3 - Situating Women and Their Travel

Summary

Women and travel within the literature

This chapter provides a context for discussion of women's travel by firstly identifying several strands of literature where issues of women and travel are discussed. The link between space, women's travel, and subjectivity is then explored. Secondly, I draw on social analysis and ethnographic work on localities in East Nusa Tenggara and also on collective thought in folk narratives to situate women and their travel within the local socio-cultural context. I am interested in the ways that culture, as a web of socially negotiated meanings, is embedded in a process of women's mobility. Mobility is a way in which women participate in the dynamic processes of reworking both the meanings of place and their own identities (Marcus and Fisher 1986; Silvey and Lawson 1999, pp. 124–125).

Current studies on travel and travellers extend to a wide range of spatial practices. Movements of people in diaspora, exile, transnational and inter- and intra-regional migrations, global tourism, and other flows have been classical research projects in geography. The spatial pattern associated with the social and cultural condition of post-modernity in which people depart from (a notion of) a place of origin, has become increasingly complex, thus harder to describe and analyse (Appadurai 1991; Siikala 2001, p. 1).

The vast amount of research on people's mobility reflects the significance of movements for existence. The rich migration literature encompasses a range of theoretical perspectives and scales of analysis. A systematic review of migration research produced by Silvey and Lawson (1999) shows a diversity of approaches within the migration field. Migration has been shown as a powerful force affecting identities in the context of societies such as Irish, Italian, Mexican, and Caribbean (Walter 1997; Grimes 1998; Webster 1998; Fortier 2000). This literature, located at the intersections of cross-cultural studies, diaspora studies, and gender studies, provides theoretical debates on identity in relation to space. A smaller but increasing number of more recent works on gender and contemporary migration, in which my work is positioned, pay attention to women's identities and subject positions (see, for example, Romero 1992; Constable 1997; Kofman and England 1997; Barbič and Miklavčič-Brezigar 1999; Cox 1999; Gamburd 2000; Parrenas 2001; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001; Silvey 2000, 2001).

Migration research employing political and economic frames nevertheless dominates the work on people's mobility.