Migrant Housing

Migrant Housing

For many years, only migrant men captured the interest of researchers. It was presumed that men, as heads of households, would migrate to find work in cities or other countries to support their families. The argument was based on economics: Men are the breadwinners, and if they cannot find work in their community, they will migrate. For a long time, migration research ignored women and either only asked men about their wives or did not include them at all. Women migrants were portrayed as passive participants who did not play a large role in migration and settlement/return decisions. This has shifted during the last 30 years as women have become a central focus in migration research. Migration of women is increasing and even outnumbers the migration of men to some countries. Women migrants either come with their husbands, follow their husbands after they have secured a job, or come by themselves because their skills are sought in the country of destination.

Because of the gender division of labor in the private and public sphere, women migrants offer different skills than men do. Women offer their housecleaning and child care skills or, because of shortages in some occupations, can rely on their educational skills. For example, nurses from the Philippines migrate to the United States because America is experiencing a shortage of nursing professionals. The emerging research on gender and migration sheds light on these women migrants and their families. This research shows that there are substantial gender differences in the migration experiences, which then influence gender roles and settlement/return decisions. This entry focuses on migration of women and men and its impact on household dynamics.

Development of Gendered Migration Research

Patriarchy is the main reason why researchers ignored women migrants for many years. It also reflects the traditional model of households where the man is the breadwinner and the woman takes care of the children. Women were portrayed as passive, and not actively participating in the migration decision. The term tied migrants, which is commonly used in migration research to describe women migrants who move with their husbands, exemplifies this thought. Feminist research in the 1970s criticized the exclusive focus on men because it only accounted for half of the experiences so gender was added as a variable to fill the gap. However, treating gender just as a variable was not helpful in explaining the differences in the migration experience of women and men. The next step was to focus extensively on women but researchers were still unsuccessful in accounting for gender differences in migration decisions. The breakthrough happened during the 1980s and 1990s when interview-based approaches slowly started to change migration research by shedding more light on women's experiences and why women and men migrants have to be analyzed differently and comparatively.

This theoretical shift from a men-oriented economic approach to an inclusive gender approach spurred two more important developments in migration research. First, the role of the larger family, or the household:

Migrants often come by themselves and leave families behind ...