Femmes, genre, migrations

Abstract

In migration studies, research has moved, over the last four decades, from a history initially conceptualized largely as a story of male workers, to the “discovery” of female migrants to a questioning of gender relations and sexuality in the context of mobility. “Finding” immigrant women meant not only questioning their roles as wives, mothers, or single migrants, but it meant looking at different segments of the labor market not previously included in migration studies (light industry in addition to heavy industry; more recently, the importance of services and the “care industry”). Women’s public and private roles, their productive and reproductive work are just part of the story. A gendered history of migration has shifted the focus to patterns of migration (and labor) that are not just different for men and women, but which imply understanding the different ways in which gendered migration roles have been constructed by: states, labor markets, and the actors themselves. Focusing on the United States and France, as two major historical sites of labor immigration to which immigrants have moved from all over the world over the last two centuries, I aim to ask questions of both the history and the historiography. Migration is both the result of and then in turn affects sex ratios, family roles, and sexuality. The point of my comments will be to sketch how women and gender roles have been perceived by state, society, and... historians.