In contrast with South Asia, young women in East and Southeast Asia
enjoy a higher degree of social autonomy, which most noticeably translates into
higher migration rates. Female mobility in Southeast Asia is only partly determined
by collective family decisions or by marriage, and individual migration
decisions linked to employment opportunities and education are very common
beginning at an early age.
Migration places young women in a different environment and makes them
especially vulnerable. The concept of vulnerability is usually a multidimensional
measure of the exposure of individuals to various sources of external stress,
ranging from economic downturns to environmental changes and political
unrest. More precisely, social vulnerability may be expressed as risk of livelihood
stress or of welfare loss1
. Gender inequality, compounded by widespread
poverty, means that women in developing countries are far more at risk, and this
is well-reflected in the existing literature. Young migrating women are a case in
point and have often been identified as an especially vulnerable group.
Nevertheless, the notion of vulnerability, when applied to young