Contenu du sommaire : Travail, femmes et migrations dans les suds

European Transmigrations of Balkanian and Caucasian Sex Workers, Escorted by Female Relatives. The globalised criminal economy of women and drug trafficking draws intercontinental circulatory territories which inextricably mix economic and emotional exchanges. The author has been following one of these circulations for four years ; it is shaped as a women's sex labour transmigration from the Balkans and Caucasia to Southern Italy, the Spanish Levant, routes through France, and finally permissive Northern European nations, before returning to where they started their journey. Their verbatim allows us to understand that each of these stops, or stages, works as a “moral area” (R. E. Park) which mixes migrant population and various illicit trades, underground and official transactions, local patronage policies and determined mafia-related strategies.

A Profession in Order to Leave : Migration of Keralese Nurses (South India). Since the end of the 70s, a large number of Indian nurses have worked in the Gulf countries. Most of them come from Kerala, a small Southern state. After describing the strategies that these migrants and their family have developed over the course of time, this paper analyzes the particularities of migration to the Gulf, compared to migration to Western countries (also recruiters of Indian nurses). Lastly, it examines the evolution of these migrants' status – as professionals and as women – in their own country.

Schooling for Care : The « Othering » of Filipina Domestic Workers. While there has been extensive research focusing mainly on the demand for domestic workers overseas, little research has been done on the “supply-side” in the Philippines. This article aims to fill this gap, by emphasizing how Filipina domestic workers bound for various countries in the global south are “produced” through labor-brokering practices in the Philippines. More specifically, it examines the techniques and procedures of the Philippine state and agencies to recruit, train and promote a certain idea of what it means to be a “Filipina domestic worker”. It also points out how social and symbolic boundaries produce otherness through training and selection processes. Finally, it emphasizes the historical dynamics underlying the production of otherness and the intersectionality of power relationship as sex, class, race.

Cross-border Trade and Women's Migration between the two Congos. This paper highlights the migration conditions of women practicing cross-border trading between Kinshasa and Brazzaville. The aim is to analyse how migratory strategies, trade obligations and love relationships articulate in these women's career-paths. Although this women's migration between the two cities is of a commuting type, it sometimes entails a temporary settling period in Brazzaville which requires them to do casual jobs or even “prostitution”. Our interpretation is that, for these women, cross-border trading is an opportunity to rewrite the rules governing gender relations.

Yakaar, Dakar-Dubai-Guangzhou : The Trajectory of Senegalese Women Traders. In the 1970s the role of women in West African trade started to raise some interest, with the nana Benz in Lome and the driankes in Dakar. In Senegal, the driankes became renowned for travelling to East Asian cities and Dubai to obtain supplies of goods to be sold in the local market. With the East Asian crisis and the rise of China as the world factory, cities in Guangzhou and, recently, in Yiwu have started to attract African migrants and traders. And women have followed this wave.

Work on the Street : Daily Experiences of Bolivian Peddlers in the Streets of Buenos Aires. The aim of this article is to show, from the case of Bolivian workers who are employed in the ambulant sale of fruit and vegetables in the City of Buenos Aires, the social experiences of Bolivian women who migrate to Argentina for work. After a brief historical presentation of Bolivian migrations to Argentina, whose family character we recall, we propose to analyze their experiences and perceptions, focusing on aspects such as : the role of social networks in getting established in the host country, what it means “to be a woman migrant and peddler”, the relations that they establish in the work area and at home, and the roles that they take on in relation to the care of children and family in general.

Las Marías in Mexico City : Precarious Street Selling Analyzed through Mobility, Gender and Ethnicity. In Mexican cities, indigenous migrant women continue to work in very precarious forms of street selling, although these are no longer profitable and generate a strong stigma. Based on an ethnographic survey, this article examines how street selling relates to family and community organization, analyzing interethnic relations, gender and mobility patterns. It proves that the marginal insertion of indigenous women in street selling derives not only from the reproduction of social hierarchies and from gendered and ethnicized representations of indigenous migrants, but also reflects the agency of the sellers and the construction of a collective identity specific to the indigenous migrant group.

The Condition of Migrant Women Employed as Domestic Workers. From Beginners to Professionals, Trajectories of Domestic Workers in Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia). Rural women who migrate from the Bolivian Andes to Santa Cruz and find a job as a domestic worker in the city have to learn their way in a new social and professional context and master the techniques of their new condition. These Indian women, coming from Quechua or Aymara communities, are submitted to several forms of social, gendered and ethnic domination. Their “domestic condition” involves multiple forms of control and limited possibilities of circulation. These women nonetheless manage to elaborate professional and migratory strategies, and their trajectories appear to be diverse. Some of them try to professionalize their domestic labour and become cooks or nannies. Others go to work as domestic workers abroad, mainly in Argentina or in Spain.

The Indigenous Face of Domesticity : Domestic Service and Ethnicity in Monterrey, Mexico. In this article I analyze the importance of ethnicity in domestic service, an employment sector where indigenous people are overrepresented, and how socio-cultural differences between ethnic groups organize the labor market and relationships between employers and employees. Taking the city of Monterrey – the third largest city in Mexico – as an ethnographic setting and based on interviews conducted with employers and employment agencies, I analyze the importance that employers attribute to regional and ethnic origin to assess a priori the capacity of domestic staff for work. The study shows that the representations inherent in this classificatory exercise contribute to the ethnicization of socio-cultural networks and to the reaffirmation of the boundaries between domestic workers and those they serve, between indigenous people and Creoles, the founding couple of Mexican national identity.

Reforms of Water Services in Burkina Faso : Women's Participation Remains in Question. Since 2000, the government of Burkina Faso has adopted a reform of the system of management of water infrastructure that supplies drinking water to rural and semi-urban areas. The new frameworks prescribed in this context aim in particular to institutionalize the accountability of the system's users through associations of water users. In theory, diversity and gender parity are promoted in the composition of these associations. They are presented as principles that limit the exclusion of women from this new social and political space, and that allow women to legitimately access positions of decision-making. This article shows that these principles collide with gender norms, and that as such, women remain confined to subordinate roles within these new associations.

Wage-Labor Nexus and Economic Regulation in Algeria. This article looks at the characterization of the wage-labor nexus established in favor of the industrialization project engaged by Algeria in the 70s, and the changes which occurred in the configuration of wage-labor relationships as a result of the liberal reforms introduced since the early 90s. Finally, we end the analysis by questioning the status currently given to the wage-labor nexus as a constituent element of the mode of regulation of the economy as a whole.