Research Projects
I first began field-based interview research in rural Bangladesh in 2010 and am interested in the ambivalent effects of economic change on women and girls.
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My first project looked at son preference, daughter valuation, and filial responsibility amid male labor migration in the villages around Matlab, Bangladesh.
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My second project examines the spread of export-oriented production into rural Bangladesh and the impact it has on land, women's labor, and the family.
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Recently, I have received funding from the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies to collect data on women who have migrated from Bangladesh to Mauritius in search of work in garment factories abroad.
All images above belong to Roslyn Schoen.
Women and
Rural Industrialization
In 2017, I completed two months of fieldwork exploring local discourses around women’s entrance into the formal labor sectors. Though my initial questions focused on how and why women might resist participation in wage labor, I found that a garment factory had recently opened in the area and, among some families, ideas about daughters' filial responsibilities have shifted in response. Support for data collection came from a research grant from the College of Arts & Sciences at my university.
Bangladeshi Labor Migrants in Mauritius
This project examines the migration of Bangladeshi women abroad to work in export-oriented garment production in Mauritius in order to expand on feminist theories of gender and supply chain capitalism. While the existence of gendered production regimes in the Global South is well-documented, this project incorporates workers’ status as foreign migrant others into our understanding of supply chain capitalism by interrogating the existence of gendered migrant production regimes.
