood
Katarzyna Grabska Nicoletta Del Franco
Institute of Social Studies University of Parma
Erasmus University Parma, Italy
The Hague, The Netherlands
Marina de Regt
VU University Amsterdam
VX Amsterdam
Noord-Holland, The Netherlands
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Foreword
v
vi Foreword
with the fieldwork contexts from previous research, provides a view that
is not only richer, but crucially more long-term. This research uncov-
ers the complex trajectories of some of the migrant girls and is able to
explore how the young women who migrated as children assess these tra-
jectories.
In the final chapter of this book the researchers turn to the central
intellectual project that drove the design and execution of the research:
namely how does migration—itself a transition—intersect with those
other transitions which are occurring, or beginning to occur, at adoles-
cence? Moving has facilitated a transition into work, which was rarely
available in their home communities, but hopes that migrant girls might
have had of continuing or improving their education are rarely met,
although they acquire other kinds of new knowledge. How migration
affects marriage, family making and becoming adult is more complex.
The detailed case studies find that migrant girls challenge the exist-
ing patterns of transition into adulthood, particularly by postponing
marriage, or seeking to get married on their own terms. In these ways
they have opened other pathways to becoming women, acquiring in the
process a greater sense of selfhood. By their small, (and we might say
heroic), acts to survive and make a life in the city, young female migrants
are bringing about social transformation by their challenges to, and
renegotiation of, existing definitions of gendered adult identities. These
new identities are however uneasily worn, and not fully embraced by the
young female migrants themselves. There are too many costs and too
many severe difficulties of daily living for this to be the case.
This book would have not been possible to complete without the
efforts, support, collaborations, openness and friendships of so many
people. The idea of the research emerged during a workshop on child
migration organized by Prof. Ann Whitehead in September 2012 at the
University of Sussex to which the three of us, Marina de Regt, Nicoletta
Del Franco and Katarzyna Grabska, were invited. Ann’s particular atten-
tion to migration of children, how it was framed in policy discourses and
in development interventions, and her insistence on the need to better
understand the agency of children and adolescents in migratory processes
prompted us to ask important questions. Thanks to this intellectual space
that Ann created, the three of us met and had the opportunity to interact
with various academics, policy-makers and activists involved in research
and advocacy with and on behalf of migrant children and youth. This
was the beginning of our friendship but also of the academic collabora-
tion that ensued. Based in three different countries (The Netherlands,
Switzerland and Italy), speaking three different languages, and having
worked in three different regions of the world, we were united by our
feminist approaches to research. We shared similar interests to better
understand migratory experiences of adolescent girls, as we felt they were
invisible in research and policy frameworks. Ann generously supported us
in our endeavours to write a research proposal and secure funding.
During the life of this project, new friendships were formed, a new life
was born, and sadly, some lives of our close-ones were lost. Our friend-
ship but most importantly a truly feminist approach to our collaboration
ix
x Acknowledgements
meant that the others’ of us stepped in when one of us was faced with
personal challenges. It was this joint strength with the continuous support
and mentoring from Ann Whitehead that carried us through the research
(2014–2016) and collaborative writing of this book (2017–2018). Our
approach to writing this book was unique, as we jointly prepared the
research, carried out the fieldwork, analysed our data, and wrote each
chapter of the book together. It was due to continuous meetings in person
during our fieldwork and filming, workshops, write-shops, meetings and
conferences in Addis Ababa, Amman, Amsterdam, Geneva, the Hague,
London, Rome, Warsaw, but also over Skype, WhatsApp and email that
each page of the book was negotiated and emerged as a result. A truly col-
laborative experience in which we have learned a lot from each other!
There are many institutions and people who should be thanked for the
support they offered throughout this project. First of all, we acknowl-
edge the generous support of the Swiss Network of International Studies
(SNIS) that provided the main funding for the research (2014–2016).
Co-funding for the research and documentary film was also received from
Terre des Hommes, University of Sussex, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,
Feminist Review Trust, and Girl Effect Ethiopia. We are very grate-
ful to them for making this project financially possible. The project was
carried out under the umbrella of the Global Migrations Centre at the
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID)
in Geneva. Thanks go to Prof. Vincent Chetail for hosting the project
and to Prof. Alessandro Monsutti for his collaboration and support.
Special thanks go to Dr. Géraldine Ruiz for her administrative assistance
and patience! Jacqueline Barrin M.A. candidate at the Graduate Institute
and Terre de Ridder, M.A. candidate at the Department of Social and
Cultural Anthropology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam provided invaluable
assistance in collecting of literature for the research. Rebecca Glade, M.A.
candidate at the Ahfad University, provided analysis of some of the policy
documents in Sudan. Thank you all!
We would like to acknowledge the co-researchers who made the
research possible. In Ethiopia, special thanks go to the two main
researchers, Felegebirhan Belesti and Arsema Solomon, who were
responsible for the largest part of the data collection, and to Madereshaw
Tafesse and Aynadis Yohannes who carried out the interviews with
returned women from the Middle East. We also want to thank the
staff of Girl Effect Ethiopia, and in particular Rebecca Smith and Fiker
Abebe, for their support during the data collection. The support of
Acknowledgements xi
xiii
xiv Contents
Ethiopia 56
Sudan 60
Locating Adolescent Girls’ Migration 63
Bangladesh 63
Ethiopia 65
Sudan 66
Politics and Policies 69
City as a Space 73
Dhaka: Exploding with Migrants 73
Addis Ababa: The New Flower Is Growing 76
Khartoum: A City with Many Faces 78
Contrasting yet Similar Settings 80
References 80
Index 265
List of Figures
xvii
CHAPTER 1
7 September 2017.
reach the age of majority, girls and boys are no longer formally entitled
to the kind of protection granted to children under the provision of the
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
From different perspectives, a number of studies have criticized
approaches based strictly on chronological age, which frames legal
minors as always vulnerable and subject to other people’s decisions and
choices. Whitehead et al. (2007), Jacquemin (2009) and Hashim and
Thorsen (2011), for example, have shown that children and adoles-
cents often make their own decision to migrate, and that their reasons
are in many cases very similar to those of young adults of between 20
and 25 years of age. A growing body of literature addresses children’s
agency in the process of migration (Coe et al. 2011; Ensor and Gozdziak
2010; Huijsmans 2011, 2017; Veale and Donà 2014) and attempts to
conceptualize it by emphasizing children’s resilience and capacities to
negotiate their own position, and the importance of relational and col-
lective agency, without losing sight of the potential risks and vulnerabil-
ities (Razy and Rodet 2016; Veale and Donà 2014). The need to listen
to children’s and adolescents’ words and experiences has also been high-
lighted (Dobson 2009), as well as the methodological and ethical dilem-
mas arising from giving them voice (see Razy and Rodet 2016, pp. 7–8).
The vast majority of studies on young people’s migration have focused
on boys and young men (Gardner 2012; Hashim and Thorsen 2011;
Punch 2007; Thorsen 2006; White et al. 2011). Adolescent migrant girls
are almost invisible in both quantitative and qualitative studies despite
their generally increasing numbers, in most regions of the world both
within their regions and countries and across the globe (Temin et al.
2013). Exceptions are academic studies, mainly of domestic workers in
African countries (e.g. Erulkar et al. 2006; Erulkar and Mekbib 2007)
and South East Asia (e.g. Camacho 2006; Muttarak 2004; Guo et al.
2011) or occasionally of sex workers (e.g. Van Blerk 2008). The studies
on domestic or sex workers usually take a gender lens as they focus on
young women without combining it with that of generational perspec-
tive. In this way, they fail to ask how age might be a relevant dimen-
sion in understanding gendered experiences of migration and work. A
few studies in West Africa have taken a more in-depth view (Hertrich
and Lesclingand 2012, 2017; Jacquemin 2009, 2011). In 2017, a com-
prehensive quantitative study of 28 countries (Montgomery et al. 2016)
sought to quantify urban migration of adolescent girls in low- and
middle-income countries by examining data collected through a large
1 GIRLS, TRANSITIONS AND MIGRATION 5
where there are profound differences in the social and cultural context.
Last, but not least, as individual researchers each of us has long-stand-
ing experience in one of these three countries. Nicoletta Del Franco has
more than 20 years’ experience in issues related to gender and devel-
opment, young people, adolescence and the transition to adulthood in
rural and urban Bangladesh (see Del Franco 2012). Katarzyna Grabska
has carried out extensive research in Sudan, especially in what used to
be Southern Sudan, and among South Sudanese refugees in Kenya and
Egypt since 2002, with a particular focus on gender and generational
relations in situations of forced displacement and the impact of (forced)
migration on youth (see Grabska 2006, 2014). Marina de Regt has been
studying the gendered aspects of migration between Ethiopia and Yemen
since the early 2000s, focusing mainly on Ethiopian domestic workers
in Yemen, and also including the historical aspects of migration of these
two close but rather distinct countries (see De Regt 2010, 2012).
legally being still children, girls between ages of 11 and 20 in the coun-
tries that are the case studies for this book as well as elsewhere, are no
longer considered as small children, but rather as getting ready to enter
the phase of adulthood, even if that phase is not necessarily ethnograph-
ically defined as adolescence in the three contexts presented here. Yet,
this particular phase of preparation for full adulthood, how it intersects
with age and gender, interests us as a critical point of transitions at which
many different life-changing decisions are being made. Lastly, our deci-
sion to refer to use the term adolescence is also to engage with the prob-
lematic policy discourses that have been pervading development policies
and projects.
Adolescence can be seen as a ‘process’ characterized by critical tran-
sitions when major life decisions are taken, albeit in context-specific
ways (Bucholtz 2002; Del Franco 2012). The spatial shift implied in
migration can be read as one such critical transition that intersects with
other life choices being made (Crivello 2009; Gardner and Osella 2003;
Gardner 2009; Grabska 2010). Whether we talk about adolescents or
youth, however, we engage with an unstable terrain that cannot be eas-
ily defined only in terms of chronological age. Bourdieu rightly argued
that “divisions, whether into age-groups or into generations, are entirely
variable and subject to manipulation” (1993, p. 95). Both terms refer
to social categories that can be understood only in relation to local and
context-specific practices and norms as well as to “complex and chang-
ing historical network of institutions, economic structures, state poli-
cies, adult initiatives and youth self-activities” (Austin and Willard 1998,
p. 3). We concur with Crivello that “the relationship between biological
age and social age is complex and is produced and practiced in cultural-
ly-specific ways, yet embedded in both local and global systems of power
and hierarchy” (Crivello 2009, p. 4).
Following Stuart Hall (1905), medical science and psychology have
characterized adolescence as a problematic and fragile state, regarding
adolescents as unfinished human beings at risk of deviant behaviour. In
this view, a successful transition to adulthood would necessarily imply
adults’ intervention to ensure a smooth socialization process. These psy-
cho-biological interpretations were founded on the idea that the phases
of individual growth are shaped by genetically determined physiological
changes. Puberty and sexual maturation were seen as the starting point
of a universal phase of individual development, which ends with full
adulthood and adult responsibilities. This universal view of adolescence
1 GIRLS, TRANSITIONS AND MIGRATION 9
2 The school of Ego Psychology to which Erikson belongs focuses on the study of the
Gendered Adolescence
Gender has important implications for how the social phase of adoles-
cence and the process of transition to adulthood are constructed and
lived in different socio-cultural contexts. The study of initiation cer-
emonies by which adulthood is acquired and age sets and age grades
are defined, which characterized British social anthropology before the
1970s, mainly concerned boys. For girls, the transition to adult status
was mainly linked to biological events such as menarche or the birth
of the first child. In the three contexts discussed in this book, attaining
womanhood is strongly linked to marriage and fertility. In Sudan, among
migrants and refugees from Ethiopia and Eritrea, adolescence for girls is
often interpreted as being linked not to a certain age, but to the social
status of being unmarried and without children. In Bangladesh, puberty
used to correspond to the immediate acquisition of adulthood for girls,
since marriage before or soon after menarche was a predominant reality.
In rural Ethiopia, marriage is still considered one of the main ways for
girls to achieve adulthood, yet perceptions in urban areas are changing,
as this research also points out.
Both Bangladeshi and Ethiopian societies are notably hierarchical
(Blanchet 1996; Del Franco 2012; Heinonen 2011; Pankhurst 1992;
Poluha 2004) with strong gender-based and generational inequalities.
Gender norms are similar in Eritrea, although there was some progress
towards achieving gender equality during the national liberation strug-
gle, in which women were very active in combat and in the liberation
movement. In all three contexts gender norms regulate and influence the
life of children from birth, as girls are less valued than boys at home and
in the wider community. Boys are more valued because they will con-
tinue the patrilineal family line and traditionally would continue to live
with their parents after marriage while married girls move to live with
their husband’s family. Gender norms determine how girls are treated,
their responsibilities and the type of domestic and farming work they
have to do, their education, their freedom of movement, their relation-
ships with friends, and their ambitions and aspirations for the future. The
sexuality of adolescent girls is strictly controlled and premarital relation-
ships are not accepted. This is a defining moment of how adolescence is
experienced differently by boys and girls in the Bangladeshi, Ethiopian
and Eritrean societies. As a girl’s virginity is highly valued in order to
secure a good marriage and achieve respectability, parents and guardians
12 K. GRABSKA ET AL.
Migration and Transitions
Our study conceptualizes migration as a physical movement within and
across geopolitical borders, initiated for a variety of factors. We acknowl-
edge that there are significant differences between the two, and also in
the reasons for movement in the first place. By focusing on the spatial
dimension of migration, we see it as more than an act or an event in a
person’s life, but as a process, and how it links to other transitions.
The concept of transition through different life phases is controversial,
however. In mainstream sociological and psychological approaches, it has
implied the idea of a linear progression from one phase of an individual’s
life to another. In anthropology, too, the classical studies on the rites of
passage inspired by Van Gennep (1908) have focused on institutional-
ized moments in which people moved from one status to another. These
approaches and the use of the term transition to identify significant turn-
ing points have been criticized from various perspectives in d ifferent
geographical contexts (see Punch 2015). As Johnson Hanks (2002,
p. 865) underlines, criticizing the use of the life-cycle model, “most vital
events—such as marriage, mother-hood, and migration—are negotiable
and contested, fraught with uncertainty, innovation, and ambivalence”,
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of men. It was as though they were back in the days of the old
Hebrew prophets when the hand of the Lord stretched out and laid
itself upon wicked men for their punishment when the measure of
their time was full.
“He tried to stand above the law in this valley,” Hollister told her. “He
wanted to stop progress—said there shouldn’t be any dam to reclaim
the Flat Tops for settlers. Merrick will rebuild it. The land will be
watered. Your ranch will be good as ever in three months. And he’ll
be buried and forgotten.”
“And poor Don Black?” she whispered. “Poor Don, who never had a
chance in this world, or, if he had one, muddled it so badly?”
He could only hope that Don had gone to a better-ordered world
where circumstances did not dominate good intentions.
Betty’s sense of tragedy lingered just now no longer than a cinema
picture. The life urge in her clamored for expression. No world could
be a sad one with her and Tug in it.
“Shall I go in and tell your father now?” the young man asked.
“Soon.” She made a rustling little motion toward him and found
herself in his arms. “Isn’t it splendid, boy? To-day’s the best ever, and
to-morrow will be better than to-day—oh, heaps better—and after
that all the years forever and ever.”
He looked into the deep lustrous eyes of his straight slim girl. What a
wife she would be! How eager and provocative, this white flame of
youth so simple and so complex! Her happiness now would be in his
hands. The responsibility awed him, filled him with a sense of
solemnity.
“Forever is a long time,” he said, smiling, and quoted a stanza of
magazine verse they had lately read together.
It began, “How far will you go with me, my love?” Close-held in his
arms, Betty answered without a moment of hesitation.
“She smiled at the stile with a sweet disdain;
She scoffed at the bridge and the great oak tree;
And looked me full in the eyes and said:
‘I will go to the end of the lane with thee.’”
The door of the inner room opened and Clint stood on the threshold.
“Hello!” he said, surprised.
Betty disengaged herself, blushing. “He’s decided to take me after
all, Dad,” she said demurely.
“Hmp! Has he? Kinda looks that way.” Clint gripped Hollister’s hand
till it hurt. It was the best he could do just now to show the gratitude
he felt for what this man had done.
“That’s not quite the way I put it, sir,” Tug said.
“Doesn’t matter how you put it, boy. It’ll be her say-so from now on.
Don’t I know her? Hasn’t she bossed me scandalous since she was
knee-high to a gosling?”
“Now, Dad, you’re giving me a bad name,” Betty protested, hugging
her father.
“If he ain’t man enough to stand some bossing, he’d better quit right
now before he says, ‘I do.’”
“He likes being bossed, Dad,” Betty announced, and the imps of
deviltry were kicking up their heels in her eyes. “Don’t you, Tug?”
Hollister looked at the girl and smiled. “I’ll say I do,” he admitted.
THE END
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