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This article considers the current age and gender discriminatory migration laws in Nepal in their historical and socio-cultural context. Drawing on eight months of field- work and data collected from both migrants and migration policymakers I ask, What are the consequences of discriminatory laws on young Nepali women’s migration experiences? And why do gender and age discriminatory laws and policies persist in light of evidence that they may actually endanger migrants? I posit that historically dominant Hindu gender norms provide the basis for the paternalistic migration laws currently in place. I argue that age and gender discriminatory migration policies are rooted in patriarchal concern for women’s ijaat (social honour) and sexual purity. The result of discriminatory law is not a reduction in migration but an increase in irregular and illegal migration that exacerbates women labour migrants’ vulnerability to a variety of abuses. I conclude that examining discriminatory migration laws with an intersectional lens raises interesting possibilities for theorizing how and why these ineffectual laws persist.

In 2006, the Nepali government made it feasible for women to pass citizenship onto their children. In 2015, a new constitution overrode these gains and again made it impossible to grant citizenship through the maternal line alone. Nepal's current gender-discriminatory citizenship laws are rooted in historical social and geopolitical tensions with India, especially nationalistic fears about Indian encroachment into Nepali territory and politics. This article argues that resurgent resistance to equitable citizenship laws does not simply reflect hegemonic Hindu patriarchal norms. This resistance is also a reactive stance against Indian influence as embodied by the real and potential coupling of Nepali women and Indian men whose children would further “Indianize” Nepal. This article suggests that restricting Nepali women's right to pass citizenship is a form of policing the boundaries of the state body via policing women's bodies, especially their reproductive capabilities.

In this article, I draw upon interviews with 30 Nepali returned women migrant workers to elucidate how the gendered institutional logics of both the Nepali state and for-profit manpower companies synergistically function to constrain women’s mobility. In particular, I focus on women migrant workers who migrate illegally to Gulf countries to work as domestic laborers, as this constitutes one of the largest channels of women’s labor migration from Nepal. To illuminate the particulars of Nepali women migrant workers’ experiences, I employ two theoretical frameworks, both developed by feminist political economists within the context of feminized workplaces broadly and global factory floors specifically. The first framework presents a logic of female disposability as shaping the feminized workforce of the global South. The second framework presents a logic of gendered control as doing the same. In this article, I show how these dual logics can be applied to women’s foreign labor migration in Nepal, and argue that these logics operate simultaneously through the various institutions that Nepali women navigate during migration. The Nepali case shows how both logics serve ultimately to limit women’s mobility and bolster the authority of institutions and organizations historically controlled by men—for example, the family, the state, transnational corporations—over women migrants. By bringing these two logics to bear on a case of women domestic workers’ migration from the global South, this article offers new insights into the functioning of institutions central to this large-scale, transnational movement of people.

This article considers the working lives of women who drive electric rickshaws, known as tempos, in Kathmandu, Nepal. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the author examines drivers' precarious working conditions and the strategies they use in an effort to secure better conditions and job security. This case study illuminates the particulars of women tempo drivers' day-to-day experiences and also speaks to larger debates in feminist political economy surrounding women's entrance into the paid labour force, especially in South Asia. Women drivers provide a compelling example of how socio-economically disadvantaged women in industrializing and urbanizing cities of the global South find ways to create and protect spaces of dignified work and worker solidarity despite myriad challenges. Evidence from the research suggests that both informal and more formalized coping and resistance strategies are important mechanisms through which women seek to change the terms of their labour. Support for the research was provided by a US Student Fulbright, The University of Colorado at Boulder and California State University, Long Beach. The author would like to thank Kailash Rai and the journal's referees for their input and assistance.1. The exact date is debated, with a few individual women owning and driving tempos in the late 1980s. However, women entered the profession in greater numbers in the 1990s. Development and Change 51(3): 874-894.