Tajik Women in Labor Migration: A Forced Survival Tactic or Choice of Free Women?

Abstract

In Tajikistan of the last decades, there has been observed a growth of spatial mobility of women, the transborder labor migration being one of the common forms of the latter. What has been conducive to the increase in numbers of women in labor migration are, on the one hand, objective cause (poverty, unemployment, lack of social support from the state) that generate conditions pushing both women and men toward migration; on the other, subjective reasons (changing needs, interests, and aspirations of the participants in the migration process themselves). The weakening of the traditional
gender roles in Tajik families is of importance as well: the man becomes incapable of performing the part of a fullfl edged breadwinner and head of the family, thus making the woman take of this role and enter the labor market both in and outside the country.