Male labor migration and migrational aspirations among rural women in Armenia

Arusyak Sevoyan, Arizona State University

Using data from a survey of married women in rural Armenia, this paper examines whether men’s seasonal labor migration attaches their wives to their communities of residence or, on the contrary, encourages them to leave. The results from a multinomial regression model comparing wives of migrants and of non-migrants’ desires to migrate indicate that the former are significantly more likely to opt for international migration vs. not migrating and even to opt for domestic migration vs. not migrating, net of other factors. When looking at non-migrants’ wives and migrants’ wives separately, we find that the desire to migrate among former is strengthened by community economic indicators and migration-related social networks, whereas the desire to migrate among the latter is impervious to any of these factors. We see these results as indicative of the destabilizing role of labor migration and reflect on their long-term implications for the sending communities.