Rural-to-rural translocal practices: Thai women entrepreneurs in the Swedish countryside: Fid-Bau Portal

Rural-to-rural translocal practices: Thai women entrepreneurs in the Swedish countryside

Webster, Natasha A.

AbstractThai women are an increasingly present migrant group in rural Sweden. Often arriving through transnational marriage, women build lives and businesses in their respective Swedish communities while retaining ties to their rural regions of origin. This paper asks: How is translocalism produced and embedded in and from rural contexts through the workplace activities of Thai migrant women in Sweden? Using life course narratives of 11 Thai migrant women and interviews with rural actors in Thailand, this article examines the role of Thai women's businesses in creating translocal connections between distant rural spaces. It finds that women actively engage in multiple rural areas as part of their daily work and business strategies. As shown by the research, Thai women migrants make rural-to-rural connections through familial and friend networks, material goods, and engagement with local rural communities. Moreover, practices are embedded and produced, through social connections and practices, within the rural areas women are closely tied to prior to migration. This paper shows the importance of women's connections to rural localities in shaping their translocal practices. The paper argues daily connections between rural areas are closely tied to local and global gendered practices, norms, and expectations. It highlights the significance of rural networks in shaping translocal practices within migrant rural businesses.

Highlights•Thai migrant women produce translocal practices through entrepreneurialism.•Migrant small businesses are nodes for rural-to-rural relations.•Gender is a central part of daily translocalism.•Social embeddedness in multiple rural areas produce translocal practices.•Rural context and social networks shape translocal activities.