IndiaPost.com - More women are becoming primary migrants: Book

NEW DELHI: Asian women are joining men in migrating to other countries, in many cases as principal bread winners, says a new book. In recent years there has been a significant rise in the number of female migrants, who sometimes come as primary breadwinners.

The male-female ratio of international level on the whole is 52.5 per cent to 47.5 per cent, though its proportion in the developed countries is almost 50:50, says the book 'Striped Zebra, The Immigrant Psyche' by US-based Uday C. Naval and Soofia K.Hussain, published by Rupa. Dr Uday Naval is a retired professor of English from the University of New York. Soofia Hussain holds a Ph.D.

In Sociology from Columbia University, New York. As a professor of sociology, she has over the years focused on the trials, struggles and successes of large numbers of immigrant students. Even by the mid-1990's, 1.5 million Asian women were working abroad, many as principal wage earners rather than as accompanying family members.

For example, 60 per cent of migrants from Sri Lanka are women who work as domestic help all over the world. In Hong Kong's population of 7 million, 250,000 are foreign maids, mainly from the Philippines, the book says.

The authors also say that with figures exceeding 18 billion dollars, the year 2003 saw the emergence of India as the world's largest receiver of remittances from expatriates abroad, showing a growth of 30 per cent over the previous year.

Because of Indians very strong 'home instinct', the diaspora from India, especially from Punjab and Kerala, sending money home is way of life.

The book says that although millions abandon their all in search of a new life in distant lands, migration is always fought with severe hardships, dangers and insecurities. At the cultural level too immigrants are confronted with a serious dilemma: how far can they go in abandoning their native values in order to accept, adopt or adapt to the values of the host society?

Even within the narrow domain of the family dynamic, there arise issues that immigrants find most difficult to resolve, for the clash of values at home could also be the most acute, at times even brutal, because of the 'evil influence' of the host society.

Over the years the migrants have mitigated the impact of the oil shocks of 1973, 1979 and 1990-91 by cushioning foreign exchange reserves, smoothing domestic consumption and investment and ensuring a debt service record free of default, the authors say.

In addition to cash remittances to the native land for undertaking works of public welfare, the new trend includes also the transfer of technology from the West to the native lands. Indian professionals flocking to the USA have taken pains to transfer modern technology in their respective fields back to the motherland.

On the whole India has contributed 25000 of its top business and engineering graduates to the US in the past four decades. Of these as many as 750 ran technology companies in Silicon Valley alone, the book says. The remittance phenomenon knows no barriers of east, west, north or south.

The world's second largest remittances from abroad, after, India, come from the Chinese migrants who send home as much as 16 billion dollars a year. Immigrants from India have recently begun to enter the political structure in the United States. In 2003, several Indian Americans ran for local office.

Apart from their growing numbers, their extraordinary successes in the fields of medicine, engineering, corporate structures, technology and higher education have given them enough clout so that even native born candidates seek to curry their favor for contribution in funds, volunteers and votes, the book says.