Challenging Instability

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the narratives about work of different generations of women living in peripheral, rural settlements in post-Socialist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), where selective labor migration has become the general way of securing family income and often manifests the only way out of social and spatial marginality (Nagy et al. 2015). The study draws on in-depth interviews conducted with women of different ages (from 23 to 88) living in rural settlements in Hungary and Transcarpathia, Western Ukraine. Due to the economic situation of families in these regions, often women are either forced to generate income by working abroad (e.g. care workers, assembly line workers) or to stay and look after the household and relatives (mainly youth and elderly) (Erőss, Váradi and Wastl-Walter 2020; Németh and Váradi 2018). We were intrigued to explore whether and how migration dynamizes women’s understanding of ‘work’ and ‘job.’ How is the work of women recognized and valued by themselves, their family and the (local) society? Can we find shifts in the narratives of work and care between generations? We contextualize the empirical research within the macroeconomic, social, and political transformations in the region (post-Socialist transition, EU accession, 2008 global economic crisis, Euromaidan) which lead to the prevalence of (transnational) labor migration as the main or only source of women’s income (Tátrai, Erőss, Kovály 2017). Intrigued by the interconnectedness of personal life, macroeconomic and political contexts that influence women’s choices and narratives, we explore if and how those macro processes and migration influence women’s notions of ‘work’ and ‘job’ among different generations. By analyzing the experiences of three generations of women, our study extends the existing literature by adding temporality to the analysis. We interpret temporality first as the shifts in individual worknarratives of women throughout the course of their lives. Second, we illustrate how the meaning of work has significantly changed from one generation to another as the region of Central and Eastern Europe has been restructured politically and economically. The analysis of women’s work narratives allows us to examine their downward social mobility in the rural peripheries of the post-Socialist countries, where once reliable and secure jobs have become more unstable, leaving the middle-aged and younger generation in precarious working conditions in their homelands and abroad.