Abstract

Physical and symbolic aspects of bodies limit the migration trajectories of female domestic workers from a Buddhist community in coastal Sri Lanka. Government regulations and family decisions regarding women’s overseas labour draw upon and in turn influence discourses about gender, sexuality, age, health, and class. This ethnographic analysis illustrates that local norms task women with nurturing the brains of babies, preserving the chastity of teenage daughters, caring for frail elders, and preventing their working-class husbands from overindulging in liquor or having sex with other women. Successful social reproduction depends on the proper conjunctions of bodies in the extended family. Corporeal and symbolic dangers imagined to arise from women's absence fuel a national-level moral panic about female migration.

Keywords: migrant domestic workers, female overseas labour, chastity, social reproduction

About one million young Sri Lankan mothers and girls … go to the Middle East for work. Reports say most of them are required to work like slaves for about 20 hours a day … Reports indicate that thousands of Sri Lankan women and girls are sexually abused by the men in the families which they work for. In many cases there are tragedies in the families here also when the mother goes away leaving the father with young daughters to look after. Often there had [sic] been reports of sexual abuse leading to the break up [sic] of thousands of families. (Daily Mirror 2015a, A8).