ABSTRACT
I have pointed out earlier that the women in my study were living through transformative times, where an unprecedented expansion of job opportunities has drawn women and men from the rural hinterland to the urban centres. Even though the waves of the Asian economic crisis hit Kuala Lumpur badly, only ripples reached the shores of Sarawak. Since fieldwork in 1997, none of the women or their spouses have lost their jobs or had to return to eke out a living from the land. Although the Sarawak state government prioritises research on economic growth and rural development, no study has been conducted on the experiences of rural migrant women in the city. Meanwhile, research by local and foreign scholars was often fuelled by anxieties that cultural mores in rural villages were being lost in the face of ever engulfing market forces. Thus, anthropological work in Sarawak has often been frenzied documentation of soon to-be-lost oral traditions and the customs and practices of remote ethnic communities. It was under such a research climate at home that I embarked on my urban study of these women who were confronting dramatic changes between their mothers’ generation and theirs.
