Kachin Refugee Women's Work Identity: Narratives In Transition

Abstract

My work focuses on the Kachin women's experiences of work in the American workforce in comparison to their experience of work in Burma. Through in-depth interviews with twelve Kachin women in the North Texas area, I analyze the dynamics of migration and work at the intersection of gender and class. Their experiences are both shaped by their prior middle-class status of gendered spheres of paid and unpaid work and their work experiences and expectations in America. Subsequently, they mostly draw from homeland ideas of gendered ideologies because these ideals create and enhance both women's gender and class-statuses in Burma. The structure of work itself requires women to renegotiate how they will perform gender appropriately in the new context. Kachin women often re-establish prior views of gendered worlds as a way to continue gender status; although they negotiate the way they perform these roles in different ways. Class status is also framed in a gendered manner of showing good manners by showing work as a way to take care of their family and bolster their status via work earnings. As gender and class status revolved around showing good manners in the home, Kachin working women in America have to re-map other avenues based on their current context. This often requires expanding prior conceptions of appropriate gender and class doings.