Resilience of Gendered Spheres in Transnational Migration: An Interpretive Book Review of Sheba Mariam George’s When Women Come First: Gender and Class in Transnational Migration

Authors

Jose Luis Calderon, Nova Southeastern UniversityFollow

Abstract

Dr. Sheba George’s ethnographic study based using participant observation and purposive sampling and an insider transnational journey to examine changes in family and social roles that result when nurses from Kerala, India immigrate to the US ahead of their husbands. The author concludes that the economic and political gain immigration affords nurses does not translate into enhanced social status for their family in India or for their husbands in the US when they undergo gender transferral to homemaker. This transference causes a shift in gender structure from the home to the community, in this case the church as a way of counteracting the social emasculation Kerali men experience. This review cross culturally examines the resilience of patriarchal cultural mores and gender roles when Kerali and Puerto Rican immigrant men face the prospect of social emasculation; Puerto Ricans are examined from an insiders perspective.

Keywords

Participant observation, cross-cultural comparison, transnational migration, patriarchal cultural mores

Author Bio(s)

Dr. Calderón received a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University at Albany, NY and an MD from Harvard Medical School. He trained in Family Medicine at the State University of New York’s Brooklyn Health Sciences Center and practiced in underserved Latino and African-American communities in NYC until training in Neurology at New York University-Bellevue Hospital Medical Center. José completed a summer graduate fellowship in Epidemiology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University and a fellowship in Health Services Research with the Health Services Research Institute, AAMC, in Washington D.C. Currently, Dr. Calderón is Associate Professor, College of Pharmacy, Nova Southeastern University, and Associate Professor at the Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science, Los Angeles. He can be reached at College of Pharmacy, Nova Southeastern University, 3200 South University Drive, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33328-2018; Voice: 954262-1296; Fax: 954-262- 2278; Email: josecald@nova.edu

Publication Date

5-4-2009

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2009.2836

Recommended APA Citation

Calderon, J. L. (2009). Resilience of Gendered Spheres in Transnational Migration: An Interpretive Book Review of Sheba Mariam George’s When Women Come First: Gender and Class in Transnational Migration. The Qualitative Report, 14(1), 105-109. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2009.2836

Comments

Original volume and issue number from The Qualitative Weekly, an offshoot publication of The Qualitative Report which has been folded into the primary journal: Volume 2, Issue 18