For at least the last century men have been leaving the village of Kohery in North West Frontier Province, Pakistan to look for work and better opportunities. In all that time migration has remained a temporary phenomenon with the men always returning to their home village. Migration has become a way of life and is deeply rooted in the experience and ideas of the people. In the 1970s the men of Kohery began to take part in labour migration to the Gulf states along with millions of other Asians. This thesis is about this migration in the 1990s, and the social and economic effects that it has had and continues to have. It is a cultural study of labour migration from Kohery to the Gulf and is divided into four parts. Part 1 consists of the life histories of several men from a group of eight households where the research was carried out. The aim is to describe the experiences of a group of individuals over several decades of migration. The stories illustrate the long history of migration from the area and form a background to the rest of the thesis. The stories are also used to demonstrate the ways in which individuals use their own life histories to represent themselves as honourable men. Part II examines households. The association of gender with space - women with houses and men with 'outside' - affects the sexual division of labour, so that men are the ones who participate in migration and who control household resources. Within households, the composition of the group and the position of individuals in the hierarchy give rise to tensions and conflicts which result in divisions. Despite considerable variations in the composition of households the differences between them are played down and the similarities are emphasised. In particular households are described as being unproductive in themselves and dependent on migration.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:663513 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Watkins, Francis |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/21598 |
Page generated in 0.0024 seconds