Transnational Labour Migration and the place of Reproductive Labour: Trailing Wives and Community Support in Boddington

Abstract

This article addresses the need for critical attention to families and place in the labour migration literature. Through examination of the experiences of trailing wives, it highlights the interconnected roles of state regulation, industry practice and destination communities in the gendering of transnational labour migration. Specifically, we attend to the experiences of trailing wives accompanying partners who migrated to Boddington in rural Western Australia to take up skilled work in the nearby gold mine, and incorporate (inter) related perspectives of local community members, in particular the provision of substantive migrant support by a key local figure. This research extends the labour migration literature in two ways. First, it develops understandings of how transnational labour migration fortifies gendered divisions of reproductive labour and, importantly, can encompass unpaid reproductive labour in local communities. Second, this article foregrounds the ways in which complex configurations of unpaid and paid reproductive labour – in households, community spaces and work-camp – underwrite economic globalization.