Labour market perspectives of young women living in extreme poverty in closed rural space: the case of a Hungarian-Romanian cul-de-sac border village

Resumen

Abstract: This study presents young uneducated women’s labour market perspectives in a cul-de-sac village of 350 inhabitants near the Hungarian-Romanian border. On the basis of interviews, we investigate this closed rural space where young people start life and make labour market decisions. We examine the most influential factors, and how these are perpetuating poverty and exclusion onto the next generations. Girls and women living here belong to a community that has been excluded from society. Their poverty is not temporary in nature and not exclusively a problem of making a living, but a status solidified into lifestyle. Women do not only receive more limited material resources compared to men, but they also experience disadvantages in areas as crucial as education, work, leisure and social relationships. This is because of life management strategies that reverse into traditionalism. This unfavourable situation does not allow women to make decisions on their lives. It is the family or the male members of the community who make the decisions instead. This includes decisions on education, starting a family, having children, sexuality, contraception, and the labour market.

Keywords: Social exclusion, young women, spatial inequalities, spatial segregation, small villages.