Georgian women hoping to migrate to the USA to work
Georgians are very proud of the fact that mothers are highly valued and respected in the Georgian culture. The Georgian mother or “deda” is viewed as a self-sacrificing individual who is always willing and ready to sacrifice herself for the needs of her children. In recent years, however, some Georgian mothers have taken these traditional roles to a whole new level: More and more are migrating to distant lands in order to financially support their adult children through remittances.
The high demand for domestic caregivers in the developed world has further incentivized many Georgian women to migrate. Naila Kabeer refers to this idea of gendered nature of globalization in her article, “Marriage, Motherhood and Masculinity in the Global Economy: Reconfigurations of Personal and Economic Life.” Many are, thus, converting their traditional nurturing roles in the heavily patriarchal Georgian society into marketable skills caring for the elderly and for young children in the US or Western Europe.
