The patterns of paid and unpaid work adopted by migrants families with dependent children are more or less similar to that of prevailing working pattern of men and women of Australian born couples. A case study with 28 couple families, 14 husbands and 14 wives who migrated from Nepal under "skill" or "professional" category and the literature review on paid and unpaid work of couple families with dependent children show that in both families the trend of change of working pattern in paid and unpaid work is similar. With the increased participation of married women in the paid labour force, men increased participation in household work. There is increased household work for both husbands and wives, but women tend to do more household "inside" and childcare work than men. In the mean time, men tend to do more work in the "masculine" sphere of "outside" work in house maintenance, repair and car care. The only factor that differentiates working pattern of migrant families with Australian born families is the experience of migration and the category that they migrated. The change of working practice of paid and unpaid work of migrant families are affected by the change of family type from extended family to two generational family and their education and previous work experience that they brought along with them. Professional migrants who migrated family as a "unit" migrated spouse and dependent children together and they made their own decision to migrate, unlike other categories of migrants who migrated from political or economic pressure. One of the important experiences of migrant families is that there are new opportunity, new lifestyle, new intimacy and companionship and new sharing of work between husbands and wives after migration. At the same time, there are losses of extended family relatives, close friends and cultural event which affects their day to day lives. There are Australian based friends who provided support in the initial period of migration but these families do not provide regular assistance or support which family relatives provided in Nepal.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/215935 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Dhungel, Basundhara |
| Publisher | University of Sydney. Social Work Social Policy and Sociology |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English, en_AU |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Dhungel, Basundhara;http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/copyright.html |
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