Abstract
European Union (EU) enlargement and the later shaping of its relationships with its new Eastern neighbours through the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) have had a significant impact on communities outside the EU’s borders. As the EU has sought to control flows of people, money and goods through these new borders, it has also become a destination for irregular migrants and small-scale traders from its eastern neighbours. This article draws upon participant observation in one such community in western Ukraine, where continuing levels of high unemployment and low wages and pensions drive dependence on flows of remittances from migrants to southern Europe, but also revenues from small-scale trade with neighbouring EU members, such as Romania. New forms of transnational mobility have emerged, which are not gender-neutral. The article asserts that, while hegemonic masculinities exist in both Ukrainian and Romanian communities, gender relations in Romania are restricted by sexualised discourses. As male and female Ukrainian traders interact with Romanian border officials and local distributors and intermediaries, hegemonic masculinities in Ukraine are re-affirmed and female traders are unable to advance and develop their trade in the same way as their male counterparts. In doing so, the article expands research on gender and transnationalism in post-enlargement Europe beyond migration and demonstrates not only how encounters at the EU’s borders are shaping gender relations in communities outside the EU, but that involvement in cross-border economic activities is determined by the gendered discourses and performance that take place at the border.
Introduction
‘You know in Ceausescu’s time there were no lights there. It was completely dark, just like it is here now. Oh, how things have changed’ (Liuba, 1 Diyalivtsi, 2 January 2008). Prior to 1991, Romania and the communities south of the nearby border had not been visible to the people of Diyalivtsi, a village in Ukraine. This lack of visibility was both physical, in terms of the lack of lights described by Liuba, but also symbolic in terms of local consciousness and understanding. As citizens of the Soviet Union, the villagers of Diyalivtsi enjoyed a standard of living beyond that of their neighbours to the south. Romania’s economy had been faltering since the late 1970s because of the burden of overseas debt repayments, and this situation worsened throughout the 1980s, as basic goods and services were in shorter supply than much of the rest of the bloc (Kligman, 1992). This has primarily been linked to Ceausescu’s pursuit of ‘socialism in one country’, which sought to break Romanian ties with and dependence on Moscow (Stan and Turcescu, 2000). Therefore, not only was travel to Romania officially restricted, but it also remained undesirable and unnecessary from the point of view of those on the Soviet side of the border.
However, the sweeping changes in political and economic context in the region since 1989/1991 have not only opened the border in administrative terms; they have also created the conditions for a change in fortunes for the borderlands’ populace. This ‘opening up’ has become increasingly uneven, with Romania’s European Union (EU) accession guaranteeing visa-free entry for its citizens into Ukraine, while Ukrainians continue to require a visa to enter neighbouring Romania. At the same time, persistently high levels of unemployment in rural areas of western Ukraine have led to increasing dependence on informal streams of income (Cassidy, 2011). In the community of Diyalivtsi, less than 1km from the Romanian border and just 5km from the region’s major road border crossing with Romania, less than one person per household is in formal employment. 3 Pension rates and other forms of assistance through the redistributive economy are too low to ensure household reproduction. As with many areas in western Ukraine (Dickinson, 2005; Williams and Balaz, 2002 on the Zakarpats’ka region) the community has looked to migrant labour to other countries to provide income and more recently, as consumer prices have increased across the border in Romania beyond levels in Ukraine, many households have also viewed cross-border small trading (CBST), particularly of cigarettes, to nearby settlements in Romania, as a means to further enhance incomes and sustain and reproduce multi-generational households.
In this article, I explore the impact of transnational mobility associated with the growth of these remittance and cross-border economies since 1989 on gender relations and the gendering of economic activity in rural western Ukraine. While the feminisation of migration from Ukraine has been widely covered in the academic literature and links to research on gender and migration in the Global South (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002; McIlwaine, 2010), research on CBST has engaged less rigorously with questions of gender (Morokvasic, 2004; Williams and Balaz, 2002). The material presented here is drawn from 17 months of participant observation in the Ukrainian–Romanian borderlands from September 2007 to January 2009 and several subsequent trips to the region. 4 Nine months were spent to the north of the border in the Chernivets’ka region of Ukraine, three months living in the regional administrative capital, Chernivtsi, and then six months in the village of Diyalivtsi. The remaining fieldwork was carried out in a village in Romania, located just 12km from Diyalivtsi, which I have named Gorbanita. While based in this village, I made several return trips across the border and I also observed traders by travelling with them by car through the local border crossing on more than 30 occasions during this period.
Diyalivtsi: a Ukrainian border village 5
Diyalivtsi had an official population of 929, 6 of whom 449 or 48.33% were men and 480 or 51.67% were women. Local people suggested that the number of people actually resident in the village during the fieldwork period 7 was likely to be lower, around 600, because of the large numbers of overseas migrant workers. This was also confirmed through ethnographic observation of the number of vacant dwellings within the village and by conversations with villagers who stated that a member of their household was working overseas.
The village experienced a drop in the number of dwellings between 2001 and 2005; however, the number of people possessing shares in commercial agricultural land and the total land belonging to villagers increased (Table 1). Between 2001 and 2005, the percentage of land used for buildings and accommodation and for commercial crop production increased, with land used for subsistence farming falling. The reasons for this fall in household agricultural production relate to the low status of agricultural work (Cassidy, 2011), an increase in the leasing of land to a commercial farmer from another Ukrainian region, but also a growth in female migration to southern Europe and more recently increasing opportunities for trade to Romania. 9 Remittances were evident in the increase in land being used for buildings, reflecting a growing trend to build large, new houses and also the development of commerce as new businesses were established, including a shop, bar and sauna on the edge of the village and a new bar and restaurant in the centre of the village. Financing for these ventures came originally from migrant worker remittances but increasingly were linked to CBST.
Changes in land use in Diyalivtsi 2001–2005
Source: Village council statistical data. 8
This replaced work from the Soviet era, which had predominantly been on the collective farm and in factories in nearby towns. Six or seven full buses 10 were said to have left the village every day to transport people to these factories, which were predominantly engaged in the production of furniture and construction materials, for which wood was often sourced from local forests. 11 By 2008, just one bus a day left for a nearby furniture factory, and only two villagers appeared to use it. Official statistics suggested that the village had a working population of just 280, which is less than one person per household. 12
In addition to formal employment, income in the households of Diyalivtsi was generated from four main sources:
1) state benefits, including pensions, sickness and disability benefits and child allowances;
2) informal/undeclared work, primarily in agriculture locally, particularly during planting and harvesting seasons;
3) remittances from migrant workers, predominantly working illegally in Italy; 13
4) CBST to Romania.
Furthermore, a number of non-market economic practices were common in the village, including domestic food production (self-provisioning) (Caldwell, 2004), barter and exchange (of labour, goods and services). The majority of households employed a range of practices (Pavlovskaya, 2004; Stenning et al., 2010).
Gorbanita: a Romanian borderlands village
Although data of equivalent detail are not available for the village in Romania upon which this article is based, it is important to give a broad introduction to the fieldwork site, as it provides the context to the discussion of the conditions found at Romanian customs and passport control. Gorbanita was located approximately 9km from the border town and 10km from the border crossing itself. The village formed part of a commune with a larger neighbouring village, which was 2km away. According to the 2002 Romanian census, 14 the total population of Gorbanita and its neighbouring village saw a decrease of around 5% in the period between the censuses of 1992 and 2002, having shown a population increase in the period since 1977. This compares with a population decrease of 2% for the county as a whole and an increase of just over 1% in rural areas of the county. However, it should be noted that, in the period since 2002, it is likely that the village has experienced a further decline in population, due to greater migration resulting from Romania’s EU membership. Census data for the village are available only combined with those of the larger neighbouring settlement but local people estimated the current village population at around 380.
The area in which the village was located was primarily seen as an ethnic Ukrainian zone by people in the local area, and large numbers of the older people spoke primarily in Ukrainian/Ruthenian 15 amongst themselves. Many younger people were able to converse in the village dialect, but few spoke Ruthenian as their mother tongue, unlike young people in some of the neighbouring settlements. 16 The larger neighbouring village, where the village council was based, was almost exclusively Romanian-speaking and, when people from Gorbanita visited the neighbouring village for the local market or other festivities, people from the neighbouring settlement would often comment that ‘the Russians are coming’. According to the 2002 Romanian census, just 0.78% or 21 people in the commune as a whole declared themselves to be of an ethnicity other than Romanian; all of these were Ukrainians/Ruthenians. 17
Gorbanita was home primarily to an ageing population, whose children and grandchildren lived in urban areas, stretching from the local towns near the border on to Suceava and also further away in Bucharest. In addition, many inhabitants had younger relatives overseas engaged in migrant work in Western European countries, including Italy, France and the UK. Residents of the village were primarily engaged in subsistence agriculture, 18 although a small number of inhabitants did work in the nearby border town and Suceava. The active working population of the commune was just 30.51% or 822 people in 2002, compared with 64.62% of the population of the county and 63.06% in rural areas. The majority of the economically active population were men; 73.36% and 90.02% were currently employed. Unemployment amongst women stood at 10.50% and amongst men at 9.78%. This compares with an average in rural areas of the county of 6.56% for men and 6.97% for women. Many pensioners had returned to the village on retirement from local towns, as they were unable to maintain homes in urban settlements on their small pensions. 19 The majority of these people had been employed in the towns during the socialist era and their children and grandchildren remained in these urban settlements, coming to the village on a regular basis to assist their elderly relatives in maintaining their crops and homes.
In addition to formal employment, income in the households of Gorbanita was generated from three main sources:
1) state benefits, including pensions, sickness and disability benefits and child allowances;
2) informal/undeclared work, primarily in agriculture locally, particularly during planting and harvesting seasons;
3) remittances from migrant workers, primarily working in Italy, France and the UK.
Almost all households were engaged in small-scale subsistence farming. There was some level of mechanisation in agriculture and most people owned tractors or hired local proprietors to assist them in farming their smallholdings. Two households in the village operated as distributors of goods from across the border in Ukraine. The owner of the village shop also received deliveries of goods from Ukraine, which included cigarettes, alcohol and matches. The village had become increasingly dependent on the supply of goods from across the border, which could also be purchased through Ukrainian traders at the weekly markets in the neighbouring villages and towns or directly through cross-border shopping trips to Ukraine. However, cross-border consumption was limited by transport, with the majority of trips being made via relatives in nearby towns or by migrant workers during return visits to the village. Therefore, there were some notable differences in economic activity in Gorbanita and Diyalivtsi, with much greater engagement in small-scale agriculture in Romania and far fewer households involved in cross-border economic activities as a means for generating income. Nonetheless, dependence upon goods from CBST was evident throughout the community and the following section explores the literature on cross-border economies in the EU’s borderlands.
Cross-border economies in the European Union’s post-enlargement borderlands
EU enlargement and more recently the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) have redefined the geopolitics of Europe, placing Ukraine at the forefront of non-accession integration (Casas-Cortes et al., 2013) and the emergence of what has been termed the ‘golden curtain’ (Allina-Pisano, 2009). Border security has been central to EU policy, particularly following enlargement and the expansion of the Schengen zone, as the EU has attempted to control flows of people and money across its borders. While harmonisation policies create opportunities for formal import/export transactions, borders have also become sites of informal trade, with profits grounded in avoidance of formal payments for permits, licences, taxes and duties. In this case, formal payments are replaced by much lower payments of informal bribes to customs and border officials, which make small-scale trading profitable (Cassidy, 2011). Economic activity at borders is the result of the arbitrage opportunities created by the border itself (Altvater, 1998). This informal trade contributes not only to the local economy but to national and international trade, through circulating commodities and monies back into formal enterprises. Thus, cross-border economies are ‘relational’ to both formal and informal economic practices (Smith and Stenning, 2006) and have come to be viewed not only as a ‘survival strategy’ for households but as an ‘enduring alternative site of economic activity’ (Williams and Balaž, 2002: 324).
Therefore, research into cross-border economies can be seen to be nestled within the work on the ‘proliferative’ (Leyshon et al., 2003), ‘multiple’ (Pavlovskaya, 2004) and ‘multicoloured’ (Sik, 1994) economies of post-socialism. This large body of literature has drawn on work about economies in everyday life (Lee, 2006), diverse economies (Gibson-Graham, 1996, 2008) and the informal economy (Hart, 1973, 2005), to highlight the breadth of economic activities in which post-socialist households engage in order to ensure their reproduction (Stenning et al., 2010). Contained within cross-border research are references to open-air markets, cross-border consumption and CBST (Iglicka, 1999; Sik and Wallace, 1999; Sword, 1999). Many of these studies emphasise the variability of these practices over time, seeing them as fluid and embedded in state socialism (Williams and Balaz, 2002). While CBST was already observed to be in decline by the late 1990s in east Central Europe (Sword, 1999: 151), the trade has proven to be more resilient on the borders of the former Soviet Union, because of weak global economic integration (Williams and Balaz, 2002).
Consideration of cross-border economies has focused on trading at the borders and the structures and power relations (Williams and Balaz, 2002), in addition to the role of the trade in the ‘transition’ (Konstantinov, 1996) and to illustrate the weakness of post-Soviet states (Polese, 2006). However, while understanding the ‘informal’ spaces of the border, and particularly ‘border-crossing’, is vital to contextualising cross-border economies, there is also a need to continue analysis into the communities most affected by the proliferation of this trade (Cassidy, 2011). In their research on Transcarpathia, Williams and Balaz (2002) emphasise the role of ‘gatekeepers’ in CBST and their ability to accumulate capital through the use of power. They suggest that such accumulation is denied to all but a few traders, on account of the disparity in power relations. They also explore the socio-economic backgrounds of traders to illustrate that they are a poor indicator of involvement and success in CBST (Williams and Balaz, 2002: 338). In focusing on the roots of trading in state socialism, their article fails to explore fully the relevant post-socialist and regional contexts. The authors’ use of ‘gatekeepers’ creates a binary approach, which divides traders and border officials, viewing them as involved in a negotiation in which one holds more power than the other. In doing so, it fails to identify differences between traders and also key elements of the setting in which border and customs officials are carrying out their duties, particularly the relevance of local social values and understanding that are central to the production of this particular milieu. Therefore, if socio-economic background is a poor indicator of success, as Williams and Balaž suggest, it is important that we ask what other factors may be impacting on experiences of CBST, including gender, which is central to organising labour and work in many post-socialist societies.
Gender relations and gendered labour in the Ukrainian–Romanian borderlands
Gendering socialism and post-socialism
Historically, gender has been one of the key factors shaping involvement in economic life in the Ukrainian– Romanian borderlands. During the socialist period many women from the region were engaged for the first time in the active labour force, and the Romanian and Soviet authorities provided new services and support, which supported the growth in female employment, such as childcare at work and extended maternity leave. In fact, women living under socialism generally enjoyed much longer periods of paid maternity leave than those living in ‘the West’ (Einhorn, 1993).
Nonetheless, research has shown that the widespread incorporation of women into the workforce as ‘producers’ did little to challenge traditional divisions of labour within the domestic economy (Fodor, 2002). This led to what was known as the ‘double burden’ (Corrin, 1992), which was a gendered outcome resulting from socialist policies to create equality for women within the workforce and the continuation of female domination in the domestic economy. ‘The liberation of women in any society involves a dual process – entry into the national economy and relative withdrawal from the domestic economy’ (Corrin, 1992: 249). It was the socialist regime’s inability to assist effectively in this ‘withdrawal from the domestic economy’ that created the double burden (Einhorn, 1993). However, women were subject to a further substantial role within socialist society, as ‘reproducers’. Socialist economies were generally capital and labour intensive and the struggle to secure future generations of workers was central to socialist policy and planning (Kligman, 1998: 19). Most socialist regimes employed a number of means to promote population growth, from propaganda and financial incentives, through to legislation and coercion. Ceausescu’s pro-natalist policies were amongst some of the most far-reaching in the region and were based upon a desire to increase the country’s workforce in order to pay off foreign debts and secure independence from Moscow; reproduction thus became part of nationalist rhetoric and took the role of the state directly into the bodies of its female citizens. Băban (2000) terms this the ‘triple burden’ on women from the 1980s in Romania, with the growing pressure put on women to be ‘reproducers’ in support of the socialist cause.
The spotlight on women in the post-socialist literature has a basis not only in the double or triple burden during socialism, but also in a number of studies suggesting that women are more likely to experience higher levels of unemployment (Glass and Kawachi, 2001), job discrimination and poverty than their male counterparts since 1989/1991 (Braithwaite and Hoopengardner, 1997; Dickinson, 2005; Hesli and Miller, 1993; Hubner et al., 1993; Pollert, 2003; Voorman, 2005). However, the gendered nature of unemployment has been shown to vary sectorally (Ghodsee, 2005). For women who have been able to find employment, earnings are often lower than their male counterparts. Russia and Ukraine have seen the biggest growth in earnings inequalities of all the post-socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (Rokicka, 2008). Although other research has shown that the wage gap between men and women did close (Brainerd, 2001), most countries in the region experienced a feminised ‘retreat to the household’ (Einhorn, 1993; Pine, 2002) at the same time as the state and its redistributive capacity were also contracting (Hardy and Stenning, 2002). As Corrin (1992: 242) suggests: Yet the economic scene is such that many women will have little choice about returning to the home, and will in fact be forced to become unpaid domestic workers, possibly having to deal with a constantly shrinking budget.
Numerous key services provided by socialist regimes were no longer available. For example, Diyalivtsi had no kindergarten and most mothers, being more heavily involved in caring and the domestic economy (Fodor, 2006), were expected to remain at home with their children until they started school at the age of seven. Fodor further argues that, while poverty may not be feminised in many countries in the region, men and women do experience poverty differently.
Gendered labour and work
The gendered division of labour in the Ukrainian–Romanian borderlands was multi-faceted. First, although women had worked under socialism, most people supported the view that men’s engagement in formal employment was more ‘natural’ than that of women, who were expected to take on more responsibility in the home, particularly as carers as a result of their reproductive role (Kideckel, 2008). Second, formal employment did not release men from gendered expectations of their contribution to the maintenance of the household. Self-provisioning and the maintenance of property and land also necessitated the investment of time in one’s own household and those belonging to kin and neighbours. The ‘natural’ division within the household sees men as being responsible for more physically demanding tasks, such as house repairs, scything, chopping wood and potato planting. Women were not expected to operate machinery used in the agricultural process. However, I do not wish to give the impression that women were not involved in physically strenuous work. Most women made a considerable contribution to self-provisioning, which often involved long hours of labour in the fields during sowing and harvesting seasons. In addition, women were also expected to provide food for all those working on their land. Feminised tasks included animal husbandry, sewing, traditional crafts and cleaning (Bridger and Pine, 1998; Morris, 2011).
No, no, no, you mustn’t go and get water from the well, that’s a man’s work. I’ll do it! Go on, leave it to me! Go and help my wife in the kitchen with the food and I’ll bring the water in to you.
Victor’s comment is just one of many I heard in both fieldwork sites, as people explained to me the very exact division of household tasks amongst men and women. Victor is 90 years old and has difficulty walking, yet he forcefully refused to let me do a task which he considered to be men’s work, in spite of the fact that both he and I knew it would be much easier for me to draw the water myself. Victor’s wife, who was in her early eighties, later explained to me how his determination was also impacting on her.
He wants us to keep a cow, but who has to look after the cow? I do. I have to feed it and milk it and all because he wants fresh milk. He won’t let me get milk from the neighbour, because he doesn’t think it is right that I go and speak to a man. He thinks there is something going on. I tell him that I can’t look after the cow, but he won’t let me get rid of it.
The concept that men’s and women’s work existed had not lessened over time in the village, as a conversation I had with Victor’s grandson illustrated.
I never learned how to cook; that’s women’s work. My grandmother, my mother and my sisters know how to cook but no one ever taught me how. I learned to do men’s work, such as chopping wood and scything. It’s not that I can’t cook; I just don’t know where to start. I could learn, but other men would laugh at me if they found out that I was helping my wife with the cooking.
Such ideas were no less prevalent amongst younger people in Diyalivtsi, as Maria explained.
Our women will not enter the bar at all during Lent. Some of the men do, but the women don’t. It’s not right. They maintain the traditions. They will stay at home and make preparations for Easter.
Thus women’s role within the household and village society was also moral and religious. Women were expected to maintain traditional values and practices, which necessitated male participation, but it was primarily women who were responsible for the preparations for such practices. These preparations were ‘female’ because they generally entailed tasks assigned to women in the household on a daily basis, notably cooking, sewing and craft-work.
In both Gorbanita and Diyalivtsi, men’s work continued to include the upkeep and construction of buildings, and those households without men capable of such tasks would often have to pay or barter with active males in the village to secure assistance. Rodika explained the predicament she had faced since she and her husband had split up.
I started the new house with my husband a few years ago. I suppose I will have to finish it on my own now. I don’t know where I’ll get the money from now. The plan was for it to be fully plumbed with a bathroom and kitchen. Maybe I’ll have to get a passport and start going to Romania. Where else will the money come from?
Apparently, gendered discourses within the village not only created ‘natural’ roles for men and women (Butler, 1990: 33), but also directed the skills developed by males and females. These skills were expected to be combined within a household, forcing single-sex households to seek to create new networks to gain access to men or women possessing these abilities. However, the social control exercised over male and female relations made establishing such networks difficult from a moral standpoint.
Sexualising gender relations
Both Diyalivtsi and Gorbanita were hetero-normative, patriarchal societies, led by gendered decision making and power. Discourses surrounding relations between the sexes gave a more active role to men in Gorbanita than in Diyalitsi. Males and females were dichotomised in Gorbanita, with non-kinship relations between the sexes being ‘sexualised’ in village discourse. The phrase ‘to talk with’ was often used to imply a relationship.
He did talk with a girl from [...] for a while. I don’t know what happened but he doesn’t talk to her any more. He never tells me about these things anyway. I don’t know if he is talking to anyone at the moment.
In this way, village discourse actively restricted contact between males and females, as observed verbal communication could lead to rumours and insinuations. The role of initiating contact between males and females was generally ‘masculine’. Non-normative discourses of females engaging men were developed, which is illustrated by the following description one young man gave of his visit to the local shop: I was being chased by the girls outside the shop. They were asking me lots of questions, as they don’t know me. One of them even blocked my exit. It was really bad; they are very uncivilised, these girls.
Men also used distinct patterns of discourse in relations with women, particularly when in the company of other males. Through these discourses the ‘bodies’ become ‘sexed’ (Gatens, 1991), with different notions of male and female bodies being reproduced. Communication between men relating to young women in particular generally focussed on corporeal aspects of these women, creating sexualised notions of the female body and affirming the dominance of sex in relations between men and women. The male ‘body’ becomes the norm, with the female body being ‘othered’.
Both villages could be said to constitute distinctly gendered spaces, which the repeated performance of particular tasks by men and women continued to create and maintain. Central to local understanding was the view that men should be primarily responsible for earning income for the household, which would give women the time necessary for extra responsibilities in the household, primarily caring for children and other dependent relatives. However, household and agricultural tasks were also clearly gendered, with young people developing skills primarily on a gendered basis that also constructed heterosexual relations as the means through which to build a sustainable household. While relations between the sexes in both communities were restricted by discourses emphasising the sexual nature of male–female relationships, women in Gorbanita were subject to a much more limiting, male-dominated set of social norms than was observed in Diyalivtsi.
The feminisation of transnational migration
While gender has recently become a recognised focus in studies of transnational migration (Donato et al., 2006; McIlwaine, 2010), less attention has been paid to the gendered nature of other forms of transnational mobility, such as CBST. Within the Ukrainian context, recent research has highlighted how demand stemming from southern Europe, and Italy in particular, has incorporated Ukrainian women into global care chains (Bettio et al., 2006; Tolstokorova, 2009a, 2009b and 2010). The growth in opportunities for care workers has been developing at a time when the availability of occupations dominated by male migrants, such as construction work (Dickinson, 2005), has been decreasing. As women in Italy, who have traditionally assumed the burden of care, have been incorporated into the workforce and employment outside the home, the demand for live-in carers has increased. This situation was facilitated until recently by relatively high pensions and also the state’s decision to give monetary benefit to families to care for elderly relatives (Bettio et al., 2006: 273). 20 In a sense, state care and institutionalised care are underdeveloped, and female immigrants have become an important resource for many families.
The reasons for the feminisation of migration from Ukraine are multifaceted (Morokvasic, 2003). They involve a growth in ‘feminised’ care opportunities in southern Europe concurrent to a reduction in possibilities for traditionally masculine work in construction due to EU enlargement, in addition to what is perceived as a growing inability of males to perform in economic life due to alcoholism (cf. Elmhirst, 2007 on Malaysia). The feminisation had created a clear ‘care gap’ in Ukrainian communities, which, rather than becoming masculinised, remained feminised through the participation of other women, including grandmothers, sisters and even non-kin females. The issue of providing care is thus ‘transferred’ from southern Europe to Ukraine. This has been noted in parts of the world which have experienced a similar feminisation of migration (cf. Parrenas, 2001 on the Philippines).
Keough (2006) explored views of migrant mothers as being one of ‘blame’ from those left at home. In contrast they themselves are creating a ‘new moral economy’ in which their migration becomes the responsible thing to do and a sacrifice being made for their children. Evidence from Diyalivtsi suggests a widespread acceptance of this practice as a ‘norm’ within village society now. However, unlike in Keough’s (2006) Moldovan example, the main blame for the migration is seen to be not female but male. As the normatively masculine role of providing for the family has been assumed by many women, even professionals within the village are no longer able to support their families and are reliant upon their wives’ remittances. Similar engagement in informal economic activity by the wives of miners in the Jiu Valley and chemical workers in Fagaras was also observed by David Kideckel (2008). While the changes observed by Kideckel have shifted local gender relations, the care gap left by migrant women in Diyalivtsi is being filled not by their economically inactive or underactive husbands, but by other females in the village. The feminisation of migration in Diyalivtsi provides important context to discussion of CBST, but has not challenged hegemonic masculinities in the village. In fact, the absence of large numbers of women for long periods of time appeared to facilitate the maintenance of masculinities’ dominance. However, in the final section below, I highlight how Romanian hegemonic masculinities experienced through CBST were also central to this process.
Gender and cross-border small trading
Hegemonic masculinities at the border
Romanian customs and border control reflected the hegemonic masculinities of local society, leading to gendered experiences at the border. While solo male traders involved in CBST would often depend on the border’s system of bribes to smuggle cigarettes and other goods through the border, solo female traders from Diyalivtsi employed gender-specific means to secure passage for them and their goods through the border. These means were centred on sexualised performance, made possible by the hetero-normative and patriarchal context of Romanian customs. This situation is much more complex than the idea of ‘charms’ and sexual favours developed by Morokvasic (2004). In fact, sexualised performance did not lead to sexual acts on the part of women at the Ukrainian–Romanian border. This type of activity was clearly described in a conversation I overheard in Diyalivtsi between Luchika and Rodika, my host. Luchika was trying to persuade Rodika to start trading cigarettes across the border to generate much-needed income in her single-parent household: You’ve got large breasts. You’ll have no trouble getting through the border. They like that, the men at the border. You know Sveta? She’s just like you. When she started at the border she kept making mistakes, as she didn’t know what she was doing. But she was bending down to pack her bag and one of the men noticed her breasts and he helped her. Now she uses them all the time and she has no problems at customs.
Such performance increased the visibility of traders at the border and challenges the idea that traders seek to be ‘inconspicuous’ in their negotiation of the border (Morokvasic, 2004). Male traders paying bribes also played a role in this performance, using the bodies of female travelling companions to build relationships with Romanian customs officials. The companions were sometimes their own wives or daughters, but they also capitalised on transporting younger women across the border. 21 This was illustrated by a conversation I had with Zhenia, Luchika’s daughter, who until the birth of her son had crossed the border on a regular basis with her husband to trade cigarettes.
I used to cross the border as well, you know? There was one border guard there who really liked me. He knew I was married, as I used to cross with my husband, but he didn’t seem to care. Dima encouraged him when he used to comment on me and he was always asking about me after I stopped crossing.
The way in which the male traders would discuss their female passengers with customs officials was typified by a conversation I witnessed between Kostia and a male customs official in 2009 when travelling between Romania and Ukraine. Kostia was discussing a young woman, who was travelling with her husband. He and the customs official commented on the ‘pretty girl’ that Kostia was travelling with and Kostia encouraged the official to approach his minibus and inspect her more closely. The official did not enter into a conversation with the young woman, but commented only to Kostia. Kostia was a Ukrainian trader 22 with whom I had travelled on a number of occasions and I noticed that he and many others would place younger women in the front seats of their vehicles, while older women and men would sit in the back. These young women were clearly sexualised in interactions with customs officials, with male traders verbally drawing attention to them. Customs officials would rarely then search the area where the young woman sat, which was commonly used for storing cigarettes and alcohol. The role of female companions was often passive, unlike in the scenario of solo female traders. They were not expected to engage in the performance between the male trader and customs official.
Female customs officials were viewed with suspicion for not maintaining the norms that enabled this sexualised performance.
You can always rely on Adi; I try to go to him. I never go to that woman, what’s her name? She is really strange and she’s always reporting us, as well as her colleagues.
Accessing male border officials became an important part of CBST, and decisions had to be made swiftly in the few hundred metres between the Ukrainian and Romanian border points, as demonstrated by a conversation I overheard between Kostia and his mother. 23
Who shall we go for? Quick, we have to decide.
I don’t know I can’t see. Oh, hang on a minute, not her. Go to the left.
Who’s on the left? I can’t see.
Go anyway! Anyone is better than her!
Oh look, it’s Adi! God helps!
While the performance of sexualised femininities at the border assisted both male and female traders in negotiating customs and avoiding official payments of tax and duties, it also emphasised normative divisions between men and women, which favoured male traders. Men were expected to lead and engage in this sexualisation in Romania, with women remaining passive. Engagement in sexualised discourses and performance at Romanian customs by female traders generated a particular view of Ukrainian females in communities on the Romanian side of the border. While the engagement in sexualised performance by Ukrainian female traders was encouraged at the border, it was perceived unfavourably away from customs. Dorin summarised the image developing in Romania concerning Ukrainian women.
It’s so easy to sleep with a Ukrainian girl, not like it is here in Romania.
The female traders’ active role in sexualising their bodies was understood as reflecting possibilities for actual sexual relations. Such a performance implied an open attitude towards sexual relations, which, given the moral restrictions placed on women in rural Romanian communities in particular, was unlikely to be reflected by female behaviour in Romania. Similar outcomes were observed in earlier trade at the German–Polish border in relation to Polish women (Irek, 1998; Morokvasic, 2004).
Female traders were unable to use the performance to create relationships with officials, unlike their male counterparts. In fact, their use of sexualised femininities created an understanding of Ukrainian women that inhibited the development of such relationships not only at the border but within local communities. This process then impacted upon female traders’ ability to develop business relations amongst the providers of services and intermediaries in local Romanian communities, which were essential to their trade. The complexity of this situation is striking. In engaging in sexualised performance, female traders invariably benefited from the avoidance of not just duties and taxes but also often informal payments. They demonstrated and responded to cultural norms of hegemonic masculinities within Romania, but also inhibited their ability to challenge those norms and expand their trading opportunities.
Hegemonic masculinities amongst Romanian intermediaries
Traders from Diyalivtsi and other communities in Ukraine depended heavily on services provided by intermediaries in Romania (Cassidy, 2010). Nearby towns and villages in Romania offered traders opportunities to sell their goods, change money and take orders for further supplies. Opportunities to sell directly to Romanian consumers, particularly through pitches at local markets, were limited not only by language (Cassidy, 2010) but also by the need to sell a wide range of produce to act as a screen to cigarette sales and permit Ukrainian traders to avoid suspicion of cigarette smuggling. Intermediary services were dominated by Romanian males, who were often unwilling to deal with female traders. The larger distributors also often moved in circles of organised crime. Male traders would often travel at night to supply cigarettes to them. The owner of the local shop in Gorbanita regularly received deliveries of cigarettes and alcohol from Ukraine at night, from one such distributor.
I don’t have a choice. People can get cheap cigarettes from Ukraine everywhere and no one would come to me. I have to do this for my business.
Female traders from Diyalivtsi were concerned about the threats to their personal safety posed by such trips in terms of both travelling at night and physical vulnerability to attacks by male distributors. Many of the services in the Romanian border town were highly organised and informally regulated. These intermediaries were also difficult for women to access because of the male-dominated gender norms present in local Romanian society. Women were rarely considered to be equal to men in business circles. Rather than see this dominance as being related to discourses of crime and hegemonic masculinities (Collier, 1998; Messerschmidt, 1993), I suggest that this dominance is linked to general patterns of re-emergence of male bread-winner roles in the post-socialist context (Einhorn, 1993).
I observed this exclusion of females from transactions on a trip I made at night with Alla and Dima, a young couple from Diyalivtsi. Alla had much experience of trading cigarettes across the border on her own, both prior to and following her marriage to Dima. After crossing the border, we drove slowly through the Romanian border town, as Dima searched for his contact. When we had passed through the town and exited towards a neighbouring village, I became aware of a car following us and Dima pulled into a small track that led to two houses. Once there, Alla and I waited in the car while Dima negotiated a price with the two men. The negotiations were protracted, with Dima returning frequently to the car to ask Alla to recalculate the prices. During the exchange, the two Romanian men merely greeted Alla and her attempts to enter into the negotiation were rebuffed. On the way back to town following the completion of the transaction, Dima and Alla argued about the price the men had paid. Dima chastised Alla for her involvement in the transaction.
I told you not to say anything. Why did you talk? You know they won’t listen to a woman. I felt stupid when you started talking.
Female traders were effectively excluded from larger transactions with distributors and their associated profits. Consequently, solo female traders had come to rely more readily on kin in Romania to distribute goods. Luchika had an aunt living in the nearby Romanian border town and cousins in a Ukrainian-speaking village next to Gorbanita, with whom she traded cigarettes. She visited these households during the day and from here the cigarettes were sold on directly to households in the village. Gorbanita had a similar kinship network across the border, which supplied the village with a number of goods, primarily the everyday items sought on shopping trips to Ukraine, such as matches, sunflower oil, rice and washing powder. The use of kinship networks also reduced the profitability of CBST for women, as their families in Romania would invariably pay less in order to ensure a profit through the onward sale of goods. In addition, kinship obligations and the risk associated with handling Ukrainian products would make women feel obliged to sell goods more cheaply. However, the use of such networks is evidence of the assertion that ‘kinship work’, i.e. the role of maintaining kinship networks and relationships, in post-socialist states is highly feminised (Fodor, 2006).
I have family in [...], you know? On the road to Suceava. I generally go to them to sell because it is easier. They pay less, of course, but they are family!
This also linked to two further related gendered aspects of CBST: the feminisation of spaces on the Ukrainian side of the border and limited mobility amongst female traders. Below are more details of the conversation I overheard between Luchika and my host Rodika, in which Luchika was advising her friend on getting cigarettes through Romanian customs: You know that sometimes they will send you back many times. I have to go and leave some cigarettes and try again. I always tell them I have three cartons and I pretend I don’t speak Romanian if they ask anything else. Sometimes it can take six attempts, but I get through eventually.
As female traders were often unable to pay the relevant bribes at customs or used sexualised performance to deliberately avoid paying, they transported smaller amounts of cigarettes than their male counterparts and this had shaped the spaces surrounding the border. Almost all the small businesses near the border had also become spaces of cross-border trade. Traders avoided the official bureaux de change and relied instead upon unofficial money-changers to be found near the border crossing. These included the owners of the local restaurant, which was used by many as a base to change money and make deals for goods being taken into and brought back from Romania. However, the vital service provided to the traders by the restaurant was relied upon to a greater extent by women from the surrounding villages, who lacked the means to travel to nearby towns to sell and purchase goods. The small insurance hut, intended to uphold the Ukrainian legal requirement for all visitors to hold valid medical insurance, was used as a base for female traders to rest between trips across the border and to hide cigarettes on their person before attempting a border crossing. Female traders from Diyalivtsi utilised their personal relationships with the insurance companies’ sole female employee (who was also actively engaged in CBST) to make use of the hut.
Finally, only a few women in Diyalivtsi had access to their own form of transport.24 For the most part they used local buses to get to the border crossing point and then travelled across the border by finding a space in another trader’s vehicle. This meant that not only were women more restricted in terms of their access to markets once they were in Romania, but also they were more likely to make numerous trips across the border in the course of a day and there was a distinct feminisation of spaces close to the border on the Ukrainian side, as women appropriated local businesses to prepare for their border crossings. Taking smaller amounts of goods through the border further restricted the women’s ability to negotiate deals with intermediaries in Romania. Few of the border town’s major distributors were interested in small quantities of cigarettes. Having to make several small trips across the border every day gained them less income than men who travelled in their own cars twice a week. Towards the end of my time in Diyalivtsi, some of the gendered aspects of mobility and CBST began to be addressed by the arrival of a new form of transport from Italy. Female traders started to invest in small scooters to take them through the border in the summer months (Figure 1). Although less effective than a car in concealing cigarettes, the scooters had storage space under the seat, which enabled the concealment of larger quantities of cigarettes than on the body.
A photograph of a woman from Diyalivtsi on a scooter that had been purchased for cross-border small trading, May 2008
However, it was still unclear whether transport would enable more profitability in trading, given the dependence on kin relations and difficulties most women traders experienced in developing relationships with intermediaries. Nonetheless, the complexity of the processes engendering CBST emerges, as gendered relations in Romania often exclude solo female traders from accessing intermediaries and they can only sell smaller quantities to their kin. Consequently, lower profits mean they are unable to invest in larger personalised transport, such as a car or van, which further limits their ability to transport large quantities of goods and attract the attention of Romanian distributors. Female traders become ensconced in a cycle of low-level trade, which often requires several border crossings a day to secure smaller incomes than male counterparts are able to generate from just two or three crossings a week.
The gendering of CBST and gender relations in a Ukrainian border village
The involvement of women in CBST and feminisation of migration from Diyalivtsi suggest a scenario very different from the envisaged retreat to the household of unemployed females (Einhorn, 1993; Pine, 2002). They show how, through the informal remittance and cross-border economies of post-socialism, women have not only remained economically active outside the household, but become increasingly ‘burdened’ by the responsibility for sustaining multi-generational households through their earnings. As in the socialist period, this burden has not been accompanied by an effective withdrawal from domestic labour; in fact in many cases, because many women are absent abroad, female labour remaining in the village has become more widely exploited to provide care to children in other households, often through kin relations, but also occasionally with non-kin neighbours. So again, as with Einhorn’s analysis of the incorporation of women into the workforce during the socialist period, post-socialism in the western Ukrainian context seems to have become increasingly characterised not by the emancipation of women from the double or triple burden inherent in the socialist system but by a subversion of this burden away from formal employment and into informal economic activities, where there is little or no protection or support afforded to them by the state. At the same time, the withdrawal of many state support services, such as childcare provision and lower pensions, has increased the burden of care in the domestic sphere, which remains dominated by female labour.
In the context of CBST itself, female labour is exploited by male traders, who use female traders travelling with them and female companions as a means to increase the profitability of their own trade. Given the organisation of households within the village, this generally leads to financial benefits for females in the households of male traders, but makes these women more dependent on their husbands and male relatives for financial support and also devalues female labour in CBST, which continues to be far less profitable than male labour. As a result, the need for a household to combine the ‘skills’ of both genders for successful reproduction is once more reinforced. Male traders are able to continue to exploit female traders in sexualised performance only if feminine immobilities persist, so any factors increasing female mobility and independent border crossing may be unwelcomed by male traders, but may also benefit males with female traders in their household by increasing profits and enabling women to more easily engage in other areas of activity in the domestic sphere or on smallholdings.
At the same time, while masculinities are not the focus here, I do not wish to give the impression that there is not an associated impact upon them. Just as men’s engagement in formal employment to provide income into households is viewed as ‘natural’, there was also an expectation within Diyalivtsi that male traders would generate higher profits than their female counterparts. There was a burden upon male traders, therefore, to engage with intermediaries and expand their trade beyond the lower levels at which feminised trade took place; this had become central to masculinities in CBST and is reflected in Dima’s reaction to Alla’s interference in his negotiations with Romanian intermediaries, which could have led to a lost sale or reduced profit from the trade for Dima. His reaction in arguing heatedly with Alla also points to some of the pressure he felt to conclude the deal successfully.
Conclusions
This article has drawn on ethnographic material from participant observation in rural communities in the Ukrainian–Romanian borderlands to explore the gendering of European transnational mobility in the form of CBST and its impact on gender relations and economic activity in these communities. The feminisation of migration from Ukraine may have suggested possibilities for challenging the hegemonic masculinities, which have arguably (re-)emerged since the collapse of state socialism, as has been observed in some studies of the Global South (Donato et al., 2006). However, contact with gender divisions in rural Romania through CBST continues to assert the dominance of masculinities. Operating outside the EU’s border controls, informal trade is highly gender-specific, in terms of the sexualised performance surrounding female traders that takes place at the border itself, the limitations that female traders face in developing contacts with Romanian intermediaries and expectations for male traders to earn more through their trade. While feminised migration to southern Europe challenges male dominance as primary earners of income into a household, CBST reasserts this dominance on a local level, as male traders are both able and expected to generate higher profits from their activities. Women are therefore disadvantaged in similar ways to paid work in the formal economy, where they are more likely to find themselves working in lower-paid, lower-skilled jobs than their male counterparts (Fodor, 2006). In spite of high levels of female unemployment under post-socialism, as Hart (1973) observed in his 1960s study of Ghana, the women of western Ukraine are still very much involved in economic activity outside the home, as migrant workers and cross-border small traders. This article emphasises why in the European Union’s eastern borderlands, where informal flows of people and goods dominate and have endured in spite of enlargement and the expansion of the Schengen space, it is critical that we analyse the social context of these movements and the ways in which they are shaping gender relations and local communities as a whole. In doing so, it illustrates through Romanian customs officials, whose official role is to uphold EU law and regulations, that informal economic activity can subvert seemingly gender-neutral regimes and enable the introduction of highly gendered discourses and performance. In exploring these interactions, the article illuminates how the EU’s relations with its neighbours are being embedded outside political centres of power in everyday life.
Footnotes
Funding
The research was funded by an ESRC 1+3 studentship, award number PTA-031-2005-0027/1.