Global Migration and Gender

International migration is a causal factor in the problems addressed regularly by many, perhaps most, social workers in all countries. In migrant-receiving countries, many immigrants are traumatized, vulnerable, exploited, and overwhelmed by the problems of coping with radical, legal, economic, social, cultural, and personal problems for which they are inadequately prepared, financed, and socially supported. The remittances that migrants send home to their families are essential, but the flow of remittances is not always steady or reliable, and the socially weakened family that is left behind is often less able to cope with the problems that caused the emigrants to leave, including poverty, social discrimination, and persecution.

Women immigrants have made significant strides in improving their own conditions and the conditions of their family members who have been left behind. However, for women who are separated from their families, the consequences of wrong decisions and bad fortune are especially dire. These women are often more vulnerable physically and more likely to be exploited than are their male counterparts. They have urgent needs for support from thoroughly informed and prepared social workers, specifically those who are feminists. The many social workers who work with immigrants are finding that political and social institutions and policies are not conducive to resolving the problems that degrade the productivity and well-being of women immigrants. The corollary of the needs for well-founded services, policies, and institutions is an underlying need for evidence-based information, sound analyses, the documentation of best practices, and the dissemination of such information through schools of social work, continuing education, and media used by social work professionals.

Unfortunately, the scope of social work scholarship on women migrants’ issues is not commensurate with the scope of the needs. This editorial aims to encourage social work scholars to focus more attention on the issues of migration, especially those that affect the well-being and productivity of migrant women.

International migration patterns have changed as a consequence of broad social, political, economic, and environmental trends. Now the driving forces include war, globalization, urbanization, and changing cultural norms regarding social roles and responsibilities. The increasing economic significance of migrants’ remittances in recent decades has focused economists’ attention on international labor migration. However, until about a decade ago, most data on migration that were used by economists were gender blind (Morrison, Schiff, & Sjöblom, 2007), perhaps because of an unexamined assumption that the great majority of labor migrants are men, with women being the recipients of remittances at home or with women migrants being part of the migrating families that accompany or follow after the men. Contrary to that assumption, data published in the past decade by the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2009) and the World Bank (Morrison et al., 2007) have shown that women constitute half the international migrants. Many, perhaps most, of the women who migrate internationally are seeking employment and are sending remittances to their families in their home countries.

In the 1970s, historians and sociologists began to include gender as a variable in statistics on migration, and some examinations of social roles of immigrant men versus women were published. More recently, ethnographers and other poststructuralist scholars have described the complex roles of women migrants as wage earners who contribute substantially to their families both in their countries of origin and in the host countries. These recent studies have gone beyond the economic aspect to address issues of social and psychological well-being. Anthropologists have begun to examine the influence of cultural traditions on immigrants’ adjustments to their changing situations, and sociologists have assessed social networks and informal organizations that support new immigrants.

Two developments during the 1980s and 1990s that contributed to knowledge about the gender issues that affect migrants were universities’ establishment of women’s studies programs and research on migration by second-wave feminists. Feminist-oriented scholarship brought attention to how migrants’ situations are affected by unequal power relationships between men and women and by the control that men exercise in social relationships. The researchers focused on the intersectionality of gender, race, and social class (Boyd & Grieco, 2003; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1999, 2001; Mahler & Pessar, 2006; Pessar, 2003). The feminist scholars’ migration studies have described the issues of concern to women migrants, and, in doing so, they influenced the direction of research on international migration, theory building, and advocacy on behalf of women.

This social research has value for social work educators and practitioners as they consider how best to support immigrants, specifically female migrants, in coping with immediate, practical issues, such as legal challenges, language barriers, exploitation, and personal matters like the angst caused by separation from family, and the consequent inability to satisfy culturally mandated responsibilities, such as parenting and caregiving to elders. However, social work researchers and scholars have as yet done too little primary or secondary research and analyses that are directly useful to the many social workers who must decide how to support women immigrants.

Social workers need information on many gendered aspects of international migration. Three of these aspects are employment, remittances, and transnational trafficking (modern slavery).

Gender and Employment

Women today are motivated to migrate by numerous push-and-pull factors. Extreme poverty pushes, and global capitalism pulls (Ross-Sheriff, 2007), cause women to discard traditional social roles in favor of work opportunities outside the home. For many women, labor migration appears to be the only way to meet their families’ basic needs. Growing transnational businesses are providing employment opportunities for migrant women in low-wage, low-income vocations that are generally associated with female labor (Van Wormer, 2010). These opportunities include factory work, service in health care and care management, work as domestic servants, labor jobs in the hospitality industry, and work in the sex and sex tourism industries, all of which call for an examination of the conditions using an anti-oppressive framework. In the United States, Canada, Europe, and the oil-rich Middle Eastern countries, opportunities have increased for women to work as caregivers for children, the elderly, and disabled or chronically ill persons.

Not all women immigrants work at low-wage jobs. Highly skilled professional women also migrate internationally, seeking employment as teachers, physicians and nurses, or technology workers. The term the feminization of migration alludes to changes in migration patterns by which more than half the migrants between some countries are women (U.S. Department of State, 2007). Typically, the migrants move from developing to developed countries, sometimes with their families, but often alone (leaving their children behind) seeking employment. Recruitment and hiring in favor of women have resulted in the reduction of traditional gender barriers in the workplace and an increase in women’s empowerment.

Mothers are leaving their own children for years at a time to support their families. Most work in low-paying jobs to provide for their children’s basic needs for food, education, and health care. The remittances provide for their children and the children’s caregivers, who in many cases are the workers’ mothers, mothers-in-law, and sisters. Many women who send remittances to their families are without visas and legal status. Because these women are constantly at risk of being discovered, imprisoned, and deported, they cannot avail themselves of health care, education, or the host societies’ social safety nets. They cannot protest exploitation or abuse by employers, landlords, and others. Yet, the women migrants’ life stories tell not only of emotional hardships; they also tell of the satisfaction, self-respect, and dignity the women derive from providing for their children’s future. For many, these stories describe success and female empowerment.

Some governments in countries of origin, such as the Philippines and Indonesia, are attempting to formalize the processes of migration and to facilitate legally required documentation (visas that allow employment) to reduce exploitation. However, women immigrants who are domestic and factory workers continue to be exploited and abused in host countries because domestic work is practically unregulated and factory labor regulations are underenforced. When the workers do not have the required visas, the likelihood of abuse and exploitation increases greatly, especially for women, since the undocumented immigrants have no way to protest.

Female Immigrant Entrepreneurs: The Economic and Social Impact of a Global Phenomenon (Halkias, Thurman, Harkiolakis, & Caracatsanis, 2011), a book of case studies on how women start and operate businesses in 15 countries, indicated that despite adverse circumstances, immigrant women manage to start businesses and achieve success in multifaceted and complex enterprises. The businesses, led by female immigrants, have substantial social and economic effects in the host countries, attesting to the strength and resilience of many women migrants.

Gender and Remittances

More than US$414 billion worldwide were recorded as remittances in 2009, and the projections for 2010 and 2011 are expected to be higher (Migration Policy Institute, 2011). Female migrants account for almost half the world’s migrants (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2009), and several studies have noted that there are important differences in the dynamics of male and female remitters. In a 2004 survey conducted on remittance recipients in the Dominican Republic, 58% of the remittance senders were women, as were 57% of the remittances recipients. Although women may earn less than men, they sent more remittances than men, and the money transfers are made mainly by women to women (Inter-American Development Bank and Multilateral Investment Fund [IDB-MIF], 2004). Similar conclusions were found in other studies, such as Connell and Brown’s (2004) in which remittances among Tongan and Samoan migrants in New Zealand and Australia were mainly from female migrants who proved to be more reliable and frequent senders of remittances. Despite their low wages and long hours of work, most of these women are resilient. Many are empowered with their successes in supporting their children and in improving the quality of the lives of family members they have left behind.

The remittances of international migrants are not only important to their families, they also have major economic and social impacts on the migrants’ countries of origin at the local and national levels. Sometimes remittances are pooled for community support, such as building wells, schools, and places of worship.

A significant portion of immigrant workers’ incomes is used to pay the very high costs of travel, especially when the migrants lack visas and must travel “underground.” Other costs of surviving without work visas are also high, including lodging, health care, and the transaction costs of sending the remittances to family members at home. Feminist social workers can make a significant contribution by helping immigrant women find financially efficient ways to survive and by promoting changes in policies that will result in lower costs for the immigrant workers. Examples of needed changes include social protections, improved rights to access “above-ground” health care, vocational training and education, and favorable policies for entry and exit that would allow migrant mothers either to bring their children to the host country or to make round-trips to visit their children more regularly.

Trafficking

International human trafficking—the modern euphemism for international slavery (Bales, 2004)—is a criminal activity that is generally discussed separately from international migration. It is included in this editorial because a great many of the women victims of this crime were or intended to be labor migrants when they were trapped by the criminals and because many social workers are involved, regularly or occasionally, in helping to protect potential victims, rescuing slaves, or helping rescued victims to transition back from slave to immigrant.

Human trafficking is among the fastest growing international criminal activities, along with the trafficking of drugs and arms. The profits from human trafficking are huge, and, unlike drugs, a trafficked person and her work are used many times over. Human trafficking is the exploitation of an individual through fraud or coercion with the objective of utilizing the individual for labor or sex labor (Potocky, 2010). While there are no precise statistics, the U.S. Department of State (2007) estimated that about 800,000 persons each year are trafficked to the United States. Some of the youngest victims are kidnapped from their homes, and, in some cases, desperately poor parents are complicit (Potocky, 2010), but the majority of the internationally trafficked persons are poor women from developing countries who are seeking a livelihood and upward socioeconomic mobility. Some are trapped immediately by responding to fraudulent advertisements for work opportunities. Others are kidnapped after their migration journey begins. Some—especially those without visas who must live “underground”—find that domestic employment in the host country becomes enslavement when their employers confiscate their travel documents, exploit their ignorance of the local language, and use other ways to prevent their leaving the workplace or seeking help. North America, Europe, the Middle East, and some Asian and African nations are destinations for many trafficked girls and women. Some young migrants become bonded laborers in domestic premises and factories, where they sometimes work alongside laborers who have normal rights and freedoms.

In the United States, acts and authorizations against human trafficking (such as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (2000) and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (2003, 2005) have provided a framework for some level of protections over the past decade (see the summaries linked to http://www.state.gov/g/tip/laws). However, enforcement is underfunded, understaffed, and problematic, and the situation in most other countries is worse. The challenges for trafficked girls and women are intractable and require great efforts from advocates, the police, and the criminal justice system to prevent and deter the crimes and to identify and rescue the victims. Social workers are increasingly called on to become involved in all these processes, but especially to work to develop policies and programs to protect and serve the victims, to stabilize them, and to assist them to achieve normal lives (Potocky, 2010; Roby, Turley, & Cloward, 2008).

In summary, globalization is changing social, geographic, economic, and political migration patterns. One of the changes is the increasing migration of women from developing to developed nations. Although globalization has created opportunities to pursue a livelihood and consequent economic benefits for women, the social and economic costs are high, with many women migrants’ problems seeming intractable. Women migrants are vulnerable, and many experience gender inequality and inequity and even slavery when they are preyed upon by globalized criminals.

Social work educators and institutions of education in the United States have responded to the challenges of globalization by developing international studies programs; organizing international exchanges of students and faculty; and encouraging scholarship on social work aspects of globalization, including the scholarship that addresses international migration. Some social work practitioners have worked directly in nongovernmental organizations and private voluntary organizations to advocate for and rescue victims of slavery and to empower the freed “slaves” and support improvement in their living conditions. However, social work scholars and practitioners are not adequately addressing the issues of women migrants.

As feminists in the academy, we must look beyond social work exchange programs and comparative international studies if we are to remain relevant to the complex issues of global gendered migration. Within the United States and internationally, we, as social workers, must diligently guard the human rights of immigrants and work to prevent the abuse of women. We must advocate for justice, fair treatment, fare wages, good working conditions, and improvement in the overall quality of life for all women. I end this editorial with two questions to Affilia readers:

How can the women benefit from the gains made through the complexity of migration—empowerment for women in all categories and oppression, specifically for those who are laborers and low-end earners, as well as those who are exploited by human trafficking?

What roles can feminist social workers play in supporting women in all categories, advocating on their behalf, and furthering gender-sensitive policies and programs to maximize the well-being and potential of women and their families around the world?