Gendered Practices of Remittances in Bangladesh: A Poststructuralist Perspective

This paper offers a gendered analysis of remittance behaviour in households that depend on overseas earnings. Applying a post-structuralist conceptualisation of gender as 'performativity' to a migrant community in Bangladesh, it discovers the performances of various subject positions adopted by males and females as remitters, receivers, providers and managers. While these fluid subjectivities are in opposition to prevailing gender norms, which see men as the providers and women as the carers of the household, the paper depicts the multiple ways in which men and women conform to and negotiate with these norms and thus normalise their position.