Published In
General Anthropology
Document Type
Pre-Print
Publication Date
9-1-2025
Subjects
Migration -- Sri Lanka
Abstract
Why might three relatively well-off, middle-class, young adults from Sri Lanka chose to leave their parents and their village to emigrate to Australia and Italy? Why would these men and women give up promising careers and comfortable homes to start over elsewhere and endure the hardship of an immigrant’s deskilled and displaced life? To understand their decisions, I rely on anthropology’s holistic perspective to help me stitch together intimate details about family choices within a context of global economic structures and national politics. I have done ethnographic research in the village that I call “Naeaegama” since 1992. I have studied labor migration from Sri Lanka to the Persian Gulf, where many women went to work as “housemaids” in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates.
I have also written about aging and care work. When Sri Lanka dissolved into an economic crisis in early 2022, I followed the news with shock and sorrow. Hundreds of thousands of people left the country, in new patterns, with new destinations, with wide-ranging implications for local families, especially older adults. The situation illustrates how kin groups adapt and help members respond to thorny circumstances. Let’s look at three of their stories.
Rights
Copyright (c) 2025 The Authors
DOI
10.1111/gena.70004
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/44215
Citation Details
Published as: Gamburd, M. R. (2025). “Migration craziness!” Financial Turbulence and Transnational Families in Sri Lanka. General Anthropology, 32(2), 15–20. Portico.
Description
This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published as: “Migration craziness!” Financial Turbulence and Transnational Families in Sri Lanka. General Anthropology, 32(2), 15–20. Portico.