Mar 25, 2013 - Simmons, âthe United nations Recommendations and Data Efforts: ...... 87â118, 100; Connie Roggeband and Mieke Verloo, âDutch Women are ...
Feminization and Problematization of Migration: Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Marlou Schrover Migration researchers and policy makers endlessly repeat the claim that a feminization of migration has taken place.1 Authors use phrases like: “women workers form the majority in movements as diverse as those of Cape Verdians to Italy, Filipinos to the Middle East and Thais to Japan.”2 The countries mentioned are not chosen randomly, although the phrase “as diverse as” might suggest this. These are the cases in which migrant women do outnumber men. Examples of precisely the opposite could as easily be given: immigrant men outnumber immigrant women in Saudi Arabia (70 percent men), Cuba (73), or Bangladesh (86).3 In some countries, such as Singapore, the number of documented migrant women has increased. In 1978, Singapore introduced the Foreign Maids Scheme which made it possible for women from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, India, and Bangladesh to enter Singapore as “live-in” domestic workers. The migrant domestic worker population grew from 5000 in 1978 to 150,000 in 2005.4 These data are to some extent misleading. The Scheme was introduced to fight the exploitation and abuse of foreign domestic workers, and registration was part of that fight. The above data partly reflect an increase in the number of documented 1 See, for example: Catharine Wihtol de Wenden, “Young Muslim Women in France: Cultural and Psychological Adjustments”, Political Psychology 19, no. 1 (March 1998): 136; Russell King and Elisabetta Zontini, “The Role of Gender in the South European Immigration Model”, Papers 60 (2000): 35–52; OECD SOPEMI, Trends in International Migration. Continuous Reporting System on Migration. Annual Report 2001 (2001), 27; Tanja El-Cherkeh, Elena Stirbu, Sebastian Lazaroiu and Dragos Radu, EU-Enlargement, Migration and the Trafficking of Women: the Case of South Eastern Europe. HWWA-report 247 (Hamburg, 2004); Mary Kawar, “Gender and Migration: Why Are Women More Vulnerable”, Femmes et Mouvement: Genre, migrations et nouvelle division internationale du travail, (Geneva, 2004), 71–87; Laura Oso Casas and Jean-Pierre Garson, The Feminisation of International Migration. Migrant Women and Labour Market Diversity and Challenges, OECD and European Commission Seminar Brussels, 26–27 September 2005. 2 Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller, The Age of Migration. International Population Movements in the Modern World (New York, 2003), 7–9, and 188. 3 Data refer to 2005. For references see tables. 4 Human Rights Watch, Maid to Order. Ending Abuses Against Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore, Human Rights Watch 17.10c, December (New York, 2005), 19.
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domestic workers. Before 1978, women also migrated to Singapore as domestic workers, but these older migrations were largely not registered. The current percentage of women among migrants in Singapore is 50 percent. There are no data available that allow us to compare the current percentage of migrant women to that in the past. Examples like these, which refer to an increased demand for domestic workers, an increased number of documented migrant women and increasing complaints about the maltreatment of migrant women, are used to claim worldwide trends of feminization of migration and, at the same time, to turn the migration of women into a problem. Frequently it is not clear what feminization means. It is used to indicate that women outnumber men in migration and to indicate that the number of women equals the number of men now, but did not in the past. It also refers to (assumed) changes in migration: increased long-distance migration of women (as opposed to mostly short-distance migration in the past), or an increase of the number of women who are pioneers or single migrants (as opposed to the assumption that they were dependent migrants in the past). Authors generally offer no proof for feminization and only observe that women today form about 50 percent of the migrants— then to move on to issues such as migrant women’s health hazards, the problems of care-workers, domestic servants, or mail order brides, or to prostitution, trafficking and illegality.5 In this way the assumed feminization of migration is paralleled by a problematization.6 5 Wihtol de Wenden, “Young Muslim Women in France”, 133–146; Ursula Biemann, “Remotely Sensed: A Topography of the Global Sex Trade”, Feminist Review 70 (2002): 75–88: Dirk Hoerder, Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium (Durham NC, 2002), 517–519; Saskia Sassen, “The Feminization of Survival: Alternative Global Circuits”, in Crossing Borders and Shifting Boundaries, vol. 1, Gender on the Move, ed. Mirjana Morokvasic, Umut Erel, and Kyoko Shinozaki (Opladen, 2003), 61; El-Cherkeh et al., EU-Enlargement, 13; Keiko Yamanaka and Nicola Piper, “Feminized Migration in East and Southeast Asia: Policies, Actions and Empowerment”, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development Occasional Paper 11 (December 2005); Belinda Dobson, “Gender, Migration and Livelihood: Migrant Women in Southern Africa”, in New Perspectives on Gender and Migration. Livelihood, Rights and Entitlements, ed. Nicola Piper (New York and London, 2008), 137–158, 152. 6 A very large number of references can be given at this point. For examples see: Jan Ryan, “Chinese Women as Transnational Migrants: Gender and Class in Global Migration Narratives”, International Migration 40, no. 2 (2002): 93–116; Annalee Lepp, “Trafficking in Women and the Feminization of Migration. The Canadian Context”, Canadian Woman Studies. Les Cahiers De La Femme 21/22, no. 4 (2002), 90–99; Nicola Piper, “Feminization of Labor Migration as Violence Against Women: International, Regional, and Local Nongovernmental Organization Responses in Asia”, Violence Against Women 9 (2003), 723–745; Petra Dannecker, “Transnational Migration and the Transformation of Gender Relations:
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Recently more systematic attention has been paid to feminization. After I first presented the preliminary data on which this chapter is based at the 2008 SSHA conference in Miami,7 Gabaccia, Zanoni, Steidl, and Alexander followed up on some of my suggestions and, partly using the same data, added their findings at the 2009 SSHA conference in Long Beach.8 They focussed on the US, and aimed to assess sex ratios. In this chapter I first look at the changes that took place in the migration of men and women in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth century. The focus is on Europe because on the one hand long term data are available (when for many other parts of the world they are mostly not), and on the other hand the debates on feminization of migration are concentrated in Europe. Secondly, I discuss why the claim that migration has been feminized has gained so much popularity. Attention is far greater than changes in percentages justify. Changes in the Number of Migrants: Data Providing an overview of levels and trends in international migration is difficult because many countries either lack a system of continuous registration of international migration or, if they have such a system, do not process and publish the data. Only a handful of countries gather data on the inflow of foreigners.9 Claims about the feminization of migration are based on ambiguous data, weak statistical evidence, and no statistics at The Case of Bangladeshi Labour Migrants”, Current Sociology 53 (2005), 655–674; Glenda Labadie-Jackson, “Reflections on Domestic Work and the Feminization of Migration”, Campbell Law Review 31 (2008), 67–90. 7 This chapter is based on a talk given at the American Social Science History Association Conference in Miami in 2008: Marlou Schrover, Who counts? Differences in numbers between women and men in European immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth century. 8 Their presentations have in the meantime been published. Katharine M. Donato, “Introduction: Variation in the Gender Composition of Migrant Populations”, Social Science History 36 no. 2 (2012) 191–195; Donna Gabaccia and Elizabeth Zanoni, “Transitions in Gender Ratios among International Migrants, 1820–1930”, Social Science History 36, no. 2 (2012) 197–221; José C. Moya, “Commentary: Gender and Migration: Searching for Answers to Basic Questions”, Social Science History 36, no. 2 (2012), 269–274; J. Trent Alexander and Annemarie Steidl, “Gender and the ‘Laws of Migration’: A Reconsideration of NineteenthCentury Patterns”, Social Science History 36, no. 2 (2012), 223–241. 9 Hania Zlotnik, “International Migration 1965–1996: An Overview”, Population and Development Review 24, no. 3 (September 1998), 429–430; Oso Casas and Garson, Migrant Women and the Labour Market; Roel Jennissen, Macro-Economic Determinants of International Migration in Europe (Groningen, 2004). Jennissen offers a wealth of data but does not break them down according to sex.
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all, or authors refer to others’ data.10 Lack of data does not stop authors from claiming that the feminization of (labour) migration has become a well-established fact.11 Data, which are presented, are frequently highly selective. Authors write about feminization of migration in Australia, for instance, but produce data on the percentage of women among the Asianborn Chinese only (and even those do no pass the 60 percent mark).12 Authors suggest increases when there are none.13 Graphs are presented with Y-axes that terminate at 55 percent to emphasize increases.14 Data refer to labour migration only, or to the migration from specific countries, such as the Philippines. The migration of women from this country is encouraged by the Philippine government and the percentage of women is exceptionally high compared to other countries. Even in the Philippines, however, it did not exceed 60 percent in the period 1993 to 2007.15 Some authors mention an under-registration of migrant women as an explanation for the meagre percentages.16 For the nineteenth century and before this is plausible because states were as a rule more interested in men, as taxpayers and potential soldiers.17 A systematic under-registration of migrant women today has not been proven. For the countries that do produce statistics on international migration, the meaning and scope of those statistics vary in reliability, and they are not comparable because different legal and statistical concepts are
10 For instance Lepp refers to Kempadoo and Doezema, who refer to the ILO website. Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema, eds., Global Sex Workers (New York, 1998), 17; Lepp, “Trafficking in Women”, http://www.ilo.org/public/english/region/asro/mdtmanila/training/unit2/asiamign.htm. 11 Piper, “Feminization of Labor Migration”, 726. 12 Ryan, “Chinese Women as Transnational Migrants”, 96. 13 See for example María José Alcalá, UNFPA State of the World Population 2006. A Passage to Hope. Women and International Migration (New York, 2006), 22. 14 Alcalá, UNFPA State of the World Population, 22; Katharine M. Donato, J. Trent Alexander, Donna Gabaccia and Johanna Leinonen, “Variations in the gender composition of immigrant populations: how they matter”, International Migration Review 45, no. 3 (2011), 495–526. 15 Aniceto Orbeta, Jr., and Michael Abrigo, Philippine International Labor Migration in the Past 30 Years: Trends and Prospects, Discussion Paper Series No. 2009–33, Philippine Institute for Development Studies (Makati City, November 2009), 7, 11. 16 Khalid Koser and Helma Lutz, “The New Migration in Europe: Contexts, Constructions and Realities”, in New Migration in Europe, ed. K. Koser and H. Lutz (Basingstoke, 1998), 1–20. 17 Marlou Schrover, Joanne van der Leun, Leo Lucassen, and Chris Quispel, “Introduction: Illegal Migration and Gender in a Global and Historical Perspective”, in Illegal Migration and Gender in a Global and Historical Perspective, ed. M. Schrover, J. van der Leun, L. Lucassen, and C. Quispel (Amsterdam, 2008), 9–38.
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used.18 Most are not broken down according to sex. Several publications take stock of the sources, which are available, and the problems that arise when attempts are made to compare migration data.19 Data have been collected by SOPEMI, in censuses, by Ferenczi and Willcox, and in the UN’s Demographic Yearbooks.20 The last two offer the best possibilities for comparison. In 1973 SOPEMI (Système d’observation permanente sur les migrations) was established to provide European member states of the OECD with mechanisms to share information on international migration. SOPEMI annually publishes Trends in International Migration. Data in these reports are not comparable (as is true for all other sources)21 and they are broken down according to sex only for the last decades and only for a few European countries. From censuses, which are not available for all countries, data on migration stock can be collected. Statistics that relate to nationality are problematic because migrants can have more than one nationality, and it is often not clear how these migrants are dealt with in statistics.22 Donato et al., and Alexander and Steidl have recently drawn attention to another problem with data on stock.23 They showed that immigrant populations feminized because men tend to die at an earlier age than women. Donato et al. 18 Alan B. Simmons, “The United Nations Recommendations and Data Efforts: International Migration Statistics”, International Migration Review 21, no. 4 (Winter 1987), 996–1016; Heinz Fassmann and Rainer Münz, “Patterns and Trends of International Migration in Western Europe”, Population and Development Review 18, no. 3 (September 1992), 457–480; OECD SOPEMI, Trends in International Migration, 19; Beate Winkler, Migrants, Minorities and Employment: Exclusion, Discrimination and Anti-discrimination in 15 Member States of the European Union. On Behalf of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC). By the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) (October 2003), 15. 19 Nicola Piper, Gender and Migration. A Paper Prepared for the Policy Analysis and Research Programme of the Global Commission on International Migration (Singapore, 2005); John J. Kelly, “Improving the Comparability of International Migration Statistics: Contributions by the Conference of European Statisticians from 1971 to Date”, International Migration Review 21, no. 4 (Winter 1987), 1017–1037. For a good discussion of sources see Adam McKeown, “Global Migration, 1846–1940”, Journal of World History 15, no. 2 (2004), 155–189. 20 John Salt, “A Comparative Overview of International Trends and Types, 1950–80”, International Migration Review 23, no. 3 (Autumn 1989), 431–456. 21 John Salt, “The SOPEMI Experience: Genesis, Aims and Achievements”, International Migration Review 21, no. 4 (Winter 1987): 1067–1073. 22 Currently, eighteen countries (Algeria, Argentine, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Eritrea, Greece, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Mexico, Morocco, Nauru, Nicaragua, Syria, Tunisia and Uruguay) do not allow migrants to give up their original nationality when they acquire a new one. Some countries allow dual nationality by choice. 23 Donato et al., “Variations in the gender composition of immigrant populations”; Alexander and Steidl, “Gender and the “Laws of Migration”.
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showed that what was called a feminization of the U.S. foreign-born population, for instance, was not the result of more migrant women entering the country, but of excess mortality of men over women. Data on flow (arrivals and departures) make it possible to see year-toyear changes. Data on flow do have the disadvantage that a difference in sex ratios might reflect a difference in migration patterns, and not in the make up of the immigrant population or final migrations. If a man moves, for instance, from a European country to the U.S., lives there for a few years, returns to Europe, marries and moves again to the U.S. with his wife, the man appears twice in the data on flow and the woman only once (and the data on flow thus show a low percentage of women among incoming migrants). Moya recently pointed out immigration statistics indicated a lower percentage of women among Italians entering Argentina than among those entering the United States. He convincingly argued this reflected the temporal migration of agricultural labourers, who were all men and who yearly crossed the Atlantic to harvest in Argentina, and returned home to harvest in Italy. They were counted every year in inflow statistics as if they were new immigrants.24 For transatlantic migrations from Europe this pattern has been observed, for intra-European migrations less so.25 When it comes to flow, not all countries use the same length of stay as a measure to distinguish migrants from, for instance, tourists.26 A matrix of data on migration, constructed in 1972, showed that figures for a particular flow reported by the country of immigration were substantially higher than the figures for the same flow reported by the country of emigration. Of the 342 flows between pairs of countries in the matrix, the total reported number of immigrants was 57 percent higher than that of the number of emigrants (1,072,500 versus 683,200) because countries used different definitions of migrants with varying measures for the minimum duration of stay.27 There were differences between “actual” or “intended” duration of stay and some countries used additional criteria such as nationality, and whether incoming persons intended to work or study. Some countries reported exclusively on nationals (and excluded
24 Moya, “Commentary: Gender and Migration”. 25 See for instance: Suzanne M. Sinke, Dutch Immigrant Women in the United States, 1880–1920 (Urbana, 2002). Gabaccia and Zanoni, “Transitions in Gender Ratios among International Migrants” do not mentioned this potential bias in the flow data they use. 26 Simmons, “The United Nations Recommendations and Data Efforts”, 996–1016. 27 Kelly, “Improving the Comparability of International Migration Statistics”, 1020.
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the emigration of non-nationals who had been living in their country for a considerable time), or they excluded emigrants whose destination was not known (as Belgium did), or they only registered those emigrants who left with a work permit (as Spain did). Data have improved since 1972, but data on flow remain less reliable for emigration, than for immigration. For this reason, only data on immigration are used in this chapter for the post-World War Two period. For the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, this chapter makes use of the statistics collected by Imre Ferenczi and Walter F. Willcox, in their 1929 publication International Migrations.28 The emphasis in this work is on emigration, mostly from Europe, but it also includes a wealth of other data. For the last sixty years of the twentieth century, I have extracted data on immigration to European countries from the United Nations Demographic Yearbooks.29 In the Yearbooks, only the data on flow are broken down according to sex. The tables in the Yearbooks come with very long explanatory footnotes that are not reproduced here. Many of these have to do with comparability. Since for this chapter absolute numbers have been converted into percentages, this difference between countries is less relevant because criteria are likely to differ between countries, but they are less likely to differ between men and women within one country. There is proof for the first—in the discussion of the data in the Yearbooks—but there is no proof for the second. In the Demographic Yearbooks data on flow (arrivals) are only available for some countries over any length of time. Albania, Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, Greece, Malta, Romania, and the USSR never supplied data on immigration or emigration well into the 1980s or later. Data on Eastern European countries and the USSR are missing for almost
28 Imre Ferenczi and Walter F. Willcox, International Migrations, 2 vols. (New York, 1929–1931). 29 UN Demographic Yearbook 1948, 1949/50, 1952, 1954, 1957, 1959, 1962, 1966, 1970. Hania Zlotnik has earlier used these data to provide overviews per region: Zlotnik, “Data Insight: The Global Dimensions of Female Migration”, in United Nations, International Migration Report: 2002. No. E. 03. XIII. 4 (New York, 2002); see also Zlotnik, “The Concept of International Migration as Reflected in Data Collection Systems”, International Migration Review 21, no. 4 (1987): 925–946, especially 942; Zlotnik, “Women as Migrants and Workers in Developing Countries”, International Journal of Contemporary Sociology 30, no. 1 (1993): 39–62; Zlotnik, “The South-to-North Migration of Women”, International Migration Review 29 (1995): 229–254; Zlotnik, “The Global Dimensions of Female Migration”, Migration Information Source, http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?ID=109, accessed 18 August 2011.
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all years, except the last. Portugal only supplied data on emigration, not immigration.30 The data in the Yearbooks only include people who were regarded as foreigners. This means that people who returned from former colonies, such as the pieds noirs in France and repatriates in the Netherlands, are not included, and neither are the Aussiedler or Spätaussiedler who came to Germany. Many of these people were not born in the country of settlement, but they did have its nationality (or right to it) and were thus not regarded as foreigners. Data also do not include people who entered illegally. Before analyzing the data, the next section briefly describes changes in migration opportunities for men and women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Differences in Migration: An Impression Authors frequently refer to one of Ravenstein’s “laws” on migration, which he formulated at the end of the nineteenth century.31 Ravenstein found that women in Europe migrated as much as men, but that women tended to make short journeys while men dominated long distance migration.32 Donato et al. observe that many authors fall back on this so-called Ravenstein law but few have tested it.33 Alexander and Steidl have recently discussed the number of references to Ravenstein.34 Authorities did differentiate between the migration of men and the migration of women. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, older rules that restricted the mobility of women, but not of men, were still in place. In the eighteenth century, the Spanish state, city councils, and the Church forbad the migration of single women, which had been important in the first half of the eighteenth century. Announcements about these restrictions were endlessly repeated, indicating that they might not have
30 Kelly, “Improving the Comparability of International Migration Statistics”, 1024. 31 For references see: Suzanne Sinke, “Gender and Migration: Historical Perspectives”, International Migration Review 40, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 82–103; Rachel Silvey, “Geographies of Gender and Migration: Spatializing Social Difference”, International Migration Review 40, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 64–81. 32 Ernest G. Ravenstein, “The Laws of Migration”, Journal of the Statistical Society 48/2.9 (1885), 167–235 and 52/2 (1889): 241–305; Silvey, “Geographies of Gender”, 67. 33 Katharine M. Donato, Donna Gabaccia, Jennifer Holdaway, Martin Manalansan, and Patricia R. Pessar, “A Glass Half Full? Gender in Migration Studies”, International Migration Review 40, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 8. 34 Alexander and Steidl, “Gender and the ‘Laws of Migration’ ”.
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been very effective.35 In 1816, in Austria, women needed the permission of local authorities to emigrate, while men needed authorization from the Court Office.36 German states forbade the migration of women who were planning to leave their children behind, but not of men who were planning to do the same.37 The growth of European cities and growing wealth of the middle classes in the nineteenth century meant an increase in the demand for domestic servants, most of whom migrated as single women.38 Conscription led to new movements of men within countries and to the disappearance of the migration by mercenaries (such as Hessians or Swiss). Groups of mercenaries had as rule been accompanied by a train of camp followers (servants, wives, prostitutes), which equalled the mercenaries in numbers.39 Guild regulated journeymen tramping systems (which had included only men) disappeared and older large-scale migration systems, which also mainly consisted of men—such as the North Sea system40—did likewise. Several European countries restricted the movement of unaccompanied women after World War One, by refusing them passports.41 During the economic depression of the 1930s, several European governments
35 Carmen Sarasua, “Leaving Home to Help the Family? Male and Female Temporary Migrants in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century Spain”, in Women, Gender and Labour Migration, ed. Pamela Sharpe (London, 2001), 29–59. 36 Ferenczi and Willcox, International Migrations, 1: 585. 37 Marlou Schrover, “Women and Long Distance Trade Migration in the NineteenthCentury Netherlands”, in Women, Gender and Labour Migration, ed. Pamela Sharpe (London, 2001), 85–107. 38 Rachel G. Fuchs and Leslie P. Moch, “Getting Along: Poor Women’s Networks in Nineteenth-Century Paris”, French Historical Studies 18 (1993): 34–49; Moch, “Networks Among Bretons? The Evidence for Paris, 1875–1925”, Continuity and Change 18, no. 3 (2003): 431–455; Jose M. Moya, “Domestic Service in a Global Perspective: Gender, Migration and Ethnic Niches”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33, no. 4 (2007), 559–579. 39 John A. Lynn II, Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2008). Lucassen and Lucassen have presented overviews of changes in migration in European migration in the period 1500–1900. Jan Lucassen and Leo Lucassen, “The mobility transition revisited, 1500–1900: what the case of Europe can offer to global history”, Journal of Global History 4 (2009): 347–377; Jan Lucassen and Leo Lucassen, The mobility transition in Europe revisited, 1500–1900 Sources and methods. IISH-Research Paper 46: http://www .iisg.nl/publications/respap46.pdf, accessed August 2011. On page 106 of the last publication the authors give estimates for the sex ratio among European migrants in the period 1501–1900, but without offering data to back up the estimates. 40 Jan Lucassen, Migrant Labour in Europe 1600–1900. The Drift to the North Sea (London, 1987). 41 D. Christie Tait, “International Aspects of Migration”, Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs 6, no. 1 (1927): 31.
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restricted possibilities for migrant men, but not for women.42 German domestic servants migrated to the Netherlands, to Scandinavian countries, and to a lesser extent to Switzerland, while the migration of men was restricted. In 1922 the Kölnische Zeitung reported that there were 100,000 German domestic servants in the Netherlands. Organizations for the protection of young girls on railroads reported that 10,000 girls had come to the Netherlands in the first seven months of 1922 alone.43 In the post-war period the creation and the expansion the European Union (and its forerunners) was important. The European Coal and Steel Community (1951) liberalized the migration of workers within the six partner states, but since miners and steel workers were all men, it was mostly men who profited from this liberalization. The fast economic growth in North-Western European countries in the period 1945 to 1975 led to guest worker migration. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Luxemburg, Sweden, and the Netherlands actively recruited guest workers while the Southern European countries supplied the labour. About 70 percent of the recruited guest workers were men. In the 1960s, Portuguese officials kept women, especially those with children, from migrating by denying them visas in the hope of receiving remittances from men at work elsewhere in Europe.44 Eastern European countries also recruited guest workers; East Germany, for example, Vertragsarbeiter from Cuba, Mozambique, and Vietnam. About 85 percent of these were men. The economic downturn after 1975 signalled the end of guest worker recruitment. In recent decades Italy, Greece, and Spain have started to attract large numbers of migrants, both men and women. The high demand for care-givers in these countries creates possibilities for women and much less for men. In Italy there are now 2.2 million foreign residents; among them 1,344,000 women from Romania, Ukraine, Albania and Morocco (59 percent). Within these groups there are numeric differences. The Ukrainian community in Italy consists of 84.6 percent women. The
42 This type of difference is, of course, also found in other continents. The migration of women from some countries increased when bans were lifted. For example, when migration of Chinese women to Australia was forbidden, numbers were very low. Once the ban was lifted their percentage gradually increased from zero in 1861 to 33 percent in 1966. C.Y. Choi, Chinese Migration and Settlement in Australia (Sydney, 1975), 22, 42. 43 Barbara Henkes, Heimat in Holland. Duitse Dienstmeisjes 1920–1950 (Amsterdam, 1995). 44 Anthony Leeds, “Work, Labor, and Their Recompenses: Portuguese Life Strategies Involving Migration”, in Migrants in Europe. The Role of Family Labor, and Politics, ed. Hans Christian Buechler and Judith Maria Buechler (New York, 1987), 36.
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same numerical dominance is found among Poles, other East-Europeans (Russians, Moldavians), and migrants from Latin America. Moroccans, Tunisians, Senegalese, and Egyptians are, by a large majority, men.45 In 2000, there were 32,000 Peruvians in Italy (mostly cleaning houses), 22,000 of them were women (69 percent). In Spain, migrants from Eastern Europe and Latin America, mostly women, have partly replaced earlier migrants from Morocco, which included men and women.46 In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the labour market position of women has changed more for the worse than that of men. Labour market participation of women was generally high before the end of communism. It has considerably dropped since its demise because many of the state organized arrangements, which were to the benefit of women, have disappeared.47 These changes led to new migrations.48 Several European countries now offer opportunities to migrant women, while they restrict the opportunities for migrant men. In Ireland, for instance, there are opportunities for nurses from the Philippines. In 2003, there were 2500 nurses from the Philippines in Ireland, all women. The spouses of non-EU nurses were allowed entry into Ireland, but were not permitted to take up any paid work,49 a measure meant to discourage the migration of men. This brief overview cannot be exhaustive. Its aim is merely to point at differences in opportunities for men and women and changes within them. It is clear that opportunities for men and women were not the same and both changed, but neither increased nor decreased linearly over time. New migrations of women have, however, received more attention in recent decades than new migrations of men.
45 Anna Triandafyllidou and Ruby Gropas, eds., European Immigration. A Sourcebook (Aldershot, 2007), 190. 46 Winkler, Migrants, Minorities and Employment, 55; Brian Gratton, “Ecuadorians in the United States and Spain: History, Gender and Niche Formation”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33, no. 4 May (2007): 581–600. 47 Thanh-Dam Truong, “Gender, Exploitative Migration and the Sex Industry: A European Perspective”, Gender, Technology and Development 7, no. 1 (2003): 37, 43 and 45; ElCherkeh, et al., EU-Enlargement; Angela Coyle, “Resistance, Regulation and Rights. The Changing Status of Polish Women’s Migration and Work in the ‘New’ Europe”, European Journal of Women’s Studies 14, no. 1 (2007): 41. 48 Mirjana Morokvasic, “ ‘Settled in Mobility’: Engendering Post-wall Migration in Europe”, Feminist Review 77 (2004): 7–25. 49 Nicola Yeates, “A Dialogue with ‘Global Care Chain’ Analysis: Nurse Migration in the Irish Context”, Feminist Review 77 (2004): 89–90.
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marlou schrover Differences in Migration: Numbers
This section looks at which changes can be seen at the statistical level. Figure 1 presents the percentage of immigrant men for all 228 countries in the world in 2005 based on UN statistics.50 Each needle size column stands for one country. Figure 1 shows that in some countries immigrant women outnumber men: Nepal (31 percent men), Mauritius (37), Haiti (38), Barbados (40), Poland (40), and Estonia (40). In other countries immigrant men outnumber women: Saudi Arabia (70 percent men), Greenland (73), Cuba (73), Qatar (74), Oman (79), and Bangladesh (86). However, in almost all countries the number of men is more or less equal to the number of women. In Figure 2 the same data as in Figure 1 are presented in a different form. Both figures clearly show that it is not true that the majority of people who migrate are women. Not surprisingly the picture is the same for Western Europe only. In all countries the number of immigrant men is more or less equal to the number of women (Figure 3). The picture is also the same if we look at nationality: the percentage of men is roughly 50 percent (Figure 4). The same is true for countries in Central or Eastern Europe (Figure 5). In Hungary and Slovenia men outnumber women among emigrants. In Slovenia this is also true for immigrants. In the Czech Republic and in the Slovak Republic the percentage of women is larger than the percentage of men among the emigrants. If we look in even more detail at some countries we do see some differences (Figure 6). For some groups of migrants—mainly from the Philippines—the percentage of women is higher than the percentage of men. These women, however, only form a small part of the immigrant populations of the countries presented here.51 On the basis of these data we can conclude that currently immigrant women in general do not outnumber immigrant men. This brings us to the next question: has the percentage of migrant women increased? According to German population censuses (which were carried out every decade in December and which did not include seasonal migrants),
50 This list includes all 192 official member nations at the time plus all dependent countries (such as colonies) and disputed areas, http://data.un.org/DocumentData. aspx?q=migrants&id=57. 51 Triandafyllidou and Gropas, eds., European Immigration, 25.
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100 90 80 70
%
60 50 40 30 20 10 0
Countries
Calculated on the basis of UN statistics (each bar stands for a country) (http://data.un.org/ DocumentData.aspx?q=migrants&id=57 (accessed October 2008; site has since been replaced by http://data.un.org/Explorer.aspx?d=POP).
Figure 1. Percentage of immigrant men in 228 countries, 2005 25
frequency
20 15 10 5 0
0
10
20
30
40
50 60 percentage
70
80
90
100
Calculated on the basis of UN statistics, http://data.un.org/DocumentData.aspx?q=migrants &id=57.
Figure 2. Percentage of immigrant men in 228 countries, 2005, frequency
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marlou schrover
100 90 80 70 60 %
50
40 30 20 10
UK No rw ay
ur Ne g th er lan ds Au str ia Po rtu ga l Fi nl an d Sw ed en
ly
bo
Ita Lu
xe m
lan d
ain
Ire
Sp
an y
k
rm
ar
Ge
nm
De
Be
lgi
um
0
Calculated on the basis of European Social Statistics Migration 3 (European Communities, Luxembourg, 2002).
Figure 3. Percentage of men among immigrants, 1999, Europe 100 90 80 70 60 %
50
40 30 20 10
UK No rw ay
ur Ne g th er lan ds Au str ia Po rtu ga l Fi nl an d Sw ed en
bo
ly Ita Lu
xe m
lan d
Ire
ain Sp
m
an y
k ar
Ge r
nm
De
Be
lgi
um
0
Calculated on the basis of European Social Statistics Migration 3 (European Communities, Luxembourg, 2002).
Figure 4. Percentage of men among non-nationals, 2000
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feminization and problematization of migration
117
100 90 80 70
%
60 50 40 30 20 10
% men immigrants
ia Slo
Re p
ub
ve n
lic
ia an Ro m
Slo va k
a ua th Li
La
tv
ni
ia
y Hu
ng
ar
ia to n Es
Cz
ec
h
Re p
Cr
oa
ub
lic
tia
0
% men emigrants
Calculated on the basis of European Social Statistics Migration 3 (European Communities, Luxembourg, 2002).
Figure 5. Percentage of men (immigrants and emigrants) 1999 100 90 80 70 %
60 50 40 30 20 10
India
Morocco
Philippines
ite
dS
ta
te s
om gd in dK
ite Un
China
Un
ly Ita
Gr
ee
ce
ce Fr an
Sp ain
an y m Ge r
Au s
tri a Sw itz er lan d
0
Turkey
Calculated on the basis of Laura Oso Casas and Jean Pierre Garson, Migrant Women and the Labour Market; Diversity and Challenges. The Feminisation of International Migration (Brussels, 2005). Sources: European Community Labour Force Survey (data provided by Eurostat); United States: Current Population Survey, March Supplement.
Figure 6. Percentage of foreign women in European countries among the total immigrants of certain countries of origin, 2004
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118
marlou schrover Table 1. Foreign population in the German Reich 1890–191052
Year
Men
Women
% women
Total
1890 1900 1910
244,086 464,274 716,994
189,168 314,463 542,879
44 44 43
433,254 778,737 1,259,873
women accounted for 43 to 44 percent of the foreign citizens in the German Reich in the period 1890–1910 (Table 1). Men thus slightly outnumbered women. To what extent is this true for other countries? As has been observed above, data are not available for all countries and all years. The data presented below are not a selection but included all data available on the basis of Ferenczi and Willcox’s International Migrations. In Hungary, the percentage of men fell from 60 to 50 in the period 1901 to 1913 (Figure 7). In Belgium, the percentage of men among immigrants and emigrants was 50 in the period 1884 to 1924 (Figure 8). For the British Isles the picture is slightly different. The percentage of immigrant men arriving from Europe is 70 in the period 1891 to 1905 (Figure 9). The percentage of men among the emigrants from Ireland to Great Britain, the British colonies and foreign countries in the period 1856 to 1921 is again 50. Immediately after World War One it drops, and this could be called a feminization of migration (Figure 10). In the Russian Empire, the percentage of men among aliens in the period 1884 to 1915 was high: 80 to 100 percent (Figure 11). The number of migrants was, however, very low (500,000 migrants yearly to this vast country). The percentage of men among the Russian citizens who worked as seasonal labourers in Germany in the period 1901 to 1913 (800,000 Russian men and women) is slightly above 50 (Figure 12). The same is true for the immigration to Sweden for the period 1875 to 1924. The percentage of men is slightly higher in earlier years and then levels out to about 50 (Figure 13). In the Netherlands, there is a difference between immigration from the colonies and that from other countries in the period 1865 to 1924 (Figure 14). The percentage of men among the migrants from the colonies is high: 80 at the beginning of this period and 60 at the end. This percentage 52 Christiane Reinecke, “Policing Foreign Men and Women: Gendered Patterns of Expulsion and Migration Control in Germany, 1880–1914”, in Illegal Migration and Gender in a Global and Historical Perspective, ed. Schrover et al., 62.
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feminization and problematization of migration
119
100 90 80
%
70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
1901
1902
1903
1904
1905
1906
1907
1908
1909
1910
1911
1912
1913
Year
Calculated on the basis of Ferenczi and Willcox, International Migrations, 1:719.
Figure 7. Percentage of men among emigrants from Hungary to European countries, 1901–1913 100 90 80 70
%
60 50 40 30 20 10
18 84 18 86 18 88 18 90 18 92 18 94 18 96 18 98 19 00 19 02 19 04 19 06 19 09 19 10 19 12 19 14 19 16 19 18 19 20 19 22 19 24
0
Year emigrant men
immigrant men
Calculated on the basis of Ferenczi and Willcox, International Migrations, 1:606, 610.
Figure 8. Percentage of emigrant and immigrant men from and to Belgium to and from other European countries, 1884–1924
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120
marlou schrover
%
100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 Year
Calculated on the basis of Ferenczi and Willcox, International Migrations, 1:655.
Figure 9. Percentage of men among aliens arrived at the British Isles from Europe (excluding transmigrants), 1891–1905 100 90 80 70 %
60 50 40 30 20 10 1919
1916
1913
1910
1907
1904
1901
1895
1898
1892
1889
1883
1886
1877
1880
1871
1874
1868
1862
1865
1859
1856
0 Year
Calculated on the basis of Ferenczi and Willcox, International Migrations, 1:730.
Figure 10. Percentage of men among emigrants from Ireland to Great Britain, British colonies and foreign countries, 1856–1921
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feminization and problematization of migration
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100 90 80 70 %
60 50 40 30 20 10
08 19 10 19 12 19 14
19
98 19 00 19 02 19 04 19 06
96
18
18
94
92
18
18
90
88
18
86
18
18
18
84
0 Year
Calculated on the basis of Ferenczi and Willcox, International Migrations, 1:805.
Figure 11. Percentage of men among aliens arriving with passports across the Russian frontier during the Imperial period, 1884–1915 100 90 80 70 %
60 50 40 30 20 10 0
1901
1902
1903
1904
1905
1906
1907
1908
1909
1910
1911
1912
1913
Year
Calculated on the basis of Ferenczi and Willcox, International Migrations, 1:810.
Figure 12. Percentage of men among Russian citizens who worked as seasonal emigrants in Germany (bearing 8-month passports), 1901–1913
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122
marlou schrover
100 90 80 70 60 %
50 40 30 20 10
18 76 18 79 18 82 18 85 18 88 18 91 18 94 18 97 19 00 19 03 19 06 19 09 19 12 19 15 19 18 19 21 19 24
0 Year
Calculated on the basis of Ferenczi and Willcox, International Migrations, 1:761.
Figure 13. Percentage of men among immigrants to Sweden, 1875–1924 100 90 80 70
%
60 50 40 30 20 10
18 65 18 68 18 71 18 74 18 77 18 80 18 83 18 86 18 89 18 92 18 95 18 98 19 01 19 04 19 07 19 10 19 13 19 16 19 19 19 22
0 Year from colonies
from foreign countries
Calculated on the basis of Ferenczi and Willcox, International Migrations, 1:744.
Figure 14. Percentage of men among immigrants from colonies and foreign countries to the Netherlands, 1865–1924
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feminization and problematization of migration
123
is not surprising since this was mainly return migration of civil servants, soldiers, and traders, and most of these were men. The percentage of men among migrants from other countries to the Netherlands is 50 but declines in the 1920s. Overall, the data for the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century show that the sex ratio among migrants was rather balanced. The data do not allow us to see if women travelled shorter distances than men, or if women travelled as dependents while men did not. Data to answer such questions are not available. We now turn to the period after World War Two. In 2002, Zlotnik presented data that showed for various regions in the world that between 1960 and 2000 the percentage of men in migration hardly changed. It was 50 percent throughout and there are no differences between regions (Figure 15).53 This does not mean that there are no differences between groups, such as in the case of migration from the Philippines. Figure 16 is based on data extracted from the Demographic Yearbooks for the period from 1945 to 2003. The lines for Denmark, Norway, and Sweden oscillate closely around the 50 percent line. In the UK, women slightly outnumber men in the early years and again in the mid 1980s, but not to a very large extent. For the guest worker recruiting countries Germany and the Netherlands the pattern is clearly different. The percentage of men strongly increases in the early 1960s, drops in the late 1960s, increases again in the 1970s and levels out after 1975, when countries stopped recruitment. Figure 17 presents data for the Netherlands for the period 1865 to 2002. It was, until recently, the only country for which data are available for such a long period. The percentage of men is about 50 between 1865 and 1920. In the interwar period the immigration of men was restricted, while women were still allowed to immigrate (mainly as domestic servants). If there ever was a period of feminization, it was in this interwar period. In the 1960s, during the period of guest worker migration, there was a masculinization of migration. This masculinization did not lead to discussions at the time or later. After 1975, we see a return to the 50 percent level. This return could be the reason why authors talk about feminization, although actually it was a correction for the earlier period of masculinization.
53 Zlotnik used the same flow data as I have done for this research. Zlotnik, “Data Insight the Global Dimensions of Female Migration”.
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124
marlou schrover 100 90 80
%
70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
1960
1970
1980
1990
Year
2000
Northern America Northern Africa Southern Asia Western Asia Latin America
Europe Oceania Sub-Saharan Africa Eastern and South-eastern Asia Caribbean
Based on Zlotnik, “Data Insight the Global Dimensions of Female Migration”, in United Nations, International Migration Report: 2002. No. E. 03. XIII. 4 (New York, 2002).
Figure 15. Percentage of migrant men worldwide, 1960–2000 100 90 80 70
%
60 50 40 30 20 10
1999
2002
1993
1996
1987
1990
1981
1984
1975
1978
1972
1969
1963
1966
1957
1960
1951
1954
1945
1948
0 Year Denmark Norway
Germany Sweden
Netherlands UK
Calculated on the basis of data in the UN Demographic Yearbooks, 1945–2003.
Figure 16. Percentage of migrant men (flow), 1945–2003
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feminization and problematization of migration
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100 90 80 70 60 %
50
40 30 20 10 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000
0 Year
Calculated on the basis of Ferenczi and Willcox, International Migrations, vol. 1, and on the basis of data in the UN Demographic Yearbooks 1945–2003.
Figure 17. Percentage of men among immigrants to the Netherlands, 1865–2002
The data for the Netherlands can be compared to those presented by Gabaccia and Zanoni for the U.S.54 In the U.S., the percentage of women among incoming U.S. migrants rose and stabilized in the 1830s at around 40 percent. During the depression of the mid-1890s, the percentage of women fell to about 30 percent. In the mid-1920s, the percentage of incoming women immigrants increased to 50 percent. The data of Gabaccia and Zanoni terminate in 1924, but seem to indicate that restrictive policies in the U.S. on migration affected men more than women, as was true for the Netherlands. Problematization of Migration Overall changes in percentages hardly justify the very large literature on feminization. How may, in the light of the data presented above, the extensive academic and political debate about feminization of migration and the keenness for using the concept be explained? Emphasis on feminization is part of the problematization of migration. Problematization is the process in which actors (academics, politicians, journalists, NGOs, lawyers, or others) analyze a situation, define it as a problem, expand it 54 Gabaccia and Zanoni, “Transitions in Gender Ratios among International Migrants”.
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by attaching other issues, and finally suggest a solution.55 Problematization creates inflated ideas about threats via extensive or overdone media attention, rapidly succeeding media reports, exaggeration of numbers, costs and consequences, and expansion to other problems.56 Exaggeration of numbers or speculations about numbers (for instance the number of women migrating) is a crucial element of problematization.57 The current dominant discourse on migration is that of problems, in which migrant men are seen as causing problems and migrant women as having them.58 The migration of men is associated with fears about losing control over borders and the labour market. In the post-9/11 era, immigration control and anti-terrorism efforts are conflated.59 The difference between causing problems and having problems is mirrored in that between being a risk and being at risk.60 Migrant men are seen as a risk because of the destabilising effects they might have on society as a whole, or on security, while migrant women are portrayed as running the risk of being trafficked, ending up in prostitution, forced marriages, situations of domestic violence or becoming the victims of honour killings.61 The way the migration of women is currently problematized shows similarities to the so-called White Slavery Scare of around 1900, which was triggered by a perceived increase in the migration of women, a disapproval of women’s migration and stories about the risk migrant women encountered.62 55 Michel Foucault, “Polemics, Politics and Problematisations: an Interview with Michel Foucault”, in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (London, 1984), 388–389. 56 Peter Vasterman, Mediahype (Amsterdam, 2004). 57 Marlou Schrover, “Family in Dutch Migration Policy 1945–2005”, The History of the Family 14 (2009), 191–202, and Schrover, “Why Make a Difference? Migration Policy and Making Differences Between Migrant Men and Women (The Netherlands 1945–2005)”, in Gender, Migration and the Public Sphere 1850–2005, ed. M. Schrover and Eileen Janes Yeo (New York, 2010), 76–96. 58 Teun A. van Dijk, “Discourse and the Denial of Racism”, Discourse & Society 3 (1992): 87–118, 100; Connie Roggeband and Mieke Verloo, “Dutch Women are Liberated, Migrant Women are a Problem: The Evolution of Policy Frames on Gender and Migration in the Netherlands, 1995–2005”, Social Policy & Administration 41, no. 3 (June 2007): 271–288. 59 Wayne A. Cornelius, “Controlling ‘Unwanted’ Immigration: Lessons from the United States, 1993–2004”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 1.4 (2005): 775–794. 60 Phyllis Pease Chock, “ ‘Illegal Aliens’ and ‘Opportunity’: Myth-Making in Congressional Testimony”, American Ethnologist 18, no. 2 (May 1991): 279–294. 61 Schrover, “Why Make a Difference?”, 76–96. 62 Jo Doezema, “Loose Women or Lost Women? The Re-emergence of the Myth of White Slavery in Contemporary Discourse of Trafficking in Women”, Gender Issues 18, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 23–50; Petra de Vries, “ ‘White Slaves’ in a Colonial Nation: the Dutch Campaign Against the Traffic in Women in the Early Twentieth Century”, Social & Legal Studies 14 (2005): 39–60; Jo Doezema, “Now You See Her, Now You Don’t: Sex Workers at the UN Trafficking Protocol Negotiations”, Social Legal Studies 14 (2005): 61–89; Dina
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The protection of “innocent” foreign women was used to legitimize restrictions on their mobility.63 Part of the process of problematization is the introduction of new terms, with a semi-academic ring to them,64 such as feminization, which helps to legitimize the problem. The word “feminization” stems from the medical discipline, where it refers to men becoming feminine because of hormonal changes or castration. In demography, “sex ratio” and “sex composition of the population” are standard terms to describe the number of women in relation to the number of men. Introduction of the word “feminization” in a demographical context and preferring it to “sex ratio” or “sex composition” emphasizes the newness of the phenomenon. Four factors explain the emphasis on feminization. In the first place, policy makers and migration researchers have in the last decades started to pay equal attention to the migration of men and women.65 This created the idea that the migration of women is new, rather than the attention for the subject. Second, the idea of feminization is strengthened by the concentration of migrant women in a few sectors of the labour market only. The labour market is segregated according to both sex and ethnicity. Migrant women
Francesca Haynes, “Used, Abused, Arrested and Deported: Extending Immigration Benefits to Protect the Victims of Trafficking and to Secure the Prosecution of Traffickers”, Human Rights Quarterly 26 (2004): 221–272. 63 Deirdre M. Moloney, “Women, Sexual Morality, and Economic Dependency in Early U.S. Deportation Policy”, Journal of Women’s History 18, no. 2 (2006): 95–122. 64 Luisa Martín Rojo and Teun A. van Dijk, “ ‘There was a Problem, and it was Solved!’: Legitimating of the Expulsion of ‘Illegal’ Migrants in Spanish Parliamentary Discourse”, Discourse & Society 8 (1997), 523–566. For emphasizing newness by introducing a new term see: Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation—Analysis of Government—Proposals for Redress (Washington, 1944), 79–96; Drazen Petrović, “Ethnic Cleansing: an Attempt at Methodology”, European Journal of International Law 5, no. 4 (1994): 343. 65 Since the 1980s, many studies about women and migration have been published. For recent overviews of the literature see: Donato et al., “A Glass Half Full?”; Hasia R. Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America. Irish Immigrants Women in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore, 1983); Schrover and Yeo, eds., Gender, Migration and the Public Sphere. See also: Annie Phizacklea, ed., One Way Ticket. Migration and Female Labour (London, 1983); Rita James Simon and Caroline B. Brettell, eds., International Migration. The Female Experience (Totowa, 1986); Katie Willis and Brenda Yeoh, Gender and Migration (Cheltenham, 2000), xi–xxii; Sharpe, ed., Women, Gender and Labour Migration; Eleonore Kofman et al., Gender and International Migration in Europe (Gender, Racism, Ethnicity) (London, 2001); Morokvasic, Erel, Shinozaki, eds., Crossing Borders and Shifting Boundaries, vol. 1, Gender on the Move (2003), and Ilse Lenz, Helma Lutz, Mirjana Morokvasic, Claudia SchöningKalender, Helen Schwenken, eds., Crossing Borders and Shifting Boundaries, vol. 2. Gender, Identities and Networks (Opladen, 2002).
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marlou schrover
and men cluster in certain sectors, but the number of sectors in which women cluster is less than that of migrant men.66 This concentration has increased the visibility of migrant women and has resulted in numerous studies on domestic servants, sex workers, and nurses.67 This literature is characterized by endless repetitions: there is emphasis on restricted rights, poor labour conditions, abuse, and exploitation.68 This adds to the idea that the migration of women is not only new but also problematic. Third, ideas about feminization are influenced by the sameness/difference dilemma. In an attempt to gain (legal) equality, differences between migrant men and women are stressed. In asylum cases, for instance, rape, female circumcision, honour killings, domestic violence, coercive family planning, forced marriages, or repressive social norms have been introduced as new grounds for asylum.69 The result is that migration of women and the risks they run are seen as new.70 Since the 1970s, organizations acting on behalf of migrants have used highly personalized cases to fight for immigrant rights via media campaigns. While this tactic increased the chances of success at an individual level, it also created an image of migrant women (and much less migrant men) as at risk and in need of protection.71 Prostitution and the trafficking of women dominate the academic, public and political discourse on women and migration.72 This
66 Marlou Schrover, Joanne van der Leun, and Chris Quispel, “Niches, Labour Market Segregation, Ethnicity and Gender”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33, no. 4 (May 2007): 529–540. 67 Janet Henshall Momsen, ed., Gender, Migration and Domestic Service (London, 1999); Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work (Stanford, 2001); Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, eds., Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy (London, 2003); Sheba M. George, When Women Come First. Gender and Class in Transnational Migration (Los Angeles, 2005). 68 Nicole Constable, Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipina Workers (Ithaca, 1997); Bridget Anderson, Doing the Dirty Work? The Global Politics of Domestic Labour (London, 2000); Salazar Parreñas, Servants of Globalization. 69 Thomas Spijkerboer, Gender and Refugee Status (Aldershot, 2000); Kitty Calavita, “Gender, Migration, and Law: Crossing Borders and Bridging Discipline”, International Migration Review 40, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 104–132, 106. 70 Connie G. Oxford, “Protectors and Victims in the Gender Regime of Asylum”, National Women’s Studies Association Journal 17, no. 3 (Fall 2005), 18–38; Calavita, “Gender, Migration, and Law”. 71 Schrover, “Family in Dutch Migration Policy 1945–2005”, 191–202. 72 Annie Phizacklea, “Migration and Globalization: A Feminist Perspective”, in The New Migration in Europe, ed. Koser and Lutz (Basingstoke, 1998), 21–38; Denise Brennan, “Women Work, Men Sponge, and Everyone Gossips”, Anthropological Quarterly 77, no. 7 (2004): 705–733; Gretchen Soderlund, “Running from the Rescuers: New U.S. Crusaders Against Sex Trafficking and the Rhetoric of Abolition”, National Women’s Studies Association Journal 17, no. 3 (2005): 65; Laura Agustin, “Migrants in the Mistress’s House: Other
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has resulted in calls for stronger monitoring of migrant women.73 The narratives of victimhood, and the information provided by NGOs working on behalf of women, have brought about protective measures, which sometimes help women but also restrict their choices.74 Countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, Burma, and Nepal have restricted the emigration of women, arguing that they need protection.75 In the fourth place, discussions on the feminization of migration are related to a feminization of the discourse on integration.76 Since the 1970s, many North-Western European countries followed a multiculturalist policy, which “allowed” immigrants to be different from the rest of the population, and encouraged them to hold on to their language and culture.77 The policy fitted perfectly with the idea that guest worker migration was temporary migration. The policy, as it took shape in the late 1970s, created, stressed and maintained differences between immigrant men and women because it reproduced stereotypical ideas about the roles of men and women in countries of origin. As part of this policy all migrant women were seen as wives and mothers. When the idea of temporariness was dropped, discourse shifted to religion and especially the assumed oppression of women in Islam. Women’s issues—such as the wearing of headscarves—currently take centre stage in debates on integration.78 Feminization of migration is linked to domestic violence, Voices in the ‘Trafficking’ Debate”, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 12, no. 1 (2005): 97, 108. 73 Umut Erel, “Soziales Kapital und Migration: Die Kraft der Schwachen?”, in Migration, Gender, Arbeitsmarkt; Neue Beitrage zu Frauen und Globalisierung, ed. Maria Do Mar Castro Varela and Dimitria Clayton (Königstein/Taunus, 2003), 154–185. 74 Soderlund, “Running From the Rescuers”, 65. 75 Tarneen Siddiqui, “An Anatomy of Forced and Voluntary Migration from Bangladesh: A Gendered Perspective”, in Crossing Borders and Shifting Boundaries, vol. 1, ed. Morokvasic, Erel and Shinozaki (Opladen, 2003), 155–176; International Seminar on Cross Border Movements and Human Rights, 9–10 January 2004, New Delhi, India (Report on seminar published by the Centre for Feminist Legal Research); Dannecker, “Transnational Migration and the Transformation of Gender Relations”, 655–674; Marina de Regt and Annelies Moors, “Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East”, in Illegal Migration and Gender in a Global and Historical Perspective, ed. Schrover et al., 151–170. 76 Roggeband and Verloo, “Dutch Women are Liberated, Migrant Women are a Problem”. 77 Ibid.; Marlou Schrover, “Pillarization, Multiculturalism and Cultural Freezing: Dutch Migration History and the Enforcement of Essentialist Ideas”, Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden—The Low Countries Historical Review 125, nos. 2/3 (2010): 329–354. 78 Dominic McGoldrick, Human Rights and Religion: The Islamic Headscarf Debate in Europe (Oxford, 2006); Lina Molokotos Liederman, “Religious Diversity in Schools: the Muslim Headscarf Controversy and Beyond”, Social Compass 47, no. 3 (2000): 367–382;
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genital cutting, honour killings, and forced marriages. In all these cases there are gross overestimates of the number of women involved. In countries with a large numbers of emigrant women, there are discussions about the problem of the children who are left behind, and about socalled transnational mothering.79 It is a debate that is not matched by a similar debate about men who left their families behind, or transnational fathering. In addition some authors have stressed that the migration of girls is responsible for the fact that the boys, who are left behind in the villages, fail to make the transition from boyhood to manhood, and compensate for their lack of money or status by showing aggressive sexual behaviour.80 Conclusion The opportunities for migration of men and women changed over the past two centuries; new opportunities were created, some restrictions fell away, while new ones were installed. Despite these changes the percentage of migrant women remained more or less equal to the percentage of migrant men. This does not deny that there were groups of migrants or periods and countries in which the sex ratio was less balanced. This is, for instance, true for the migration from the Philippines to several European countries, in which women outnumber men. In the interwar period, when several European countries restricted the migration of men, we see to some measure a feminization of migration. Within the guest worker migration regime we see a masculinization of migration, which is not addressed or problematized. In current debates the feminization of migration is presented as a recent and general phenomenon. Partly, the image that migration has feminized springs from the fact that more attention is paid to the migration of women. Partly, it can be explained by the
Susan B. Rottmann and Myra Marx Ferree, “Citizenship and Intersectionality: German Feminist Debates about Headscarf and Antidiscrimination Laws”, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, Special Issue: “The Veil: Debating Citizenship, Gender and Religious Diversity”, (Winter 2008): 501. 79 See for instance: Yeates, “A Dialogue with ‘Global Care Chain’ Analysis”; Filomenita Mongaya Hoegsholm, ed., In de Olde Worlde: Views of Filipino Migrants in Europe (Quezon City, 2007); Mojca Pajnik and Veronika Bajt, “Migrant Women’s Transnationalism: Family Patterns and Policies”, International Migration (2010): 1–25 (pre-publication online version: 28 APR 2010 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1468–2435.2010.00613.x). 80 Rebecca Elmhirst, “Tigers and Gangsters: Masculinities and Feminised Migration in Indonesia”, Population. Space Place 13 (2007): 225–238.
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campaigns on behalf of migrant women in an attempt to gain equal rights. Most importantly a large number of “problems”, in the countries of origin and settlement, is linked to the feminization of migration. Protection of migrant women is linked to issues of safety and control, and is used to legitimize restrictions on migration.
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