Gendering The Politics of Migration

Gendering the Politics of Migration
Author(s): Nicola Piper

Source: The International Migration Review, Vol. 40, No. 1, Gender and Migration
Revisited (Spring, 2006), pp. 133-164
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Gendering the Politics of Migration1
Nicola Piper
Asia Research Institutey National University of Singapore
Although every aspect of the migration process is shaped by political

factors and migration presents many political challenges on the domestic
and international levels, the attention of political scientists in the United
States and Europe has been limited to relatively few topics, including control
over entry and exit, and issues of incorporation and citizenship. Work that
considers the political aspects of migration from a gender perspective con
stitutes an even smaller body of work. In considering the contribution that
political science might make to our understanding of gendered migration,
this essay points both to some pioneering studies of gendered patterns of
migration and incorporation, and also to the growing concern with gender
among international organizations and policy makers. Interestingly, the
essay shows that it is scholars in neighboring disciplines who have more
often have taken up questions of governance and the development of
gender-fair policy towards migrants. The essay raises questions about the
relationship between disciplinary boundaries and topical areas and also about
the ways in which regional contexts shape the nature of scholarly inquiry
by contrasting work on Asia with that in Europe and the United States.
INTRODUCTION
Global migration affects an increasing number of countries at origin and

destination with both positive and negative effects on the countries and
individuals involved. Politics and policies shape the whole process of migration,
starting from the motivation to leave, through policies regarding predeparture
training, choice of destination, and terms of admission, to policies regarding
labor protection, and social and political inclusion. As a result, migration
creates a myriad of political challenges, both in terms of relations between
states and also in the nature of politics within states through the creation of new
constituencies and the generation of new policy debates.
Gender is relevant to all of these questions. Men and women in sending
countries may be differently affected by political change or policies, resulting
in gendered patterns of migration; laws regarding both emigration and
xThe author would like to thank the guest editors of this issue for their invaluable comments and
suggestions that helped shape this paper. Special gratitude goes to Marian Sawer and Eleonore
Kofman for reading earlier versions of this paper and for providing very useful comments.
? 2006 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved.
DOI: 10.1111/J.1747-7379.2006.00006.X
IMR Volume 40 Number 1 (Spring 2006):133-164 133
134 International Migration Review
immigration are often strongly gendered; and policies that affect the integra
tion of migrants into receiving societies may also affect men and women dif
ferently. In turn, the ways in which migrants engage as civic and political actors
in the process of migration and settlement or return are also often mediated by
gendered norms, expectations, and opportunities for agency.
As the other essays in this collection show, there is an extensive literature
covering many aspects of the interaction between gender relations and migra
tion and on the gendered representation of migration (Carling, 2005; Piper,
2005a). However, while studies on some of the political aspects of gendered
migration processes provide important insights, the complexity of the process
and its political implications are yet to be explored in their entirety.
There is no doubt that "politics affect migration" (Hollifield, 2000:148),
and migration also affects politics. Issues revolving around international migra
tion - be they from the viewpoint of the country of origin or the country of
destination ? are politically charged, as is evident in heated debates over rules
of entry and exit and the potential impact of migration on national identity
and membership. One might expect, therefore, that international migration
would be a well-established subject among political scientists. However, to the
contrary, a fairly recent review article observes that - when compared with cog
nate disciplines such as sociology, geography, and anthropology ? migration
has only recently emerged as a field of interest in the study of politics and gov
ernment (Hollifield, 2000:137). Moreover, only very specific and somewhat
limited aspects of migration have gained attention. Perhaps not surprisingly,
with the exception of some quite recent work in specific areas, there are few
studies that focus on women migrants in the context of politics and civic life,
and even fewer that include a more nuanced study of gender.
In light of the above, this article will consider which migration issues
political science has tended to focus on and to what extent, and in what ways,
it has incorporated gender in doing so. Since one of the interesting findings of
a review of work on migration and governance is that much of it has been con
ducted by scholars in disciplines other than political science, this essay will not
focus solely on work within this discipline, but treat the topic of gendered ana
lysis of the "politics" and "governance" of migration more broadly.
Another way in which this essay differs from others in this special issue
is that it explicitly addresses the regional nature of migration research and
the ways in which the focus of scholarly inquiry is itself shaped by political
institutions and debates. Although the U.S. context is discussed to some
degree, this essay also examines research on migration and governance in Asia,
another region comprised of many migrant origin and destination countries.
The Politics of Migration 135
In contrast to the dominant concern in European and North American scho

larship with incorporation, citizenship, and control, attention in Asia is mainly
given to the politics of temporary labor migration, and undocumented and
return migration.
The organization of the paper is as follows. The first section summarizes
existing political science studies of migration in general, and then discusses
gender sensitive migration policies to show the relevance of gender and the
types of gender issues raised in global policy circles. This is followed by a
broader exploration of academic research on the political aspects of female
dominated migration streams. The general trends in political science vis-?-vis
the study of migration are then revisited to investigate the extent to which
social scientists have approached these themes from a gender perspective.
The final sections consider recent developments within migration studies,
highlighting the politics of migration from a transnational angle and the con
tributions political science has made to complement other disciplinary
approaches to gendered migration.
POLITICS OF MIGRATION
Hollifield's review article (2000) provides a good starting point for the
discussion of political science studies of migration. Hollifeld summarizes the
history and emerging themes in political science research on migration. He
observes that on the whole there has been a dearth of theorizing about the
politics involved in international migration, and that the studies that do
exist focus largely on the macro level and are written from a state-centered
perspective. The three major themes he identifies are control {i.e., the role of the
nation-state in establishing the rules of entry and exit), national security, and
the issue of incorporation, including the impact of immigration on citizenship.
These three themes have mostly been approached from the viewpoint
of migrant receiving countries (particularly North America and Europe),
although there are a few examples of scholars whose research has addressed
emigration policies.2 As a result, more studies in the field of politics have con
cerned themselves with the consequences of migration in the destination coun
try than with the determinants or causes in the country of origin. Political
science research in North America and Europe has mainly focused on explain
ing the difficulties of immigration control in liberal democracies of "the West"
2For example, such as a forthcoming book by historians F. Weil and N. Green. Tasneem Siddiqui,
a Bangladeshi political scientist, has also discussed emigration policies.
(see e.g., Joppke, 1998; Castles, 2003). They have been less concerned with the
observations of demographers and sociologists ? that migration also flows
significantly between countries in "the South," as, for instance, in the context
of intra-Asian migration.
Because scholars in the subfield of international political economy
(IPE) are typically interested in the connections between domestic/compara
tive and international politics, and in the ways in which increasingly complex
economic ties have contributed to the internationalization of domestic politics,
one might expect them to have focused on international migration. Yet
Hollifeld observes that surprisingly little has been written from this perspective.
Likewise, at the time of his writing, the subfield of security studies had as yet
failed to produce significant studies on international migration.
Hollifield concludes that the state continues to be seen as the unitary and
rational actor at the center of macro-level analyses by scholars of international
relations and that political science tends to focus on the international systemic
or national security implications of population movements. In the literature on
citizenship, the theoretical focus is primarily on the transformation of host
societies and only secondarily on the immigrants themselves.3 He further notes
that within works on citizenship, which tend to be "atheoretical" and heavily
formal-legal in orientation, the most highly developed body of literature deals
with voting in the U.S. (for example, Lien, 1997, 2001) and with the rise of
extremist, anti-immigrant parties in Europe (for example, Husbands, 1994;
Schnapper, 1994; Kulluk, 1996). The major gaps in existing political scientific
scholarship identified by Hollifield are that too little attention has been paid
to the politics of emigration and that the prevailing assumption has been that
migration is permanent.
The three themes identified by Hollifield still characterize mainstream
research in North America and Europe, as reflected in continuing interest in
issues such as citizenship (e.g., Soysal, 1994; Gerstle and Mollenkopf, 2001;
Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer, 2002; Kondo and Westin, 2003; Spencer, 2003),
populist party politics (Spencer, 2003) and the revived interest in immigration
control, specifically border controls in an era of enhanced globalization
(Andreas, 2000; Andreas and Snyder, 2000). Consensus is emerging among
academics and policy makers regarding the significance of the movement of
peoples across national borders, with the propensity to treat such movements
3Although Hollifield does not discuss the extensive body of work on citizenship by political
theorists such as Will Kymlicka, Joseph Carens, and James Tully, their writing also focuses on
the receiving end of (im)migration.
as a "security issue" (Doty, 1999; Lohrmann, 2000). The growing perception

of international migration as a threat to security is partly related to the concern
with transnational criminal activities revolving around human smuggling/
trafficking, and more recently also terrorism (Tirman, 2004). The events of
September 11, 2001, and subsequent bombings in Madrid, London, Bali, and
elsewhere have resulted in "national security" issues being even more firmly
back on the agenda. There is some evidence that this has had negative
implications for the mobility of male migrants from certain countries such as
Pakistan. It has also been argued (Hyndman, 2005) that "certain outsiders,
such as Afghani women, became convenient pawns in the war against terror' "
(Kofman, forthcoming).
Very little has been written by political scientists on refugee flows from
a security perspective that would establish a link between internal conflict
(resulting in internally displaced persons, or IDPs) and cross-border migration.
Outside of Europe and North America, however, this constitutes an impor
tant topic and has been a subject of concern to South Asian and Southeast
Asian scholars (e.g., occasional paper series by the Refugee and Migratory
Movements Research Unit, Dhaka). Such conflict situations could thus be
of interest to foreign policy analysts as exemplified by Teitelbaum and Weiner
(1995).4
One emerging area of inquiry which has been related to migration
(among other issues) is the debate on "non-traditional security." However,
while some scholars of international relations emphasize the importance of
societal security in the post-Cold War environment, with migration being
highlighted as one "new security issue" (Waever et al, 1993), neorealists tend
to downplay the significance of migration as a security issue. Most interna
tional relations scholars regard migration as having its primary impact on
domestic politics; and from a neorealist perspective, the cross-border move
ments of unarmed refugees and migrant workers should not be incorporated
into "state security" considerations. As a result, international migration seems
mostly relegated to the analysis of "low politics" of international economics
rather than to the "high politics" of international security concerns (Koslowski,
2003). Despite the traditional approach to "security" as a state-centered
concept, some scholars have argued that security cannot be limited to such a
state-centric perspective (Doty, 1999; Lohrmann, 2000). The Copenhagen
School has developed this further under the framework of "securitization"
(Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde, 1998). An ongoing project funded by the Ford
4An early exception is Weiner (1995) and Greenhill's recent work (2002a, 2002b).
Foundation entitled "Non-Traditional Security in Asia" includes migration as

one of the main subthemes, and it was also the focus of a recent conference.
This prompts the question of whether the focus by political scientists
in the "West" on immigration and the impact of migration on destination
countries provides a broad enough picture of the political issues arising from
migration. The developed countries are themselves currently experiencing a
revival of guest-worker systems as well as considerable, if not rising, numbers
of undocumented migrants, but these topics have yet to emerge as subjects of
political science research. In contrast, in Asia, another region hugely implicated
in the "import" and "export" of migrant workers, issues to do with settlement
migration are largely irrelevant because permanent residence occurs rarely and
citizenship is largely out of reach. Thus, debates on citizenship and incorpora
tion make little sense or take a totally different shape in this region. Political
science research by Asian scholars on migration issues tends to involve discus
sions of migration policies (or the lack thereof) and the high occurrence of
undocumented migrants, especially in the aftermath of the economic crisis in
the late 1990s (e.g., Tigno, 1997; Pillai, 1998). The "migration and develop
ment" nexus is also of great interest to scholars in the "South," although rarely
to political scientists. In the context of regions such as Asia, the politics of
forced migration constitutes another important research area that has not been
given sufficient attention by political scientists, with the exception of Siddiqui
(2001).6
To sum up, political science research on migration has been dominated
by approaches that place the state at the center of the analysis and thus focus
on macro-level issues. In addition, North American and European scholars
have tended to concern themselves with destination countries where immigra
tion and settlement is an option. In the contemporary era of enhanced globali
zation and restructuring of economies, however, the number of source and
destination countries is increasing and so are the types of migrants in terms of
legal status and entitlements.
Women participate in all of these categories, new and emerging, but their
experience tends to differ significantly from men's. Hollifield's review article
does not make any reference to gender as a valid and important analytical tool
5This project is carried out by the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at the Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore. For the papers on migration and the Beijing conference, see
<http://www.idss-nts.org/theme_illegal3.htm>.
6Work by Stephen Castles (2003) constitutes another exception, but strictly speaking he is not
a political scientist.
in the study of migration. It needs to be asked, therefore, to what extent this is

in fact symptomatic of political science's approach to migration. Are there
really no studies on gender and the politics of migration? Has the complexity
of stratified and highly gendered migration (as pointed out by many scholars
in other disciplines) really not been the subject of political scientific research
as well as policy responses?
A number of UN agencies as well as specially established international
commissions7 have in recent years produced reports with the aim of highlight
ing global trends and major issues that require policy responses by state gov
ernments ? unilaterally, bilaterally, and multilaterally. Migration and gender
have been identified as among the key issues global society has to address,
although political will is what will likely determine whether actual policies are
developed. These reports are also an indicator of the state of existing research
and the gaps within it. Although gender has received increasing scholarly atten
tion, it still constitutes an area where major gaps persist in both research and
policy.
GENDER SENSITIVITY AND MIGRATION POLICY
The politics and policies that shape migration are intertwined in the sense that
policies cannot be divorced from politics. The historical subordination of
women to men that resulted in gender-neutral policies which ignored women's
specific experiences and needs has been the subject of many studies in a variety
of contexts (Hoskyns, 1993; Lister, 1997). It is not surprising to find a similar
tendency in the area of migration, where policies governing the different
categories of migrant workers are also typically expressed in gender-neutral
terms (Lim and Oishi, 1996). In reality, these policies affect men and
women differently for three principal reasons: the concentration of men and
women in different migratory flows based on gender-segregated labor markets
"at home" and abroad; gendered socioeconomic power structures; and
sociocultural definitions of appropriate roles in destination as well as origin
countries.
There is, however, a growing recognition that mainstream international
policy debates, including those on migration, are not being sufficiently
informed by the knowledge that is being generated through gender research.
7These UN agencies are, e.g., the ILO, UNIFEM, UNHCR, and UNDP. The three international
commissions are the Global Commission on Human Security, the World Commission on the
Social Dimension of Globalization, and the Global Commission for International Migration.
Recent reports on gender equality in general, or women in migration specifi

cally, have assessed global progress in the direction of gender-sensitive policies.
Global Level
International migration has become an established feature of contemporary

social and economic life globally. As a result, cross-border mobility has, in
general, attracted a great deal of international policy attention in recent years.
In addition, since the 1980s, studies on contemporary flows of migration have
increasingly acknowledged and highlighted a wide range of issues related to one
of the key features of contemporary migration flows today: its feminization.
Two global reports were published during the last couple of years (by the
World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization in 2004 and the
Commission on Human Security in 2003) that both placed migration issues
firmly among their recommendations for a global policy agenda. Although not
completely ignored, gender issues were not the focus of either report. By con
trast, the recently launched report "Gender Equality: Striving for Justice in an
Unequal World" (March 2005) by the UN Research Institute for Social Devel
opment (UNRISD), and the latest World Survey on the role of women in
development by the UN, devoted to the issue of "women and international
migration" (UN, 2004), place gender at the center of their analysis of a number
of subject areas. Both reports assemble arguments and data from a wide range
of feminist scholarship on migration to provide a global picture of issues and
trends.
The UNRISD report devotes one chapter to migration, analyzing the
key axes of differentiation and stratification among male and female migrants
with regard to legal status, entitlements, and rights. Furthermore, the category
of "female migrant" is broken down to show the differences between skilled
migrant women and the unskilled, refugee women and migrating wives. In
each category, however, migrant women tend to face more obstacles and
sources of discrimination than male migrants based on the modes of entry
open to them and the types of jobs they perform. It is argued that the under
valuing of women's labor (e.g., domestic labor) and restrictions on their right
to work, and involvement in activities that are deemed to be criminal offenses
or against public order (e.g., prostitution) mean that a higher proportion of
women are statistically invisible and are, or become, undocumented. Gender
analysis, however, should not be limited to statistics broken down by sex, but
raise awareness about broader social factors that influence women's and men's
roles, and their access to resources, facilities, and services. As a result, the report
argues that analysis of the role of gender in migration should be mainstreamed

into social policy agendas by governments in the destination as well as origin
countries.
The UN World Survey (2004) addresses a broader set of issues related to
women and international migration. It stresses that women have always been
an important component of international migration. However, the lack of
gender-disaggregated data as well as neglect by mainstream academic research
has contributed to little acknowledgment of the role of women. Just as women's
economic contribution to their families and communities has become increas
ingly significant, so too has their growing presence in migration flows to all
world regions. These global trends indicate new developments in terms of the
scale of international migration and entry of women into migration streams
that used to be dominated by men (i.e., women as independent migrants and
main income earners). The report argues that these realities and trends need to
be better reflected in policies and provides an extensive list of recommenda
tions, which include the implementation of gender-sensitive emigration and
immigration laws and policies as well as the development of policies that
empower migrant and refugee women in all spheres of life. National govern
ments are called upon to give due attention to gender differences in the formu
lation of migration policies.
The most recent report by the Global Commission on International
Migration (launched on October 5, 2005) does not devote a separate section
to gender, but mainstreams gender into all of the main areas discussed, showing
that gender issues arise in each of these. Whether or not this does enough jus
tice is a matter for debate. What all of the above reports point out, however, is
the importance of broadening migrants' and migrant women's choices by
designing and implementing enabling policies.
National Policies
On the national level, international migration has also attracted a great deal
of policy attention. The reasons stem in part from xenophobic political
considerations in destination countries, but also from the process of ageing
under way in most industrialized countries and posing new challenges to the
care economy. There are also concerns about brain and skills drain from the
perspective of developing countries. Countries of origin have also begun to
show increasing interest in their diasporas and the benefits of their remittances.
Within and beyond these considerations, there are gendered ramifications of
migratory processes.
National policies toward regulation and practices governing the entry

and residence of migrants have changed to some extent in recent years.
Industrialized countries in Europe, North America, and Oceania still admit
permanent residents on the basis of three long-established principles: family
reunification, economic considerations, and humanitarian concerns. But there
has been an increasing move toward a dilution of "settlement" principles in
ways that favor the needs of the labor market. Policy makers are increasingly
urged to tailor migration selection to meet these demographic and economic
needs. As a result, "guest worker" types of regimes are re-emerging (UNRISD,
2005). Although present in all types of migrant categories, the majority of
migrant women still enter via family reunification schemes in the "North"
(Boyd and Pikkov, 2004; Kofman, 2004a), while most women migrate as
independent contract workers in much of the "South" (Piper and Yamanaka,
2004).
The increasing shift toward temporary and circular migration as opposed
to permanent settlement is differently experienced by migrants according to
skill, gender, and ethnicity. The increasing bifurcation between skilled and
unskilled migration in the ease of cross-border movement between countries is
accompanied by a clear gender bias, with most highly skilled migrants being
male (intra-company transfers, IT workers, etc.) (Boyd and Pikkov, 2004;
Kofman, 2004a) and women dominating in certain sectors (household, sex/
entertainment, sweatshop). Official policy, however, largely neglects this group
of migrants and, partly as a result, the numbers of undocumented migrants are
high.
For refugee women, one of the key subjects of debate in Europe as
well as North America and Australia is the extent to which women have
access as asylum-seekers and are subsequently able to gain recognition as
Geneva Convention refugees, through a secondary status or through even less
secure humanitarian protection. It is clear that women are less able to reach
western countries as principal applicants due to their lesser resources. The
potential and actual underrepresentation of women in various humanitarian
based modes of entry reflects the gendered nature of the definition of a
refugee associated with the UN 1951 Convention (Boyd, 1998; Boyd and
Pikkov, 2004; Khoo, Ho, and Voigt-Graf, 2004; Kofman, 2004b). National
policies have rarely addressed these gender issues. The Canadian and
Australian "Women at Risk" programs aimed at providing special assist
ance in the protection and resettlement of vulnerable women refugees are rare
exceptions and still only receive modest numbers (Boyd and Pikkov, 2004;
Khoo, Ho, and Voigt-Graf, 2004).
ACADEMIC DISCUSSION OF WOMEN-DOMINATED

MIGRATION STREAMS
How are these global trends toward the stratification and bifurcation of
migratory streams and their gender ramifications reflected in academic research
on the political aspects of migration? The discussion below reviews some of the
major themes that have emerged in the scholarly literature.
Economic change in many regions of this world, including rising male
unemployment and underemployment due to economic slowdowns and the
shift from manufacturing to service industries, have led women to assume an
increasing burden. As foreign workers, migration policies and structural con
straints usually mean that they are mainly channeled into gender-specific jobs
or female-dominated sectors. Skilled women migrants throughout the world
have also tended to go into what can be broadly classified as traditionally female
jobs in the welfare and social professions (education, health, and social work).
Nursing is the most female-dominated sector, with 90% or more of the nursing
workforce being comprised of women (Buchan and Caiman, 2004). As
unskilled migrants, most women migrate as domestic or care workers, or as
"entertainers."8 Others work in manufacturing (especially the garment indus
try) and to a lesser degree in agriculture (in manufacturing, male migrants are
often part of higher management levels and women concentrated at low levels;
?^Dias and Wanasundera, 2002). Another group of migrant women use inter
national marriage as a strategy to migrate or to obtain a secure residential status
(Piper and Roces, 2003). The evolution of globalized sectors in labor markets and
the dominance of women among certain groups of migrants are issues that lend
themselves to inquiry by political scientists from various subfields, especially IPE.
Domestic Work
Domestic workers and their experiences have been studied in a variety of

geographical contexts (East and Southeast Asia, Canada, Europe, U.S.), but the
bulk of this research is not by political scientists - with the exception of Kristen
Maher (foreign domestic workers in Chile and Southern California, 2003a)
and Christine Chin (foreign domestic workers in Malaysia, 1998). Chin's
study of foreign domestic workers (1998), for instance, has situated the import
of such workers within the "politics of development" of Malaysia. In this
8In Japan, entertainers from the Philippines are classified as "professionals" in terms of visa
category.
regard, she echoes approaches by other social scientists who have linked foreign
domestic worker issues with larger questions of global economic restructuring
and the feminization of labor migration.
Domestic work has emerged as one of the most important legal avenues
for migrant women today, occurring in almost all regions (North America,
South America, Asia, and Europe). Feminists within political science have
joined the debate in most social sciences on the artificial nature of the public
and private divide arguing that, among other issues, defining domestic work as
private depoliticizes women (Steans, 1998). From the viewpoint o? foreign
domestic workers, however, the "politics of domestic work" is a subject area
that has not been given much attention by political scientists. Approaching the
subject from an international relations perspective, Enloe (1990) was among
the early scholars to touch upon this topic. Pointing to the precarious nature
of migrant women's lives within the domestic sphere, Enloe alerts us to the fact
that women domestic workers are treated as less than "serious workers" by men
in trade unions and by the regulatory frameworks of home and host govern
ments. Furthermore, Enloe raises the unsettling issue of how politically self
conscious middle-class women can justify the hiring of foreign maids instead
of addressing gender relations in their own (national) midst ? an issue further
elaborated by Romero (1999), who contextualizes the employment of foreign
domestic workers within the feminist "domestic labor debate" of the 1960s and
1970s that ignored class differences.
This point is picked up in more recent scholarship on migrant workers'
political organizing in Asia and the problems domestic worker activists are fac
ing with alliance or coalition-building (Wee and Sim, 2005). The examination
of the female employer's positioning vis-?-vis the female employee shows that
gender is always mediated by class and ethnicity (Chin, 1998; Anderson,
2000). The category of "domestic maid" is also stratified by ethnicity and social
capital (in the sense that the Filipino maid typically has an advantage over other
nationalities by being better educated and speaking fluent English; see Lan,
2003).
Sex Work/Trafficking!Mail-Order Brides
Some of the political science research that places the migration of (particularly
Asian) women within a feminist discourse has discussed the increasing
incidence of sex tourism, the issue of "mail-order brides," and the trafficking
of women in a global context (Enloe, 1990; Hanochi, 2001; Maher, 2003b).
These works fit into other disciplinary (mainly sociological) approaches aimed
at establishing a link between tourism and migration as gendered phenomena

in the pursuit of economic development (Chant and Mcllwaine, 1995; Truong,
1996; Piper, 1999). Following earlier attempts to theorize the connections
between those three specific patterns of migration by women (domestic work,
sex work, and mail-order brides) and emphasizing the narrow channels for
legal migration available to those from developing countries (Pettman, 1996;
Truong, 1996; Piper, 1999), Maher (2003b) argues for a "theory of gendered
migration" that integrates notions of an "international division of social
reproductive labor" and a "political economy of sex."
A few political scientists have engaged in debates on trafficking by
examining global policy and international law (Ucarer, 1999; Sullivan, 2003).
Ucarer (1999) outlines the various frameworks under which trafficking falls in
the sphere of international law (human rights, women's rights, and labor
migration). Sullivan (2003) assesses feminist approaches to trafficking and
prostitution and their impact on the new UN Trafficking Protocol from 2000.9
In her discussion of the two main theoretical positions that exist today - radical
feminism (also referred to as "abolitionists") and sex work feminism - she
makes reference, among others, to the work of the political scientist Jeffreys
(1997), who represents the radical feminist position, whereas Sullivan herself
sympathizes with the argument for sex workers' rights.
Global Care Chain
The dramatic increase of international migration in the health sector can only
be understood in the context of structural changes in the global economy and
political responses to them. In northern countries, this includes public
sector reforms, the privatization and the liberalization of trade, and changing
regulations governing investment and migration. In Europe, the growing
numbers of migrant health workers, most of whom are women, are a reflection
of gendered welfare states and the crisis of care. Yet only a few authors,
including Kofman (2004a), have considered the impact of changing welfare
regimes when analyzing the extent to which care is supplied by migrant
women. Meanwhile, in the South, Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs)
have resulted in serious budget cuts that explain to a large extent the declining
state of social services such as health. This situation drives health workers to
seek employment abroad to alleviate severe income insecurity and bad working
9Its full title is "United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons,
Especially Women and Children," also known as the Palermo Protocol.
conditions (Van Eyck, 2004). Although the impact of outflowing health

workers on origin countries has been captured by academic concepts of "brain
drain" and "brain gain," there has not been much analysis of the political
factors underlying this phenomenon.
As a result of a highly unequal global economy, restructuring of European
welfare states, and shortages of health or care workers experienced in Europe,
North America, and parts of Asia, large numbers of female migrants are drawn
to fill jobs in private households as well as state institutions (Kofman, forth
coming). Care work has thus become one of the most globalized forms of work,
forming a complex web - or "global care chains" in the words of Hochschild.
This web can be defined as "a series of personal links between people across the
globe based on the paid or unpaid work of caring" (Hochschild, 2000:132).
Kofman (forthcoming) has remarked that scholars such as Staeheli and Brown
"draw upon the extension to non-familial spheres of an ethics and politics of
care which has been advocated by feminist political theorists (Tronto, 1993;
Sevenhuijsen, 1998) and by social policy scholars (Daly and Lewis, 2002)".
Care work is thus analyzed as a concrete activity as well as a moral orientation
that is "carried out not only in the confines of the home and through intimate
relations but also through intermediate institutions of civil society and the
state" (Kofman, forthcoming). Despite the global connections and inter-state
dynamics, political scientists have been very silent on the issue of health and
care worker migration, in contrast to scholars in cognate disciplines (see, for
example, Yeates, 2004; Manalansan, this issue).
GENDERING THE STATE, SECURITY, AND CITIZENSHIP
This section revisits the three areas identified by Hollifield as the main themes
in migration research political science thus far (state control, national security,
citizenship) to show that gender perspectives can and have informed such
analyses and theorizing. Interestingly, however, many of these works have not
been produced by political scientists but by scholars in other disciplines who
have addressed the political aspects involved in gendered migration.
The Role of the State
Gender perspectives on the state have a long standing in social scientific

enquiry. It was in particular feminists who challenged the depiction of the state
as gender neutral, some of them drawing on Marxist and socialist feminist
perspectives that conceptualize the state within the wider dynamics of capitalist
society and as an arena of struggle over class and gender inequalities. Radical
feminists such as MacKinnon (1989) elaborated the critique of the state as
systematically male in its interests and judicial procedures.
In the field of international migration, gender perspectives have also
informed discussion of the role of the state and its handling of female mobility
(Mountz, 2004; Piper, 2004a; Silvey, 2004). It has been demonstrated how
state policies in destination countries result in the stratification of rights and
entitlements differentiating migrant women according to skill level, ethnicity,
etc. (Boyd and Pikkov, 2004; Kofman, 2004b). In South Asia, it is policies that
have obstructed the freedom of mobility of women that have been discussed ?
in the context of labor migration (Siddiqui, 2001) and refugee or displacement
migration (Hyndman and de Alwis, 2004). Investigation of gender implica
tions of immigration and emigration policies at state level, as well as inter-state
dynamics as reflected in bilateral agreements and regional dialogue in form of
regional consultative processes (or the lack thereof) deserve more attention by
political scientists than they have been given to date.
Security and Insecurity
A recently published book, edited by the political scientist Jane Freedman

(2003), puts emphasis on the flipside to the current security debate by
discussing the specific situation of migrant women in Europe, and that is
"/^security." The chapters in this edited volume discuss various angles on
migrant women's insecurity - political, economic, cultural - mainly in the
context of labor markets but also in the area of health. The focus is therefore
on the most vulnerable groups of female migrants: those classified as unskilled,
undocumented, trafficked, and refugee women. The author demonstrates how
increasingly restrictive immigration policies have resulted in higher levels of
insecurity for many migrant women who, however, develop their own
strategies and coping mechanisms. What is missing in this volume is a stronger
theoretical analysis and discussion of security from a gender perspective. In her
introduction, the editor does not engage with the theoretical debate on
security, and as a result the book does not make a significant contribution to
the theorizing of these concepts.
One study, by Hansen (2000), does provide a gender critique of
"security." By responding specifically to the Copenhagen School, the author
takes issue with its definition of security problems as grounded in speech. "This
epistemological reliance on speech act theory presupposes the existence of a
situation in which speech is indeed possible" (p. 285). Using the example of
honor killings in Pakistan (and one can easily conceive of other examples in a
migration context, i.e., trafficked women or refugee women), she demonstrates
how "security as silence" occurs when insecurity cannot be voiced (p. 287). Thus,
she not only argues that the Copenhagen School has no concept of gender-based
insecurity, but also shows through a critical discussion of this absence where the
barriers lie to the construction of a security theory which includes gender.
Another nontraditional perspective on security is provided by the
concept of human security which has been applied to illegal migration and the
trafficking in humans (e.g., Curley, 2004). This is discussed by Hemming and
Piper (2004) in reference to trafficking and the Thai sex industry. By highlight
ing the influence of certain U.S. pressure groups on the U.S. government, the
authors position the issue of prostitution and trafficking within the current
international security debate.
Political Participation and Citizenship
It has been in particular the arrival of migrants from new source countries that
has triggered debates over their economic and social incorporation in western
destination countries. The immigration of new groups has also significant political
implications, but until quite recently, relatively little work focused on how con
temporary immigrants are being integrated into political systems.10 A 2001
article identified three main issue areas in the literature on the political behavior
of immigrants: the extent to which immigrants are incorporated or assimilated
into the political system; the factors that impede or promote their incorporation;
and the implications of immigrant participation for electoral outcomes and
public policy. The authors noted that the concept of political participation was
largely defined and measured in terms of rates of naturalization and levels of
voter registration and turnout (Minnite, Holdaway, and Hayduk, 1999).
With immigrants and their children forming an ever-growing proportion
of the electorate in many cities and regions of the United States and Europe,
scholarly interest in their political orientations and behavior has increased, with
a number of studies and volumes focusing on particular ethnic groups or on
comparisons among groups or countries. The focus continues to be primarily
on electoral politics, but within this frame gender has come to be a more reg
ular part of the analysis (Sawer, 2004). For example, in the U.S. context, Lien's
work (2001) explores the issue of political participation through the lens of
10Examples of exceptions are the work of de la Garza (1998) on Mexican Americans, of DeSipio
(1996) on Latino voting more generally, and of Lien (1997) on Asian Americans.
Asian Americans and includes a discussion of gender differences. A smaller body

of work (for example, Wong, 2003) addresses the gender question more directly.
Until recently, few studies considered non-electoral participation or
employed qualitative analysis that might offer explanations for gendered
differences in participation. But the exceptions demonstrate the potential for
further research in this area. Hardy-Fanta's work on "Latina Politics" (1993)
provides an alternative view on politics precisely because it is based on a clear
gender analysis. Exploring the nature of politics for Latina women and Latino
men in the U.S., she analyzes the interaction of gender, culture, and political
participation. In the specific site of her research, Boston, Latina women constitute
the majority of participants and activists at political events, taking part in
traditional politics as well as offering insights into alternative visions of "what
is political" (p. 2). In this way, Hardy-Fan ta engages with a key debate in
current feminist political theory, looking into gender differences in political life
by bringing culture into the discussion of gendered politics. Her data (derived
from participant observation and in-depth interviews) shows that women's
visions of politics include a stronger sense of community, cooperation, and
collective processes of organization. In this sense, she contributes to the re
definition of politics away from behavioral measures as defined by conventional
scholarship, arguing that "there is more to politics than just voting" (1993:23)
and the holding of elective office. In analyzing her findings, she makes refer
ence to Ferguson's argument about empowerment as "the ability to act with
others to do together what one could not have done alone" (1987:221). In
other words, she accounts for the "power to effect change rather than the power
over others" (Hardy-Fanta, 1993:30).
Hardy-Fanta addresses not only the neglect of a gender analysis but also
the state-centric, macro-level perspective that is usually taken by political sci
entists. She explains the dearth of migrant voices within political science by
arguing that studies that do exist on (Latino) immigrants have followed the
general trend within political science of focusing on influential individuals, and
thus elite politics. But percentage-wise, there are far fewer nonwhite elite
politicians than whites. In contrast to the already existing literature on Latino
politics, her feminist analysis of Chicana women's community organizing
emphasizes political development and ways of enhancing broader community
participation rather than focusing on voting rates alone.
Building on arguments made by Hardy-Fanta and others,11 Jones-Correa
(1998a, 1998b) pursues the investigation of a gendered understanding of
11 E.g., Grasmuck and Pessar (1991), Hondagneu-Sotelo (1994).
immigrant political organizing and socialization in the context of Latinos in

New York. He argues that immigrant Latinas are more likely to concentrate in
their political activities on their new country of residence, whereas immigrant
Latino men tend to engage in the politics of their countries of origin. He
explains this by the differing (real or perceived) status and class positions
between immigrant men and women (with women tending to be upwardly
mobile postimmigration and men losing status), as well as by the fact that
women's social contacts in their capacity as mothers and homemakers is with
American governmental institutions. These experiential differences offer an
alternative route to mobilization than immigrant organizations that tend to be
formed by men with men occupying organizational or leadership positions,
pushing women into alternative forms of political activism.
The work of Jones-Correa, Hardy Fan ta, and other scholars (for example,
Marwell, 2004) who have looked at nonelectoral political participation is
grounded in ethnographic and qualitative research methods. The tendency of
political science as a discipline to favor quantitative methods and modes of
analysis may partly explain the previous lack of enquiry into informal modes
of participation, which has tended to be taken up more often by sociologists.
The U.S. focus on immigrants as opposed to temporary migrants also
explains the attention to electoral politics as opposed to other issues. In the case
of contract or undocumented migrant workers, however, political participation
looks very different. When a legal work permit or a secure residential status is
absent, there are clear limitations to active political struggle. With contempo
rary migration patterns involving large and increasing numbers of short-term
contracts and/or undocumented status, they are in great danger of being polit
ically disenfranchised. In this sense, Hollifield (2000) is right in stating that by
taking permanent immigration as the prevailing assumption, political scientists
working on migration have largely ignored the political consequences and reality
of other types of migration. Also, the perspective of the country of origin as the
source or target of political activism is missing. In addition, immigration and visa
policies stratifying migrants (skilled vs. unskilled, permanent vs. temporary,
legal vs. illegal) are also gendered (Boyd and Pikkov, 2004; Kofman, 2004b), but
the ways in which this gendered stratification affects migrants' political engage
ment and citizenship is a topic that has only recently begun to be explored.
New Perspectives on Citizenship and Rights
Recent studies on contract migrant workers have offered a new conceptualization

of citizenship in the sense of taking political action to fight for rights at both
ends of the migration chain. Reflecting the short-term and transnational

character of migration, migrant issues are in fact simultaneously politicized in
the form of activism directed toward the country of origin as well as the
country of destination. This is typically done via nongovernmental (NGO)
activism. Such NGOs are either run by local citizens who take up issues on
behalf of migrants, thus engaging in transnational politics, or they are set up
as "migrant organizations," i.e., run by former migrants themselves or by their
compatriots. Filipinos have been particularly strong with regard to the latter
type of activism as is evident from research that focuses on their experience
(Ball and Piper, 2002, forthcoming; Rodriguez, 2002; neither of the two
studies, however, discusses gender). In these works, citizenship is taken beyond
the formal-legal sense (i.e., as an issue of naturalization) by conceptualizing it
as a specific form of participatory action that takes place in a transnational
setting.
The perspective taken on citizenship in these works is related to human
rights and activism aimed at the recognition and implementation of migrant
workers' rights. Universal human rights provisions have targeted specific groups
such as women, and a few scholars have investigated the relevance of UN and
ILO conventions for women migrants (Piper, 2004b; Satterthwaite, 2004,
forthcoming). The feminization of labor and migration has resulted in women
being particularly influential in championing migrant workers' rights, though
organizing outside of traditional trade union structures (Ford, 2004; Ford and
Piper, forthcoming). There is increasing empirical evidence about the rise in
non-union labor organizing that is occurring around issues concerning foreign
domestic labor demands (Piper, 2005b).
Violation of Womens Rights
The feminization of labor migration has also been analyzed as a form of

violence or a violation of women's rights (see Piper, 2003 on state and nonstate
responses; see Cunneen and Stubbs, 1997 for an international relations
perspective). These accounts highlight institutional forms of violence carried
out by the state upon female migrant workers at both ends of the migration
process, defining violence as the oppressive application of migration laws or
policies through which women workers are denied options to find alternative
employment (Abrera-Mangahas, 1998) and are not treated as workers worthy
of protection (Chin, 2003). The feminization of migration thus emerges as a
phenomenon which is not neutral but linked to the violation of human,
women's, labor, and social rights. Such analyses integrate female migrants'
experiences into discussions of violence against women in general, an area that

has long been of concern to feminist social scientists across most disciplines.
TRANSNATIONAL GOVERNANCE AND MIGRATION OF

POLITICS
One of the challenges facing social science research is to understand the role
of migration in the transformation of human society and its institutional/
organizational makeup, a process that requires reconsidering the validity of
many social science concepts, particularly those that are based on the
parameters of the nation-state. Prevailing forms of migration today take place
under increasingly restrictive immigration policies, under which citizenship is
out of reach for many migrants. Thus, traditional concepts within social
science need to undergo a paradigm shift which can incorporate greater levels
of "transnationalism" (i.e., maintenance of a strong link between country of
origin and destination).
Having meaningful institutional alternatives through which influences
on policy and the normative/legal framework can be channeled at all stages of
the migration process (premigration, stay abroad, and return migration) is
an important concern. Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in
governance in academic and policy circles. While there is no precise definition,
the notion of governance is generally used to signal that policy making is (or
should be) broader than the formal structures of government. The literature on
governance draws attention to the fact that policy making, i.e., the purposeful
steering of the economy and society, involves networks of public and private
actors rather than public actors alone (International Institute for Labour Studies,
2004). In this sense governance is about mechanisms, processes, and institu
tions (global institutions, the impact of global processes, legal and normative
frameworks) at multiple levels - state, sub-state, and supra-state (Piper, 2003).
The link between governance and migration has also been discussed from
the viewpoint of migrants' protection and rights, looking at responses to inter
national migration issues by global institutions, states, and non-state actors in
both sending and receiving countries (Piper, 2003). Control over and manage
ment of labor migration has remained one of the last bastions of individual
states, despite the increasing pressure to migrate in developing countries and
the demand for low or unskilled foreign labor in the developed world (Martin,
2003; Piper, 2003). This is particularly relevant to the migrant-receiving
countries, which are mainly concerned with the protection of their borders,
"national security," and voters' opinion.
Recent studies have pointed to a lack of political will on the part of most
governments to deal with migration issues from a rights perspective, especially
those related to the rights and civil liberties of migrants and their families
(Piper and Iredale, 2003; Pecoud and Gucheneire, 2004). The "lack of polit
ical will" issue needs more detailed analysis, but in view of the disinterest exhib
ited by most governments, some scholars have argued that it is very much up
to non-state actors, such as NGOs and trade unions, to take up a political advo
cacy role in order to assert pressure on policy makers (Ford, 2004; Piper and
Yamanaka, 2004; Piper, 2005b).
Political Transnationalism
Transnationalism has in recent years become a well-studied subtheme of

migration initiated by anthropologists and later taken up by sociologists,
economists, and political scientists. The concept of transnationalism concerns
itself with migrant networks, transnational communities, or transnational
social spaces through which societies of origin and residence are linked (Pries,
1999; Faist, 2000; Levitt and Sorensen, 2004).
The study of cross-border and global connections has posed a challenge
to state-centric views of the world (Vertovec, 2001), causing some scholars to
argue that we need to abandon methodological nationalism and to study
migration within transnational social fields (Vertovec, 2001 ; Levitt and Soren
son, 2004). By developing sociological and spatial analyses of transnational
networks, however, transnational studies tend to take an approach that is less
directly interested in questions of democracy or the state. Few studies have
addressed directly the role of the "political" per se, within transnational
networks (Grugel, 2004).12 This is where the work of IR scholars and political
scientists comes in.
Without explicitly engaging the conceptualization of transnationalism,
the work of Jones-Correa mentioned above touches on the issue of the "migra
tion of politics" and "transnational politics," by pointing to male migrants'
stronger attachment to the home country, which translates into continued
engagement with "homeland politics," even after emigration. Earlier works
have discussed "homeland politics" in relation to the new country of residence by
way of "diasporic communities," such as the study by sociologist Goulbourne
(1991) of postimperial Britain as well as the volume edited by Sheffer (1986)
12With the exception of Sklair (2001), whose work analyzed the rise of a transnational capitalist
class.
on diasporas in international politics. Although most studies on trans-state

political activities of diasporas focus on North America (such as Shain, 1994),
there are also some studies on transnational communities in Europe (for exam
ple, Oestergaard-Nielsen, 2000). Political scientists have focused on diasporas'
role in the prolongation or end of conflicts (King and Neil, 1999/2000; Shain
and Barth, 2003).
In these studies, transnational migrant communities or diasporas have
largely been treated as monolithic phenomena. Diasporas are, however, not a
homogeneous entity but can be highly heterogeneous along class, ethnic, and
gender lines. To date, there has been little systematic research on differences
between men and women's role in diasporic initiatives or the impact that such
differences might have on gender relations in the country of destination and
origin. Not only are the activities of migrants' associations and their role in
local community development an underresearched topic as Tamas (2003) has
observed, but women's role in diaspora associations is unclear. It has been
suggested that hometown associations formed by Latin Americans in the U.S.
are highly male-dominated, but there are also professional associations such as
those formed by nurses or philanthropic and other associations in which
women might have a more prominent role.
In contrast, the emerging research area of transnational political activism
has generated important studies within several different scholarly disciplines,
including international relations (for a detailed literature review, see Piper
2003; Piper and Uhlin, 2004). Issues pertaining to labor in general and
women workers specifically as important ingredients in the development of
transnational perspectives on political activism have been the subject of
considerable scholarly debate (Herod, 1995; Dominguez, 2002; Macdonald,
2002; Staudt, 2002; Fonow, 2003). In such works, male and female workers
emerge as social agents and not merely as passive bearers of the power of global
capital.
GENDERING MIGRANT POLITICS - CONCLUDING REMARKS
This article has attempted to highlight the complexities involved in the "politics
of migration" and the "migration of politics" from the perspective of gendered
migration patterns and has considered the extent to which existing studies
within political science have contributed to our understanding of these. There
is a considerable body of work on the ways in which state politics and policies
affect (mostly im-) migration and destination societies, but less attention has
been given to the political impact of migration upon countries of origin - and
upon the migrants themselves. Despite the many structural and legal
constraints that many migrants are facing, the few existing gender analyses of
political participation and behavior of migrants have highlighted migrants' role
as political agents when politics is understood in the broad sense. Transnational
citizenship and human rights activism are important components of
"alternative" politics. Migrants' role in transformative politics and linkages to
global networking, alliance-building across the boundaries of nation-states,
class, and gender, and the empowerment of migrants in general and migrant
women in particular is not yet fully understood. There is also a need to reframe
migration-related issues that impinge on the lives of women, and political
scientists working with multiple levels of analysis have much to offer in this
regard.
The centrality of the state and macro, or elite, politics partially explains
the specific methods and methodologies used by political scientists when
researching and understanding migration. But as in other disciplines, some
political scientists have begun to explore a wide range of "new" methods. What
seems to differentiate political science from cognate disciplines is possibly a
greater level of resistance, and hence relatively underdeveloped engagement
with, certain qualitative methods such as ethnography.
On the whole, political science has an important role to play in address
ing these issues at the multiple levels of micro, meso, and macro within the
transnational sphere in which many migrants are moving today. Doing so
would also help to foster transdisciplinary dialogue. Political science has a lot
to offer in advancing our understanding of politically transformative processes
as the cause or result of international migration, and in situating male and
female migrants within the transnational political economy of gendered labor.
Political scientists can help to explore questions pertaining to what adjustments
can be made by actors in the migration arena ? state, nonstate, and supra-state
? as well as the institutions that can influence the design of enabling and
gender-fair policies toward migrants.
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Gendering The Politics of Migration

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Gendering The Politics of Migration

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Gendering the Politics of Migration

Author(s): Nicola Piper

Although every aspect of the migration process is shaped by political

Global migration affects an increasing number of countries at origin and

IMR Volume 40 Number 1 (Spring 2006):133-164 133

In contrast to the dominant concern in European and North American scho

as a "security issue" (Doty, 1999; Lohrmann, 2000). The growing perception

Foundation entitled "Non-Traditional Security in Asia" includes migration as

in the study of migration. It needs to be asked, therefore, to what extent this is

GENDER SENSITIVITY AND MIGRATION POLICY

Recent reports on gender equality in general, or women in migration specifi

International migration has become an established feature of contemporary

argues that analysis of the role of gender in migration should be mainstreamed

National policies toward regulation and practices governing the entry

ACADEMIC DISCUSSION OF WOMEN-DOMINATED

Domestic workers and their experiences have been studied in a variety of

Sex Work/Trafficking!Mail-Order Brides

at establishing a link between tourism and migration as gendered phenomena

Global Care Chain

conditions (Van Eyck, 2004). Although the impact of outflowing health

GENDERING THE STATE, SECURITY, AND CITIZENSHIP

The Role of the State

Gender perspectives on the state have a long standing in social scientific

Security and Insecurity

A recently published book, edited by the political scientist Jane Freedman

Political Participation and Citizenship

Asian Americans and includes a discussion of gender differences. A smaller body

11 E.g., Grasmuck and Pessar (1991), Hondagneu-Sotelo (1994).

immigrant political organizing and socialization in the context of Latinos in

New Perspectives on Citizenship and Rights

Recent studies on contract migrant workers have offered a new conceptualization

ends of the migration chain. Reflecting the short-term and transnational

Violation of Womens Rights

The feminization of labor migration has also been analyzed as a form of

experiences into discussions of violence against women in general, an area that

TRANSNATIONAL GOVERNANCE AND MIGRATION OF

Transnationalism has in recent years become a well-studied subtheme of

on diasporas in international politics. Although most studies on trans-state

GENDERING MIGRANT POLITICS - CONCLUDING REMARKS

Ball, R. E., and N. Piper

2002 "Globalisation and Regulation of Citizenship - Filipino Migrant Workers in Japan."

Buzan, B., O. Waeverae, and J. de Wilde

Gerstle, G., and J. Mollenkopf, eds.

2004a Gendered Migrations, Livelihoods and Entitlements in European Welfare Regimes.

2005b "Rights of Foreign Domestic Workers - Emergence of Transnational and Transregional

Piper, N., and R. Iredale

2001 Transcending Boundaries ? Labour Migration of Women from Bangladesh. Dhaka,

United Nations Research Institute for Social Development

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