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Milk Teeth And Jet Planes: Kin Relations In Families Of Sri Lanka’S Transnational Domestic Servants, Michele Ruth Gamburd

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay examines the confluence of local and global dynamics, exploring how transnational migration affects and is affected by gender roles, kinship relations, intergenerational obligations, and ideologies of parenthood. Journeying to the Middle East repeated on two-year labor contracts, many of Sri Lanka’s migrant housemaids leave behind their husbands and children. Women’s long-term absences reorganize and disrupt widely accepted gendered attributions of parenting roles, with fathers and female relatives taking over household tasks. Migrants say that economic difficulties prompt migration, and assess commitment to kin in financial terms. The government also benefits from remittances. Nevertheless, stakeholders (villagers, politicians, and the …