MIGRATION WITH A FEMININE FACE: BREAKING THE CULTURAL MOLD.

• Author: Abusharaf, Rogaia Mustafa

Women are the homeland, and now they are here. Janice Boddy, Managing Tradition 1995:21

Travel, migration and movement invariably bring us up against the limits of our inheritance. We may choose to withdraw from this impact and only select a confirmation of our initial views. In this case whatever lies on the other side remains in the shadows, in obscurity. We could, however, opt to slacken control, to let ourselves go, and respond to the challenge of a world that is more extensive than the one we have been accustomed to inhabiting.

Iain Chambers, "Migrancy," Culture, Identity 1994:115

THE MIGRATION OF SUDANESE WOMEN has received scant attention in most studies of population movements. Even when they receive such attention, women are generally relegated to a subsidiary position as dependent variables, who only move as part of family units. Appalling, as this neglect may seem, it is to be expected. As a result of a prevalent ideology in Sudanese society, the notion of women traveling by themselves is not only close to unimaginable, it is seen as an alarming threat to the well being of the family and community. In her book Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American Women in the United States, Evelyn Shakir states "in a society where male protection and patronage were essential guarantors of a woman's respectability, to go alone among strangers--especially for young, unmarried women--was a daring if not a brazen act" (1997:27).

Sudanese attitudes toward the migration of single women should be understood in this light. An elderly woman whom I met in Khartoum expressed nostalgia for the good old days, when women were not allowed such mobility. She remarked: "Sudanese women are becoming increasingly free, they crossed these distances to go to distant countries all by themselves, I swear to Allah all of them are mataliq." The term mataliq, meaning free or unrestrained, has pejorative connotations as Sudanese people employ it to refer to uncontrolled or reckless behavior. The predicament of Sudanese women today is certainly influenced by "burdens and riddles" that have defined the position of women across the African continent. Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo describes the major factors constraining the advancement of African women today as societal patterns, western penetration and the "apparent lack of vision or courage, in the leadership of the postcolonial period"(1998:42). This factor explains much of the hapless condition in which S udanese women find themselves.

Fifty-six years ago when the Sudanese merchant marines arrived as single men and founded a seed community in North America, no one could have envisioned a stream of women migrating to far away lands without the company of their men-folk. Until recently the migration of Sudanese women by themselves was rare. The only exception was the migration of female schoolteachers to the Gulf countries, especially to the U.A.E., Yemen and the Sultanate of Oman. These "women of exceptional merit" secured contracts ranging from 3-5 years, arranged by the Sudanese Ministry of Education.

However, one of the most recent trends I encountered in the course of researching the Sudanese in the North America is the migration of women by themselves. Over the last eight years, circumstances at home and abroad have intersected to transform widely held traditions, resulting in the feminization of international migration. A clarification should be made at the outset. In this ethnography, there is no assumption of the existence of an undifferentiated, monolithic or homogenous category "Women" irrespective of their personal histories and individual experiences. The reasons that prompted Sudanese to come to the North America are many, and in order to comprehend the experiences of these women, both their pre-migratory experiences and their own personal biographies should be explored.

Just exactly, who are these women whose migration is the most talked about back home and here, in their new societies? The backgrounds of migrant women are very relevant to an understanding of their position in the host society. Undoubtedly, social and material conditions affect their roles and their daily lives. Many are restrictive to women: constraints on political participation, unemployment, discrimination, cultural conventions which enforce "keeping a low profile," economic victimization and circumscribed personal mobility. I observed the following groups that disrupt earlier patterns of Sudanese migration characterized by the preponderance of men:

First are women who are unmarried, relatively young and educated. In their demographic as well as socioeconomic characteristics, they approximate Sudanese male migrants, especially in their occupational status. The majority of women in this category indicated that they held white-collar jobs before coming to the United States and Canada. Entering this country as visitors, they subsequently decided to apply for asylum because of their well-founded fear of persecution upon return.

Second are Southern Sudanese refugee women who lived outside the Sudan before their resettlement in the United States. Although there are a large number of Sudanese women who came here and then sought asylum, Southern women came here as refugees whose claims of persecution were recognized prior to their move.

Third are women who entered the United States as green card lottery winners. I observed on numerous occasions the presence of single women who arrived in this country on the diversity visa lottery program. The Sudan is allowed nearly 5000 visas to be granted to lottery winners annually. The offices that handle applications for this program are scattered all over the Sudanese provinces. The majority of women I talked with indicated to me that they either applied from the Sudan or had relatives in the United States apply on their behalf. Their arrival occurs with predictable regularity, a reality that is corroborated by one migrant's comment. Ahmed, 35 and living in Colorado, tells friends:

I really want to get married to a woman from the Sudan. But these days everyone knows that Sudanese at home are starting to call America "Armica" -meaning to throw out-because people go home, get married, but cannot bring their wives. I decided to apply to six women from neighborhood for the lottery, any of them who wins the lottery, I am willing to marry. That way we don't have to have a trans-continental wedding.

This humorous comment, reflects the awareness of Sudanese people here of the rising numbers of single women arriving annually in the United States.

Fourth: women who are married and expecting children. They come here with the sole intention of giving birth to "American children." Rarely accompanied by their husbands, these women spare no effort in planning their visit, obtaining visas to the United States and networking with those already here to facilitate their stay until the babies are born. They return to the Sudan after accomplishing their mission.

Finally: women whose husbands are still working in the Gulf and who move with their children in search of a secure place to live. They are largely concentrated in metropolitan Toronto. Sociologist Edite Noivo, in her book Inside Ethnic Families: Three Generations of Portuguese-Canadians, depicts a similar choice among Portuguese women, who reported that a consensus was reached when certain family members had to migrate to Canada. For Sudanese women, too, separation of the family was a tactic pursued for the good of their families.

What are the reasons prompting these women to break with their traditions? The increased presence of Sudanese women migrants and exiles is dramatic evidence of this change. Edward Said has argued that "the exile knows that in a secular and contingent world, homes are always provisional. Borders and barriers that enclose us within the safety of familiar territory can also become prisons, and are often defended by reason or necessity. Exiles cross borders, break barriers of thought and experience (1990:365)." My conversations with Sudanese women were illustrative of women breaking barriers and crossing borders that once enclosed them in order to protect their well being and prosperity.

These stories demonstrate the self-reliance, resourcefulness and assertiveness of many who opted to migrate. To them, gender, like ethnicity and class, is nothing but a situational social construction that undergoes significant transformations as conditions demand. The magnitude of female migration testifies to the fact that gender is no longer a stumbling block to women's mobility. Whether they are refugees, visa lottery winners, or wives coming here without their husbands, the trend of women coming to the North America has forced Sudanese society to revisit some of the most basic organizing principles of people's lives. Today several hundred Sudanese women unaccompanied by men are spread throughout the United States while several thousands reside in Canada, with the highest concentration in Toronto.

The narratives below are representative of women's commentaries on their status within an Islamic state, and their resistance to its politics. I have chosen these stories (in addition to Hanan's) because they trace the links between the migratory decision and the larger role of the State in the reconstruction of the "Sudanese woman."

"BRAZEN ACT" OR VALIANT ACCOMPLISHMENT: THE STORY OF EIGHT REFUGEES

In their essay "Gender and Creativity in an Afro-Arab Islamic Culture: The Case of the Sudan," Sudanese psychologist Omer Khaleefa and colleagues argue that generally, African, Arab and Islamic social and cultural elements seem to affect the behavior of individuals and groups differently. These elements reinforce more freedom and independence for males than for females (1996:52).

Of relevance here to the new pattern of migration is the relegation of women to a subordinate position. In the words of Sudanese authors Magda el...