Sheba Mariam George, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles, is set to release a book next month titled, When Women Come First: Gender and Class in Transnational Migration:
With a subtle yet penetrating understanding of the intricate interplay of gender, race, and class, Sheba George examines an unusual immigration pattern to analyze what happens when women who migrate before men become the breadwinners in the family. Focusing on a group of female nurses who moved from India to the United States before their husbands, she shows that this story of economic mobility and professional achievement conceals underlying conditions of upheaval not only in the families and immigrant community but also in the sending community in India. This richly textured and impeccably researched study deftly illustrates the complex reconfigurations of gender and class relations concealed behind a quintessential American success story.
When Women Come First explains how men who lost social status in the immigration process attempted to reclaim ground by creating new roles for themselves in their church. Ironically, they were stigmatized by other upper class immigrants as men who needed to “play in the church” because the “nurses were the bosses” in their homes. At the same time, the nurses were stigmatized as lower class, sexually loose women with too much independence. George’s absorbing story of how these women and men negotiate this complicated network provides a groundbreaking perspective on the shifting interactions of two nations and two cultures.
I think this might be a good stocking stuffer during Christmas for many Mallu moms. Apparently it wouldn’t be a good idea to let any men in the house see it though. You know, bruised egos and all.
According to Sheba George, the nursing profession is often viewed in India as a dirty occupation for women, partly because it involves touching unknown men. It is a well-paid occupation, however, and a current worldwide shortage of nurses makes it relatively easy for them to emigrate, bringing their families with them. However, their husbands are caught in a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, a working wife brings certain economic benefits. On the other, she breaks all conventions of the man being the breadwinner and unquestioned head of the household. Many of these men once held respected professional jobs in India, but are now relegated to laboring in blue-collar jobs, looking after the kids, and cleaning the house. To bolster their self-esteem, they take on leadership positions in church-going as far as to set up a new congregation if necessary.
As George explains: Whereas with most other Asian Indian groups, the men immigrate first, in the case of Kerala Christians, female nurses have come first and only later sponsored husbands and families. In the process they became the uncontested breadwinners while the men became downwardly mobile, both economically and socially resulting in drastic changes in gender relations in their households.
Just recently The EB-3 amendment was incorporated into the The Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief Act, 2005, which was recently signed by President Bush. The EB-3 act makes it possible to utilize unused EB-3 visas from 2001 to 2004 and dedicate half of them to help resolve the nursing shortage, mostly be allowing the recruitment of nurses from India and the Philippines.
