Becoming a Young Migrant or Stayer Seen through the Lens of ‘Householding’: Households ‘in flux’ and the intersection of relations of gender and seniority

Abstract

This paper conceptualises migration and staying by young rural Lao in the empirical context of above replacement level fertility as manifestations of ‘householding’ that interacts with other dimensions of householding. Drawing on the framework of the inter-generational contract and by juxtaposing qualitative and quantitative data I show that becoming a young migrant and becoming or remaining a young stayer is shaped by young migrants’ situated agency. The second part of the paper departs from conventional household-based analyses and introduces the notion of ‘households in flux’. This highlights the dynamic interaction between changing external dynamics affecting rural households, and internal dynamics that constantly reconfigure the field of the household. These conceptual readjustments require going beyond inflexible notions of the household, the analytical disconnection between a focus on migrants and stayers in migration research, and static readings of relations of gender and generation. Furthermore, the paper argues that intra-household relations need to be appreciated as gendered relations of relative seniority which are in the process of householding constantly made and remade, among other things, by young dependents through ‘staying’ and ‘leaving’. These conceptual moves help explain the empirical puzzle of why in rural Lao households young women are both the ones most inclined to become a young migrant as well as most inclined to become or remain a young stayer.