A fine balance: Women, work and skilled migration

Abstract

Synopsis The impact of international migration on the lives of professional women has been given scant attention in the academic literature, notwithstanding the now considerable body of scholarship on gender and migration. This article focuses on this neglected area, examining the experiences of skilled women moving from South Africa to New Zealand using data from interviews conducted using the Biographical Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM). In line with the small number of studies on professional migrant women, the research participants experienced disrupted or damaged careers and/or an increase or intensification of domestic responsibilities, shifts variously theorised in the literature as “de-skilling”, “feminization”, “re-domestication” or “compromised careers”. It is argued here that BNIM's in-depth interviewing and meticulous analysis extends this scholarship by illuminating the iterative relationship between migrant women's work and home lives and their ongoing attempts to achieve a balance between the practical and emotional obligations inherent in each.