Lived Experiences and Challenges of Women International Migrants from Darjeeling District: An Empirical Study

The expansion of global markets and the concomitant socio-economic transformations in recent decades have integrated women as active agents in the discourse of migration in contemporary era. The pervasive assumption that the international migrant is a young, economically motivated male is overshadowed with the increased participation of women migrants in both national and the international level (Pedraza, 1991). The integration of women as anactive agents in the migration history is a resultant effect of the globalization process (Upreti, 2015), fledgling industrialization, expansion of job opportunities in business, health, education and service economy for women migrants in developed countries (Yamanaka and Piper, 2005) thus popularizing the notion of feminization of migration. In recent times, outmigration from Darjeeling district has been a burning issue, showing a significant rise of migrants. There has been a dynamic flow of women migration for work purposes in skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled sectors. Varied factors such as the outgrowth of population, lack of employment opportunities, absence of private sectors, the closure of tea industries etc. in the hills has stagnated the socio-economic development of the region, thereby enforcing women to migrate in foreign countries. Thus, keeping in mind the opportunities migration bring forth into the lives of migrants, it comes with multiple challenges and repercussions, especially for female migrants who majorly has been working in unskilled or unregulated sectors of the economy, one of which is the domestic sector.