Gender and Rural Migration

Book excerpt: Gender and Rural Migration: Realities, Conflict and Change explores the intersection of gender, migration, and rurality in 21st-century Western and non-Western contexts. In a world where heightened globalization is making borders increasingly porous, rural communities form part of the migration nexus. While rural out-migration is well-documented, the gendered dynamics of rural in-migration - including return rural migration and the connectivity of rural-urban/global-local spaces - are often overlooked. In this collection, well-grounded case studies involving diverse groups of people in rural communities in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Norway, the United States, and Uzbekistan are organized into three themes: contesting rurality and belonging, women’s empowerment and social relations, and sexualities and mobilities. As demonstrated in this anthology, rural areas are contested sites among queer youth, same-sex couples, working women, young mothers, migrant farm workers, temporary foreign workers, in-migrants, and return migrants. The rich expositions of various narratives and statistical data in multidisciplinary perspectives by emerging and established scholars claim gender and rurality as nodal points in contemporary migration discourse.