Gender and Immigration

Abstract

Women and men migrate across international boundaries at roughly the same rate. Yet most scholarship assumes that international migration results primarily from the labor migration of male workers. When international female migration is acknowledged, the focus is almost exclusively on women in the low-wage labor sector of the global economy. Gender and Immigration challenges this outlook by examining the diverse and complex ways in which women in a variety of occupational and social categories experience international relocation. Written by experts and policymakers in the field, the timely essays collected here explore whether international migration provides women with opportunities for liberation from the subordinate gender roles of their countries of origin. Or, do migrant women face both traditional and new forms of subordination and discrimination in their host societies? Exploring the experiences of a broad range of women, from unskilled workers on the U.S.- Mexican border and Filipino mail-order brides to Indian-American motel owners, Asian businesswomen, and Russian immigrants to Israel, Gender and Immigration offers a much-needed corrective to the long-standing invisibility of women in international migration research.