Women adjusting their sails: The role of motility in women's livelihood strategies in a fishing village in Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract

This article draws on research conducted in a fishing village in southern India to examine the ways in which middle-aged women in a precarious socio-economic position used mobility and immobility strategies to improve their livelihoods, both inside and outside of fisheries. Kaufmann et al.'s (2004) work on motility is applied to show how the mobility decisions and livelihood needs and plans of five women (occupying different socio-economic positions) were influenced by socio-economic structures. The study shows that the women's mobility decisions allowed them to improve their socio-economic positions and reconfigure their gendered identities in the local village, outside the fishing sector. Motility (which encapsulates socio-spatial mobility) empowered these women by allowing them to move out of the increasingly precarious small-scale fisheries industry. We argue that the concept of motility provides a useful analytical framework for understanding mobility, and we use the women's narratives to exemplify this claim.