1
Migration, gender, empowerment1
Mirjana Morokvasic
“Now I am someone and something. Back in my village in Yugoslavia I was just a
rejected widow”(Danka, Sweden, Morokvasic 1987)
“First I worked three years in order to be able to finish building our house. Now,
I have been working for three further years to maintain that house, because the
heating and the rest are enormously costly and my husband is unemployed. One
could never pay that without my Belgian salary. That is my life: six years of
cleaning jobs in exchange for a beautiful house in which I live only for one or two
months a year.” (Polish migrant in Brussels; quoted in Kuzma 2003, 122; own
translation).
1. Contradictory outcomes of migration on gender order and beyond
Mobility and migration have a specific significance for women: Historically they
have been associated with immobility and passivity. For a long time they were
either invisible or regarded as dependents rather than migrants in their own right,
their migration tied to migration of men. In many societies, in spite of overall
feminization of migratory movements, the obstacles and restrictions to women’s
mobility still persist. Furthermore, women on the move often also face moral
stigmatization even in the situations where they massively participate in migration
flows or even represent the majority of migrants and main family providers (Potot
2005, Peraldi 2001, Keough 2006, Le Espiritu 2005). Therefore, a potential social
impact of mobility as a newly gained or not yet achieved freedom will be different
for women than for men.
Migrants are situated within power hierarchies – which shape the ways people
think and act - that they have not themselves constructed (class, race, ethnicity,
nationality, gender, immigrant status etc). But, they also develop different types of
agency vis-à-vis these hierarchies from their different social locations within
structural conditions that are both constraining and enabling. Women can be
initiators of moves or even if they do not move themselves they can influence the
moves of others, or be affected by the mobility of others in different ways. Gender
can facilitate or jeopardize migration, settlement, gender relations prior to
migration affect the migration work, the process, the migration patterns and
ongoing relations (Catarino and Morokvasic 2005). Feminist and other scholars
focused on the link between migration processes and distribution of power in the
family, on the impact of waged labour and economic independence of women on
household decision making towards more egalitarian relationships.
The research evidence suggests that crossing borders for work purpose can be
empowering, open up opportunities for challenging the established gender norms,
but it can also lead to new dependencies and reinforce existing gender boundaries
and hierarchies. Increasingly feminized (about half of world wide migrants are
women, 52% in Europe) international migration is an area where globalisation,
1
This is a shorter revised version of a text forthcoming : Morokvasic, Mirjana (2007): “Migration,
Gender, Empowerment“. In: Lenz, Ilse; Ullrich, Charlotte; Fersch, Barbara (eds.): Gender Orders
Unbound. Globalisation, Restructuring and Reciprocity. Barbara Budrich Publishers. Opladen;
Farmington Hills: pp. 69-97.
2
development and gender ideologies intersect. World wide feminisation of
migration continues to reflect the presence of migrant women in precarious, low
paid jobs in manufacturing, and a rapidly increasing number of them in service
jobs (Parreñas 2001; Anderson 2000; Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2003), mostly
domestic work, nursing, care for the elderly, entertainment and prostitution, the
latter often related to increased mobility of men (as military, as militarized peace
keepers, as tourists) (Enloe 2000, Falquet 2006). Most of these occupations are
often not visible or not recognized as “work” especially if they are performed
outside the legal framework. They are also labelled as help rather than work:
Haushaltshilfe, assistante maternelle, aide-ménagère, assistenza or
collaborazione familiare are official denominations of similar occupations in
France, Germany and Italy regarding personal services and care; as for the „au
pairs“, they can be invested with full time child care, nanny and household
responsibilities, but come within „cultural exchange programme” as in Germany
(Hess 2005).
These occupations are built on gendered assumptions of women’s innate affinities
for work in the reproductive sphere. It could be expected that precisely performing
in these spheres would not be conducive or would be even less conducive to
destabilizing gender norms about the division of labour in the household and to
disrupting gender hierarchies. The research evidence indeed suggests that the very
presence of immigrants (and in particular women) reproduces them or intensifies
them (Friese 1995, Lyon 2006, Shinozaki 2005, Oso 2006).
The preservation of hierarchies of class and gender means that - whatever the
gains that may be achieved by immigrants - they are offset by the loss of status,
overwork, declassing, and exploitation. Depending on the context and the sector
of work, there is also a high real risk of being confronted with experiences of
extreme humiliation and violence, as the evidence from work in the sex industry
especially, but also in domestic services suggests.
The gender order is not necessarily challenged by migration of women, in
contrast, ample evidence exists that it is considerably resistant to change in
migration even in the situations of reversal of traditional roles. But in the present
text I would like to go beyond the usual implicit or explicit question of whether or
not the gender relations are reconfigured in the context of migration and ask how
are the outcomes negotiated and what space for agency and empowerment2
there
is. This seems to me indispensable from the perspective of migrants as actors of
change rather than objects or targets of change. My argument here is that
international migrants albeit women and men in different ways, tend to use the
traditional gender order and rely on it for their own purposes, if they don’t
challenge or question it.
They are well aware of the institutional, political, cultural-social and economic
contexts which shape their employment opportunities across borders. They know,
but will express it differently in their own words, that the openings for them exist
also because the traditional gender order is embedded in them with expectations
that their employment (mostly migrant women’s but also sometimes migrant
2
Empowerment can be understood as a process of reinforcing people’s agency, it means strengthening
individual and collective strategies of resistance (but also negotiation, subversion etc) to get rid of social,
economic, political pressures or/and try to find valuable alternatives.
3
men’s) will sustain the continuity of the order, with its class-gender hierarchies,
informal employment structures and family ideals.
When migrant women’s only chance to leave their home country is to join
“alternative circuits” of smugglers or to feature as mail order brides via agencies
or internet, when their only employment opportunity is in domestic service or the
sex industry, it is very likely that they will go along rather than try to challenge
the order that opens borders for them and procures them work. Some will go even
further and excel in demonstrating how they are “better” than those they are hired
to replace.
The focus in the text will be in particular (but not only) on women’s reliance and
use of the gender order in which men are privileged. It is not as self-evident as
men’s use of it. It will be shown that whereas sometimes the order is relied upon
and as such preserved, it can paradoxically be relied upon in order to, effectively,
subvert it from within.
2. Challenging the gender order in the globalized world. The gains for women?
The conventional wisdom in some studies, in particular in classic “settler
societies” historically as today, is that change in gender relations is closely related
to the participation of women in the labour force and that women’s bargaining
power increases compared to their countries of origin. Besides, the new context
favours men’s participation in activities traditionally considered as women’s
duties in their countries of origin like child care and household chores (Menjivar
1999). Women on the contrary even when they are not successful in the labour
market gain access to institutional and other resources which are supposedly
unavailable in their home countries. Thus it seems that women’s gains are
conceptualized as being more related to gender, while men’s losses are in
occupational status.
One of the universal findings in studies on return migration indicates that women
are generally more reluctant to return (Grassmuck and Pessar 1991, Morokvasic
1987a, Fibbi, Bolzmann and Vial 1999). This on the other hand feeds into the
assumption that women are “better off where they are now”, more favourable to
settlement as opposed to men, more adaptable, whereas men tend to reinforce
their own values and norms as a response to an environment that is strange and
hostile to them and excludes them.
Comparing the impact of access to paid employment of Moroccan women on
“gender contract” in the context of Morocco and in Spain, Angeles Ramirez
suggests that whereas their access to the labour market in Morocco is still seen as
a transgression of their traditional role, working in Spain enables women greater
access to and control over resources and provides them with more autonomy in
managing their lives “in spite of the inferiority of their position in Spain both as
foreigners and women” (Ramirez 1999: 35). The fact that Spain’s immigration
policy gives priority to female immigrants contributes to modifying the gender
order in Morocco: men are no longer seen as exclusive economic providers for the
family as women enter the sphere as indispensable economic agents. Similar
observation concerning the feminisation of the trading circuits from Tunisia to
Italy is provided by Camille Schmoll (2005).
4
Taking the perspective of women domestic workers from the Philippines in
France Liane Mozère (2005) underscores the empowerment of these women who
become entrepreneurs d’elles- mêmes. The gender order and practices are
disrupted by the fact that women acquire the status of the breadwinner for the
whole family, whereas men assume tasks which in the home country are
associated with female roles3
. Women also have access to liberties unknown to
them in the Philippines. In spite of these changes Mozère warns that this happens
in a world where they are - as migrants - condemned to “partial citizenship” only
(Parreñas 2001). Swanie Potot (2005) shows that although women attain more
autonomy , back in Rumania the gender order reasserts itself and women,
confronted with the stigma of bad reputation have fewer opportunities to make use
of their success,.
3. Maintaining or strengthening the gender order
Whereas the evidence about “improvements” often stresses contradictory
outcomes and social costs, many accounts point the opposite side: reproduction of
gender inequalities. intensified traditional roles, dependency, increased work load
for women.
3.1. Loss of support and increased work loads
Middle class women who used to rely on both paid and unpaid support in their
countries of origin, adapt to escalating demands in new circumstances in the
context of migration without challenging the gender order
Myra Marx Ferree surveyed Cuban middle class women in the US in the context
where female employment is needed to maintain standards of respectability for the
family. In the Cuban community the traditional view of women has been stretched
to include employment as a regular part of female role (1979, 48). Then , the
author argues, the employment as a family obligation is not so much a cultural
change as it is a behaviour produced by applying traditional values to changed
circumstances. As such, it does not imply changes in other values such as moral
respectability in terms of sexual behaviour or authority deference patterns in malefemale
relationships.
The Hong Kong Chinese highly qualified women migrants to Canada are
confronted with deterioration of their status because of loss of support network
and decrease in earning power (Man 1995). Regardless of whether the woman had
paid work outside of the home, her paid work was always subordinated to her care
for her husband and children.
3.2 When women’s work is not “work”
Observing the conditions in the 1980s in garment production in Paris Morokvasic,
(1987b) noticed how over the years different patterns of employment emerged for
men, at least for some of them, and for women. The petty entrepreneur status is
quasi limited to men whether they possess the sewing skills or not. They can, or
have to rely on skills of their kin and other women. They can even expect women
in their own family to work without pay at all, sewing simply being considered as
an extension of women’s domestic duty. Although generating income, women
3
Women often refer to their husbands staying behind as “housebands” (Mozère 2005: 227)
5
therefore do not get out of their dependent status. “He brings in the work to be
done. I just work and work. He takes the work away, gets the money, I do not
know how much, from whom, I know nothing, I have nothing” (Morokvasic, field
notes garment sector Paris 1984).Women for years remained home workers or
outworkers without the opportunity of promotion or upgrading or legalisation –
the conditions for regularisation were such that women did not qualify:
uninterrupted continuity at work and long term engagement. Their work on the
contrary was marked by discontinuity and by short term, sporadic arrangements.
The French legalisation procedure of 1982 which benefited some 135000
clandestine immigrant workers bypassed women. Only 17% were legalised and
only slightly more in sectors where women were typically a majority (22% in
garments for instance, Morokvasic 1987c,1993). The state regulatory tools and
gender specific discrimination at work thus combine to give precarious conditions
a permanent nature.
The male bias in business ownership and gendered perception of work are also
confirmed in a study of Chinese businesses in Germany, although women
commonly “contribute” labour (Leung 2004). Their work is however often written
off as “merely” additional help. “No, I deal with the shop business here. My
husband really works, he works in the factory. Here it is only for me.”(ibid.: 105).
The spatial connection between her shop and home implicitly defines her work as
“work at home” and thus not as “real work”. Though she is sewing late into the
evening, this itself may be seen just as an extension of a “natural” woman’s role at
home and therefore not valued as “work”. Thus the fundamental gender division
of labour (not only in immigrant communities) resting on the expectation that
‘women are responsible for home and men for paid work’ is not challenged but
reinforced. Kim herself fits her business and her perception of it within this
unchallenged order.
3.3. Substitute women at the intersection of gender, class, migrancy
The globalisation of reproductive tasks and South-North migratory movements
contribute to the reproduction of gender inequalities. Female immigration to Spain
enables some Spanish men to find a woman who fits their expectations of the
“feminine housewife” either due to her more traditional socialisation or to her
position of vulnerability as an immigrant combined with the fact that native
women are increasingly rejecting such a role: “I think that a Colombian woman
looks after a man better than a Spanish woman. (Oso 2003: 224). The study of
German internet match making agencies carried out by Riitta Vartti (2003)
confirms similar desirable feature of partnerships for their customers (99% are
men): They expect “old fashioned traditional femininity” from the immigrant
would-be-bride, i.e. non emancipated, docile, home loving and not career-oriented
women, pretty and faithful home-keepers, better alternatives to local women, who
are too liberated and career-oriented.
Spanish quota policy, a kind of annual regularisation process, reflects an
increasing demand for domestic work and encourages the immigration of women
into domestic service which has been in Spain, together with the agricultural
sector, one of the major sectors offering employment. For Spanish working
middle class women reliance on foreign women to take over the domestic tasks
reflects their reproductive strategy to solve the problem of double burden by
employing substitute women. For upper class non working housewives the
presence of a domestic is a way of maintaining social status. Thus the outsourcing
6
of domestic tasks (rather than sharing them within the family) “has an
emancipating effect on working middle class women while preserving the status
quo, whereas it perpetuates tradition among those who have chosen to stay at
home to raise family” (Oso 2003: 213).
As in Spain, in Italy, Greece, France, Germany, Turkey among other countries
where increasing female employment rates and aging population have created a
demand in a “domestic niche” (Lutz 2002), foreign women increasingly replace
both paid and unpaid labour of women as housekeepers and carers. Their
employment is framed by inadequacy of welfare regimes and, in terms of
migration policies, by the absence of legal immigration channels, compensated by
toleration of informal inflows and a circulatory pattern (Finotelli and Sciortino
2006). The shift to a “migrant-minder” model creates a new racial- and classbased
divisions between Italian or other European women and women who take
over as carers. The gendered and racialized characterisations continue to be the
rationale behind migrant women’s employment: They are considered naturally
gifted and generally charitable in disposition, undemanding and subservient i.e.
perfectly suited for service and care work (Lyon 2006 pp. 222-223). Their labour
is marginalized as unproductive and excluded from the category of work not only
on the basis of gendered relations but in addition through the dimensions of
migrancy and legality. But as such it remains even more strongly embedded in
and sustaining of the ideal of family care for the elderly.
The presence of migrant women in personal services enables the gender
hierarchies to be preserved in their employer’s households. Increasing equal
opportunities between German men and women in the labour market is parallel to
increasing inequalities among women as Friese (1995) notes. Most of Eastern
live-out cleaners, baby sitters and caretakers to whom German middle class
career-oriented women transfer the reproductive work are declassed and deskilled:
They are themselves middle class, often academics and professionals in
their own countries and are trying to hold on to their high status-low pay jobs at
home Their upward mobility or status preservation at home is thus contingent to
declassing in their country of work.
Whereas for their employers they contribute to maintain as a norm the caring
arrangements functioning on a daily basis, closely bound spatially and
temporarily, for their own families they improvise the “living-apart-together
arrangements” managing separations across time and space. Although this can be
empowering for them - as economic and bargaining power within households may
have improved for many of these women (Irek 1998) - as we shall see, the system
nevertheless reinforces their traditional identities as mothers and carers. The
traditional gender roles have not necessarily been challenged.
“When I go home to Poland, I do not rest, there is so much to do. Imagine a man
alone with two kids… If I go to stay one month for instance, the first two weeks I
do nothing but cleaning, housework.” (Kuzma 2003: 124)
Thus typical traditional gender order remains unquestioned, even though (or
precisely because) the father or the partner had taken over in the wife’s absence.
When the new post-socialist mother worker superwoman is back things have to
“return to normal” and of course it is she who does everything even though it
may take half of her vacation.
7
As we have seen so far, the evidence from studies is mixed pointing to the
contradictory outcomes of migration on gender order: Both husbands and wives
have become more interdependent as they are forced to rely on each other and on
the traditional family for economic security and emotional support. On the other
hand, to the extent that the traditional division of labour and male privilege are
unchallenged, paid work increases the women’s overall workload. The majority of
women, instead of expecting their husband’s help with housework, often choose
to solve their double day syndrome by hoping to displace it on less privileged
women relying on what Arlie Hochschild (2000) called the global care chain.
The empirical examples in this section demonstrate that the gender order is not
only resistant to change, but under certain circumstances intersecting with class,
migrancy and legality can be intensified. Are there nevertheless potentials for
agency behind the unchallenged, preserved gender order?
4. Reliance on gender order: turning it to one’s own advantage
We will see below how migrant women (and sometimes men) negotiate the
contradictions between economic gains and downward social mobility, how they
turn their “handicaps” into advantages in response to stigmatisation and blame,
how they disconnect norms and behaviour or use traditional patterns to follow
their own objectives etc.
4.1 Coalition: traditional family and marriage as support
The capital earned by Tunisian women on their trading trips (Schmoll 2005) is
invested in their daughters’ dowries but also in their education. Thus mothers are
dealing with the contradiction between keeping some gender norms intact and
trying to promote emancipation of their daughters. The contradiction was also
observed among Yugoslav mothers in the upbringing of their daughters: they
projected onto their daughters what they did not have themselves - fostering girls
and boys education alike, insisting that both participate in household tasks, but
still adhering to sexual double standards (Morokvasic 1987 a).
Resorting to marriage with a local is particularly common among women from
Eastern Europe (in France over 80% of these binational marriages are between
French men and Eastern European women). This is not necessarily a strategy from
the beginning, but is nevertheless framed by the logic of social promotion using of
the traditional institution of marriage especially among students and au pair girls.
For elder women whose migration is mainly motivated by family obligations at
home (Rotkirch 2005), starting a new marital relationship is the most efficient
way to assume these family obligations as well as to escape poverty in the home
country (Giabiconi 2005). The same is true of Filipinas who come to Japan as
entertainers with regular short term contracts. Marrying a Japanese is the
alternative to returning to the Philippines or to overstaying illegally in Japan.
Stable residence permits thus obtained open up opportunities of self-employment
and business creation in Japan that short term permit holders or illegal residents
do not have. It further opens doors for reuniting family members and their
employment in the created businesses. This enabled Annie to support her parents
8
in the Philippines and bring her elder son over to Tokyo “I wanted to come back
to Japan…for me he (Annies’s husband) was my stepping stone.” 4
4.2 Good mothers, self-sacrificed and irreplaceable heros
Migrant women are often the ones who are blamed for the social costs of
migration, for “disrupting” the social and gender order. Women’s migration has
generally been identified as being more problematic for families than that of men
(Asis 1995). The outcry about “incomplete families” and other social costs thirty
years ago when women guestworkers from socialist Yugoslavia left their children
behind (Katunaric 1978) - no study mentions specifically men leaving their
children back home - is today matched by the blame about social costs of
migration. From the Philippines to India, from Moldova to Poland, the blame
targets primarily migrant women family bread-winners. As Chiho Ogaya (2004)
observes the most sensational social cost of migration, “disruption of the family”
is always referred to through the absence of the mother and the destruction of
gender norms.
Thirty years ago as well as today women themselves seldom contest the order, but
rather preserve it and re-positionning themselves in it even more firmly. It is the
good mother and the good carer of children that went abroad, sacrificing herself
for the benefit of the children and the entire family. “He did not mind having so
many children (we had seven) without being able to ensure they would have
proper education. I could not stand that” So Stana left for Germany “firstly to
enable my daughters to have better education, to be able to earn their own
living… and second, I wanted to get some pension for my old age, even if very
little” (Morokvasic 1987 a and field notes).
Today migration from post socialist countries for work abroad has become a way
of life. Women often outnumber men in migration flows from the Central and
Eastern European countries. In Moldova, the poorest nation in Europe, one fourth
to one third of the population works abroad. The majority are men working in
Russia, but as Leyla Keough (2006) says it is women’s transnational labour and
their absence from families and villages that has provoked anxiety over
transformations in the social order. Blame for social disorder in Moldova is placed
upon migrant women, especially those who work in Turkey: They are depicted as
irresponsible mothers, immoral wives and selfish consumers. Migrant women
themselves argue back that in going abroad to work they are selflessly making
sacrifices for their children and thus are being more resourceful and better
mothers as transnational ones than are those who stay at home. In doing so, they
push the limits of local norms of “motherhood as the key to social order” not only
to justify their absence but to reassert themselves as “better mothers” (ibid.: 433).
Thus they resist by turning around the very same argument employed to blame
them. The same gendered logic is guiding those who see a problem with migration
of mothers and blame them for being involved in it and migrant women
themselves who rely on it to legitimate their own performance and participation in
migration. Leyla Keough argues that whereas the migrants' gendered justifications
to position themselves enables them to assert new ideas of what makes a good
mother and what makes a better social and economic order, this “new moral
economy” aligns with global and Moldovan state neo-liberal rationales.
4
Morokvasic, Mirjana : “Being your own boss” 2001, a video about Filipinas in Tokyo.
9
The argument of how to be a good mother women also use for justifying their
revenues from an occupation seen as transgressing moral codes, as for example
single and divorced mothers who lost their jobs and engage in prostitution along
the Czech-German border: “…I had to feed my kids” (Sidén 2002, 36). Among
Polish traders in the beginning of the 1990s there were grand-mothers who were
hitting the road daily or weekly in order to save to help their grandchildren’s
education or to acquire a flat (Morokvasic, field notes). They acted in line with the
ideal of a socialist good worker-mother superwoman.
Reasserting themselves as “good mothers” may be the only viable solution as
response to blame and stigma related to their migration. This in a way legitimizes
their absence and enables them to come to terms with the contradiction of the
“good mother provider” and the “bad absent mother”.
4.3 Facing contradictions of gender, class and migrant status
It was also observed that men migrating alone perform domestic tasks out of
necessity, however they revert to the established order as soon as their wife or
another woman is around or when they are back under the watchful eyes of the
community (be it back in their country or among the co-ethnics abroad).
This is the case also when men get employed in the domestic service sector and
care, i.e. in what is seen as “naturally” women’s work. Francesca Scrinzi (2005)
trying to understand the feminisation of migration by interviewing men sheds
light on the way the gender order changes or does not change in the context of
migration. At the first glance for these men the gender order is reversed: They are
the ones who do domestic work or care for the elderly. Highly gendered qualities
of work and capabilities become a requirement and therefore a norm to observe
and put forward as an exceptional trait to qualify for the job. Thus, being capable
of “working like a woman”, or being “as good as a woman”, becomes for men a
resource in negotiating employment opportunities, a “normative ideal”. Returning
home for vacation is for them an opportunity to reconstitute their masculine
identity, the way they conceive it: They would not participate in the housework of
their sisters or mothers. Those who do not do domestic work for pay but stay at
home whether reunited with their wives family bread-winners or back in the
country of origin say they “have to get used to the situation… in order to help
their wife and child. … I know I have to accept, so I assume” (Scrinzi 2005: 235).
Here we see the reversal of the gender order accepted as an expedient out of
solidarity and out of family interest.
In another case reported by Kyoko Shinozaki (2005), the male domestic worker
claims having been treated as “family” thanks to reasserting his “maleness”
through his attitude of resistance to unacceptable treatment by his lady boss. This
in turn made it easier for him to negotiate the contradiction between his
educational and professional status in his home third world country and his
current occupation in service of a female white professional. Thus the direct
confrontation and resistance in this case leads to a compromise where the power
hierarchies remain intact under the shell of family of which he considers himself
to be a part.
Being treated as part of the family is often in the literature pointed to as a trap of
domesticity, a situation where the line between work “out of love” and paid work
is blurred and which leads to exploitative relationships and around the clock
availabilities. However, being considered as a family member who does not
10
“really work” but only “cares for” or “helps out” etc. has not only discursive
advantages allowing for easier coming to terms with the situation when for
instance a highly skilled professional is hired as a domestic worker, but is also
considered by the latter as a desirable one. It enables them to negotiate spaces of
control and responsibility, to take the initiatives to impose her/his own way of
functioning (“I can do as I would do at home”), to get leave of absence for family
reasons etc. Addressing the employer’s family members by family names (granny,
auntie or by personal names) is an attempt to introduce into a highly unequal
relationship some signs of equality.
4.4 Gendered mobilities as a resource: the rotation system
After the Wende (1989) one of the most important features in the new migrations
from and within Eastern Europe was that people became free to leave and to come
back. An abundant supply of redundant workers from transition economies
became readily available to respond to persistent demand which was only partially
covered by official recruitment into short term programmes as in Germany, and
which mainly concerned men (Rudolph 1996). Women have had to rely on
alternative informal networks and on circular patterns, favoured by geographic
proximity and public policies (for Germany and Austria). They mainly find work
in personal services and function on a rotation basis through a series of temporary
stays, they “settle in mobility” (Morokvasic 2004).
Domestic workers and caretakers from Eastern Europe usually set up a rotation
system with a network of women of the same origin to optimize the opportunities
and minimize the obstacles relative to their reproductive paid and unpaid work
both at home and in Germany (Morokvasic 1996, 2004). It relies on solidarity,
reciprocity and trust of its participating female members. The regularity of
commuting is determined by the care for the family remaining in Poland, Ukraine,
and Romania etc. The rotation system enables women a transnational double
presence combining life here and there, improvising new transnational family
arrangement, a kind of “living apart together”.
In the context where “the freedom to move become “the main stratifying factor of
our late modern and post- modern times” (Bauman 1998 :2) mobility and and the
ability to be mobile play an important part in the strategies of these migrants.
Rather than trying to immigrate and settle in the target country, migrants settle
within mobility, staying mobile as long as they can in order to improve and
maintain the quality of life at home. Migration thus becomes a lifestyle, an
occupation and leaving home and going away, paradoxically a strategy of staying
at home, an alternative to emigration. Such transnational short term mobility can
be a resource and an important dimension of their social capital. Therefore
remaining in control over their own mobility is a conditio sine qua non for
achieving the original target of social promotion or status preservation at home:
the more they have control over their mobility, the more they are able to use it as a
resource whereas vice versa, the less control they have, the less they are likely to
benefit from the returns of their mobile strategies.
Circulation is facilitated for those who do not have to cope with obstacles such as
visas and to worry about temporary permits. Therefore it is important to regularize
ones situation and obtain resident permits. Stable status is instrumental not only
for easier mobility but also enables more control over that mobility (Riccio 2003,
11
Morokvasic 1999). Women are more likely to rely on family reunification channel
or marriage to obtain the stable status (Giabiconi, 2005).
Rotation system yields mixed outcomes as already mentioned concerning
renegotiation of the division labour in the household and other aspects of gender
relationships. There are however other opportunities for agency: Sharing several
employers women avoid being trapped in dependency vis-à-vis one employer (as
live-in domestic workers do). Second, their constant mobility enables them to
avoid an illegal status – as long as they do not overstay. Third, in a sector where
upward mobility is impossible the rotation system can be a stepping stone to
setting up own business using the acquired social capital for building their own
“rotation group” and thus acting as a gatekeeper to available jobs within the
network.
4.5 Mobile entrepreneurs
Trading is another occupation of the people on the move. It involves mixed
groups among Eastern Europeans: Gender and intergenerational role attribution
during trips provide a family like profile to the group – inconspicuous because
looking more private than professional. Trading further relies on unquestioned
gender relationships and hierarchies which assign to women and men different
expectations and positions. Men act as group leaders and protectors, while women
are assigned the task of negotiators with customs officers: “One does not throw a
woman out of the train”. Women are in charge of transport of more sensitive
goods and may be expected to make use of their charms to attract customers.
Occasional prostitution can be a by product of a trading trip (Irek 1998,
Karamustafa 2001).
Those women who manage to remain independent and in control of their mobility,
use the accumulated capital to improve their condition by setting up businesses at
home. Others because of lack of other alternatives or because of institutional
obstacles to mobility are obliged to rely on a protector or a smuggler in order to
cross borders (Lazaroiou and Ulrich 2003, Morokvasic 2006). This may lead to a
situation where women are no longer in control of their mobility and get trapped
in the circuit of forced sexual nomadism, being rotated by their pimps from one
European city to another within a system in which gender power hierarchies are
exacerbated.
The circulation in the Euro-Mediterranean region involves beside the Eastern
Europeans other groups of people, mostly from North Africa. There, trading was
done by women traditionally in the private sphere and shifted to soukhs (markets)
only recently. Now in majority, the female traders have not only invaded an
originally completely male sphere, but they also exit into the public space to do
the trading. Their circulation is in service of social promotion for the family and
gaining autonomy for themselves (Peraldi 2001).
Beside the changing patterns of migration and trading, the feminisation of crossborder
trading circuits reflects also the power that the newly performed mobility
confers to women in a society which traditionally limited the mobility of women.
Being a woman becomes an advantage: crossing borders, confronting obstacles
(visas, customs officers) is easier for women, in particular mature women.
Feminine attributes and dress are (like with women from the Eastern Europe)
used as a tactic to cross the borders, to smuggle some articles. North African
women instrumentalise the veil for instance which, as Michel de Certeau argues
12
becomes the instrument of the weak (2002) and confers a feeling of security
enabling women to cross the boundaries of the domestic space (Schmoll 2005).
They develop a specific “know-how to circulate”- as Alan Tarrius (1992) would
say which differs from the rotation of Polish domestic workers and traders. The
Polish domestic workers function as a group but travel individually and substitute
each other at weekly or monthly intervals. The North Africans travel in groups:
this has a socializing function for the newcomers, but also the group, as a social
control minimizes the dimension of transgression of the gender code implied in
geographic mobility. The groups of women traders from Tunisia manage not only
to invest public spaces in the cities like Naples but also transform them (Schmoll
2005). Women in the world of men often have a male „protector“: Whereas
among the Eastern Europeans the protector regulates and manages the services
including sexual services that some women of the group would provide as a part
of trade negotiations (Irek 1998), the protector of Tunisian women observes that
the moral code is preserved and that they are not sexually assaulted.
In a society where according to the prevailing gender norm the man is the
provider and bread-winner whereas women working outside are transgressing that
code, women handle this major transformation carefully. Although it eventually
may become a prime source of income for the family, it continues to be
considered as complementary only. They make sure that men “do not lose face” in
the process and provide them with “an alibi” for not participating in cross border
trading: men are often either formally associated with women’s business, they
assist, and when they don’t, outside forces are mentioned as an alibi for men’s
non-participation: „they have obstacles in getting visas“. (Schmoll 2005)
Thus although this brings major disruption in family life and in the decisionmaking
of women, it is important to negotiate the transformations without
conflict, under the mask of continuity in gender relations. As the evidence from
other studies shows, the changes in gender relations are taking place gradually,
based on reciprocity and constant adjustments rather than radical transformations.
5. Arrangements
Migration patterns and processes, the experiences of migrants, as well as the
social, political, economic and cultural impact of their migration are gendered.
Gender can facilitate or constrain mobility and settlement, gender relations prior
to migration affect the migration work, the process, the migration patterns and
ongoing relations.
Transnational migration continues to be predicated on the gendering of work:
Women continue to be in demand across borders to perform, stereotypically
women’s work as “substitutes”. Today, world wide feminisation of migration
reflects an increasing number of women in service jobs as domestic workers, child
minders, carers for the elderly. These occupations are built on gendered
assumptions of women’s innate affinities to work in the reproductive sphere and
hence not conducive to destabilizing the gender norms about the division of
labour in the household, but rather reinforcing gender hierarchies.
The empirical evidence presented here has an exploratory rather than conclusive
character: processes of reproduction of gender order are manifest in variety of
situations but contain in the same time elements of change, of subversion from
13
within. This text looked at the ways the contradictory outcomes are negotiated.
Much of the research including our own various surveys in the past thirty years
suggest that compromising and reliance on reciprocity and solidarity is given
priority in overcoming contradictions of observing traditional gender norms, while
at the same time performing in a way that puts these gender norms in question.
The privileges that the traditional gender order conveys to men are offset in a
number of ways, as Raewyn Connell (2005) emphasises in reference to William
Goode (1982). They are cross-cut by the interests men and women have in
common. For immigrant men and women more specifically these common
interests stem from their status as “partial citizen”, discrimination, insecurity and
inequality relative to migrancy and legality; or from the fact that, as they are declassed
and trying to achieve upward mobility, they have to join forces. Feminist
researchers stressed already long ago that gender processes cannot be understood
independently of class, race, immigrant status etc. with which they intersect
(Anthias;Yuval-Davis 1983). The evidence suggests that in the process migrant
women negotiate and learn to take advantage of attributions that initially handicap
them. Most look for compromises rather than confrontation and rejection of the
traditional gender division of labour and values. Providing men with an “alibi” for
not performing what the traditional order expects them to do, creating jobs for
them, contributing to the dowry system or reasserting themselves as the key to the
social order that blames women of disruption, relying on mobility as a resource
and performing according to sex role expectations etc., are, to borrow from Erving
Goffman (1977), different “arrangements” mainly “between sexes” but also with
broader social surroundings and social expectations.
References
Anderson, Bridget (2000): Doing the Dirty Work? The Global Politics of
Domestic Labour. London; New York.
Anthias, Floya, Yuval-Davis, Nira (1983): Contextualizing feminism – gender,
ethnic and class divisions, Feminist Review 15, November 1983, pp. 62-75
Asis, Marla (1995): Family Ties in a World without Borders. In: Philippine
Sociological Review 42, pp.16-26.
Bauman, Zygmunt (1998): Globalization. The Human Consequences. New York,
Columbia University Press.
Certeau, Michel de (2002): L’invention du quotidien. Arts de faire. Paris.
Connell, Raewyn W. (2005): Masculinities. Berkeley, Los Angeles. Second
Edition.
Ehrenreich, Barbara; Hochschild, Arlie Russell (2003): Global Woman. Nannies,
Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy. London.
Enloe, Cynthia (2000): Manoeuvres: The International Politics of Militarizing
Women’s Lives, Berkeley.
Falquet, Jules (2006): Hommes en armes et ‘femmes de service’: tendances
néolibérales dans l’évolution de la division sexuelle et internationale du
travail. In: Cahiers du Genre 40, April, pp. 15-37.
14
Fibbi, Rosita; Bolzmann, Claudio; Vial, Marie (1999): Italiennes et Espagnoles en
Suisse à l’approche de l°age de la retraite. In: Revue Européenne des
Migrations Internationales 15, 2, pp. 69-94.
Finotelli, Claudia; Sciortino, Giuseppe (2006): Looking for the European soft
underbelly: Visa policies and amnesties for irregular migrants in Germany
and in Italy. In: Baringhorst, Sigrid; Hollifield, James F.; Hunger, Uwe
(eds.): Herausforderung Migration – Perspektiven der vergleichenden
Politikwissenschaft. Münster, pp. 249-79.
Foner, Nancy (1978): Jamaica Farewell. London.
Friese, M. (1995): Die Osteuropäische Akademikerin, die im Westeuropäischen
Haushalt dient. Neue soziale Ungleichheiten und Arbeitsteilungen
zwischen Frauen. In Modelmog, Ilse; Gräßel, Ulrike (eds.): Konkurrenz
und Kooperation. Frauen im Zwiespalt? Münster, pp. 171-93.
Giabiconi, Dominique (2005): Revue européenne des migrations internationales
21, 1, pp. 259-73.
Goffman, Erving (1977): The Arrangment between Sexes. In: Theory and Society
4, 3, pp. 301-31
Goode, William (1982): Why Men Resist. In: Thorne, Barrie; Yalom, Marilyn
(eds): Rethinking the Family. New York, pp. 131-50.
Hess, Sabine (2005), Globalisierte Hausarbeit. Au-Pair als transnationale
Migrationsstrategie von Frauen aus Osteuropa, VS-Verlag, Wiesbaden
Hochschild, Arlie Russel (2000): Global Care Chains and Emotional Surplus
Value. In: Hutton, Will; Giddens, Anthony (eds.) On the Edge: Living with
Global Capitalism. London, pp. 130-46
Irek, Margolzata. (1998): Der Schmugglerzug. Warschau-Berlin-Warschau.
Materialien einer Feldforschung. Berlin.
Karamustafa, Gulsün (2001): Objects of Desire – A Suitcase Trade (100 Dollars
Limit). In: Hess, Sabine; Lenz, Ramona (eds.): Geschlecht und
Globalisierung. Ein kulturwissenschaftlicher Streifzug durch
transnationale Räume. Königstein, Taunus, pp. 166-180.
Keough, Leyla J. (2006): Globalizing ‘Postsocialism’: Mobile Mothers and
Neoliberalism on the Margins of Europe. In: Anthropological Quarterly
79, 3, pp. 431-61.
Kuzma, Elzbieta (2003): Les immigrés polonais à Bruxelles. Rapport de
recherche, Université de Bruxelles. Brussels.
Lazaroiu, Sebastian; Ulrich, Louis (2003): Le trafic des femmes: une perspective
sociologique. In: Diminescu, Dana (ed.): Visibles mais peu nombreux. Les
circulations migratoires roumaines. Paris, pp. 265-300.
Leung, Maggie Wai-Han (2004): Chinese Migration in Germany. Making Home
in Transnational Space. Frankfurt am Main; London.
Lin Lim, Lean 1990 International Migration Policies and the Status of Female
Migrants. Proceedings of the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on
International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants (San
Miniato, Italy, March 1990).
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2/content_storage_01/0000000b
/80/22/8b/56.pdf
Lyon, Dawn (2006): The Organization of Care Work in Italy: Gender and Migrant
Labor in the New Economy. In: Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
13, 1, Winter 2006, pp. 207-24.
15
Man, Guida (1995): The Experience of Women in Recent Middle-Class Chinese
Immigrant Women from Hong Kong: An Inquiry into Institutional and
Organizational Processes. In: Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 4, 2-3,
303-25.
Marx Ferree, Myra (1979): Employment without Liberation: Cuban Women in the
United States. In: Social Science Quarterly 60, 1, June, pp. 35-50.
Menjivar, Cecilia (1999): The Intersection of Work and Gender: Central
American Women and Employment in California. In: American
Behavioral Scientist 42, 2, pp. 601-27.
Morokvasic, Mirjana (1987a): Emigration und danach. Jugoslawische Frauen in
Westeuropa. Frankfurt am Main.
Morokvasic, Mirjana (1987b): Immigrants in Parisian Garment Industry. In:
Work, Employment and Society 1, 4, pp. 441-62 .
Morokvasic, Mirjana (1987c) : Recours aux immigrés dans la confection
parisienne. Eléments de comparaison avec la ville de Berlin-Ouest, in: La
lutte contre les trafics de la main-d'oeuvre en 1985-1986, La
Documentation Française, Paris,1987, pp.199-242.
Morokvasic, Mirjana (1991): Roads to Independence. Self-employed Immigrants
and Minority Women in Five European States. In: International
Migration, 19, 3, pp. 407-20.
Morokvasic, Mirjana (1993): In and out of the Labour Market: Immigrant and
Minority Women in Europe. In: New Community 19, 3, pp. 459-83.
Morokvasic, Mirjana (1996): Entre L’Est et l’Ouest, des migrations pendulaires.
In: Morokvasic Mirjana ; Rudolph, Hedwig (eds.): Migrants. Nouvelles
mobilités en Europe. Paris, pp. 119-57.
Morokvasic, M. (1999): La mobilité transnationale comme ressource: le cas des
migrants de l’Europe de l’Est. In: Cultures et Conflits, No. 32, pp. 105-122
Morokvasic, Mirjana (2004): Settled in Mobility: Engendering Post-wall
Migration in Europe. In: Feminist Review 77, 1, pp. 7-25
Morokvasic, Mirjana (2006): Une circulation bien particulière: la traite des
femmes dans les Balkans. In: Migrations Société 18, 107, pp. 119-43.
.
Mozère, Liane (2005): Des domestiques philippines à Paris: un marché mondial
de la domesticité défini en termes de genre? In: Migrations Société 17, 99-
100, pp. 217-28.
Ogaya, Chiho (2004): Social Discourses on Filipino women Migrants. In:
Feminist Review 77, pp. 180-2.
.Oso, Laura (2003): The New Migratory Space in Southern Europe: The Case of
Sex Workers in Spain. In: Morokvasic, Mirjana; Erel, Umut; Shinozaki,
Kyoko (eds.): Crossing Borders and Shifting Boundaries. Gender on the
Move. Opladen, pp. 207-27
Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar (2001): Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration
and Domestic Work. Stanford.
Peraldi, Michel with Betaieb, Aier.& Manry, Véronique. (2001): L‘esprit de
bazar. Mobilités transnationales maghrebines et sociétés métropolitaines.
Les routes d‘Istanboul. In Perladi, Michel (ed.) Cabas et contenaires.
Activités marchandes informelles et réseaux migrants transfrontaliers
Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, pp. 329-361.
16
Percot, Marie 2005, Les infirmières indiennes émigrées dans les pays du Golfe :
de l’opportunité à la stratégie. In : Revue européenne des migrations
internationales 21, 1, pp. 29-54.
Pessar, Patricia R.; Mahler, Sarah J. (2003): Transnational Migration: Bringing
Gender. In: International Migration Review 37, 3, pp. 812–46.
Phizacklea, Annie; Monder, Ram (1996): Being Your Own Boss: Ethnic Minority
Entrepreneurs in Comparative Perspective. In: Work, Employment &
Society 10, 2, pp. 319–39.
Potot, S. (2005): La place des femmes dans les réseaux migrants roumains. In:
Revue européenne des migrations internationales 21, 1, pp. 243-58.
Ramirez Angeles (1999): La valeur du travail. L’insertion dans le marché du
travail des immigrées marocaines en Espagne. In: Revue européenne des
migrations internationales 15, 2, pp. 9-36.
Riccio, Bruno (2003): From ‘Ethnic Group’ to ‘Transnational Community’?
Senegalese Migrants’ Ambivalent Experiences and Multiple Trajectories.
In: Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 27, 4, pp. 583-99
Rotkirch, Anna (2005): ‘Sauver ses fils’: migrations trans-européennes comme
stratégies maternelles. In: Migrations Société 17, 99-100, pp.161-72.
Rudolph, Hedwig (1996): The New Gastarbeiter System in Germany. In: New
Community 22, 2, pp. 287-300.
Schmoll, Camille (2005): Pratiques spatiales transnationales et stratégies de
mobilité des commerçantes tunisiennes. In : Revue européenne des
migrations internationales 21, 1, pp. 131-54.
Scrinzi, Francesca (2005): Hommes de ménage, ou comment aborder la
féminisation des migrations en interviewant des hommes. In : Migrations
Société 17, 99-100, pp. 229-40.
Shinozaki, Kyoko (2005): Making Sense of Contradictions: Examining
Negotiation Strategies of ‘Contradictory Class Mobility’ in
Filipina/Filipino Domestic Workers in Germany. In: Geisen, Thomas (ed.):
Arbeitsmigration. WanderarbeiterInnen auf dem Weltmarkt der
Arbeitskraft. Frankfurt am Main, pp. 259-79.
Sidén, Ann-Sofi (2002) Warte mal! Prostitution after the Velvet Revolution.
London.
Tarrius, Alain (1992). Les fourmis d’Europe. Paris.
Vartti, Riitta (2003): Equal Partners Online? German Matchmaking Web Sites and
Trafficking in Women. In: Morokvasic, Mirjana, Erel, Umut; Shinozaki,
Kyoko (eds.): Crossing Borders and Shifting Boundaries, Vol. I: Gender
on the Move. Opladen, pp. 177-206.