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Intellectuals, reporters, and activists have been drawing attention to the rise in female migration across the globe since the mid-80s. Experts are increasingly measuring this so-called feminization of migration with a sex or gender balance that identifies the proportion of females to males in migration streams. Scholars, journalists, and campaigners have noted the rise in female migration around the globe since the mid-1980s. Experts increasingly gauge this so-called feminization of migration using a sex or gender ratio that represents the percentage of females to males in migration streams. Scholars, journalists, and activists have been drawing attention to the rise of female migration since the middle of the 1980s. Experts are increasingly measuring this so-called feminization of migration using a sex or gender ratio that represents the percentage of females to males in migration.

When analysts in the US Department of Labor first noted female majorities among American immigrants, they claimed that gender balance or modest female majorities were typical globally. This is when the study of the feminization of migration started. Globalization posed a danger to gender roles that, although being founded on an inequitable gender philosophy, had still served to safeguard cultural identities, traditional societies, and families by making women less mobile than males. Due to a few long-term changes in the gender makeup of international migrants and to large differences in sex ratios between many migrants before and after the 60's , historical and sociological published research have significantly updated scholars' understanding of the feminization of migration over the past ten years. Historically, domestic slavery, for instance, was primarily used to increase lineage political and economic power through reproduction in the Indian Ocean, North African, and Middle Eastern slave markets.

Migrations with a female majority have been pushed by the current need for caregivers in Europe, sections of Asia including Hong Kong, and portions of South America. Despite the fact that more nations now send and receive gender-balanced migrants than did so a generation back, official data show that there have been periods of both masculinization and feminization as well as variance among immigrants from various origins who live in a single nation. Recording and illustrating the effects of changes in gender composition have proven difficult, notwithstanding researchers' success in characterizing shifts in gender ratios and identifying the causes of their variations in migrant gender composition. There aren't many research that show that feminization has any unfavorable effects.

References

Gabaccia, D. R. (2016). Feminization of Migration. The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, 1–3.

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a difference between thinking about sex differences with a dichotomous variable and integrating more complex gender analysis and theory into one’s work

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a difference between thinking about sex differences with a dichotomous variable and integrating more complex gender analysis and theory into one’s work

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In the 1970s and 1980s, a conception of gender as an individual-level, static category determined at birth gave rise to the integration of gender analysis in migration studies. Scholars have labeled this as the "add women and stir" phase (Hon- dagneu-Sotelo 2000; Indra 1999; Kofman et al. 2000). Using a binary variable of male or female to measure gender, this method restricted the empirical analysis of gender to differences between women and men at the individual level. Still, this research was an improvement over previous efforts that either ignored gender differences or focused on men and then extrapolated those results to all emigres.

Recent developments in the study of gender and migration have relied heavily on the theoretical framework of gender relations (Connell 1987, 2002), particularly studies that examine the ways in which gender roles change as a result of migration and settlement. Each social institution has its own regime of gender relations that determines how individuals' gen- der performances are constructed, as described by Connell's four-dimensional model of gender relations (power, production, emotional, and sym- bolic relations). Connell's theory of gender relations accounts for the potential for autonomous actors to alter gender structure while acknowledging the limits placed on agency and the interdependent nature of the two. Most U.S. and Canadian sociology of migration research is situated within a modernist epistemology, and while her theory does include cultural and discursive elements, it draws heavily upon structuralism (i.e. research that focuses on structural influences on human behavior). Feminist migration scholars can use this theory to make sense of how gender power dynamics shift in response to macro-structures like shifting global labor markets and state-supra-state regimes. Although not all studies of gender and migration are grounded in gender relations theory, many do include basic elements of Connell's model of how gen-dered practices are either maintained or challenged and reconstructed.

There hasn't been a lot of study into the intersections of gender and migration until after the emigrant has arrived in their new home and begun the inevitably difficult process of assimilating into the host culture. In particular, this study reveals how the shift in economic relations affects family (specifically het- erosexual family) dynamics, resulting in a reshaping of gender relations. 'Family stage migration' refers to the phenomenon in which one partner (typically the husband) migrates without his or her spouse and children due to gender-specific labor demands (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1992; Toro-Morn 1995). When people move away from their families, they often adopt new cultural practices that change the roles that men and women play at home. Wives gain independence as their husbands travel for work, and husbands learn to do household chores (George 2005; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994).

In the past three decades, research on gender and migration has progressed from a small handful of studies that focused on women immigrants or used gender as a binary variable to a thriving body of literature that has made important contributions to our understanding of many facets of the migration experience. However, feminist migration analysis and theory have not yet been fully embraced by the larger field of migration studies. I trace the origins of gender and migration studies and the theories that support them in this article. After that, I discuss the significant advances in our understanding of labor migration, migrant families and social networks, transnationalism and citizenship, sex trafficking and sexuality that have been made by feminist migration scholars. Taking into account these significant advancements, I investigate why feminist migration research remains lar- gely outside the mainstream of the broader field and what can be done to improve its integration.

References:

Nawyn, S. J. (2010). Gender and migration: Integrating feminist theory into migration studies. Sociology Compass, 4(9), 749-765.

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Nancy V. Yinger was director of International Programs at the Population Reference Bureau from January 2000 to June 2006.

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Nancy V. Yinger was director of International Programs at the Population Reference Bureau from January 2000 to June 2006.

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In December 2006, Women's international migration patterns have shifted: more are moving from one country to another on their own, rather than accompanying their husbands or other family members. This feminization of migration raises a number of critical policy concerns about women's security and human rights in both sending and receiving countries. 1 Although international analysts have increasingly focused on these changes and their implications, they have been largely ignored in the public debate about immigration, and myths about why women migrate persist.

More women were classified as dependents in 1960, whether or not they were financially independent, and moved for the purpose of family reunification. Today, a greater proportion of people leave for economic reasons. 4 Of course, not all migration is voluntary: millions are forced to relocate due to war, civil unrest, or coercion, a problem that the international community is working to address. Even for some voluntary migrants, particularly women, conditions are not always favorable. Some migrants who are disempowered by poverty or discriminated against because of their ethnicity or gender may be exploited or trafficked.

Women's migration to other countries to do reproductive work broadens the definition of such work beyond their own households. Changing employment opportunities for women in developed countries created income-earning opportunities for women in developing countries in many cases. In Singapore, for example, as female education levels rose in the 1980s, more local women began to work productively outside the home. This shift created opportunities for Filipina women to work as domestic workers and caregivers in Singaporean homes. In the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of Asian female household workers migrated to oil-rich countries. This, combined with a decline in the demand for male construction workers, resulted in a shift in the ratio of Asian female to male migrants.

Women who migrate from poor countries to perform reproductive work in the households of wealthier countries are increasingly becoming members of a global care chain as they become members of transnational families. Many female migrants have children and elderly relatives to care for. Typically, they either delegate this responsibility to other female relatives or hire lower-income domestic workers to manage their own households with their higher foreign earnings. This can result in families with members from two households, two cultures, and two economies. This can lead to a change in the head of the household as grandmothers or young people take care of children with absent parents, resulting in conflicting national loyalties.

Checks, cash, money orders, electronic transfers, the postal system, banks, credit unions, small and large money transfer companies, and couriers are all used by migrants to transfer funds. They also transport funds themselves or use less regulated or informal channels. Women who send money home frequently use less formal methods, in part because they lack the necessary education or experience to use the formal banking system. Women's remittances may lose more value during the process because informal methods frequently involve higher fees or other transaction costs.

The conceptualization of space and subject matter at the core of migration studies has been significantly impacted by feminist migration study. The development, persistence, and restructuring of gender relations and differences as they shape unequal geographies of mobility and displacement are examined in the expanding body of feminist literature on migration. Through examples taken from contemporary work in the area, this chapter examines the fundamental issues in feminist migration studies.

Migration is a socially rooted phenomenon, reflecting and reinforcing social divisions based on, among other things, gender, ethnicity, class, nation, sexual orientation, caste, and religion (for an overview, see Kofman et al., 2000; Willis and Yeoh, 2000). Therefore, spatial mobility is better understood when it is considered in relation to changes in the economic and cultural landscape, which are an integral part of it, rather than as an epiphenomenon or particularly in terms of structural causes or consequences. The social coherence of migration, for analyses of gender and difference, indicates that mobility is controlled and connected with meaning inside and through existing power hierarchies and spatialities, not because of them (Lawson, 1999). Feminist geography emphasizes thinking beyond essentialist concepts of such boundaries and processes of embodiment. Migration study focuses on the migration of bodies across borders. 8 Identifying and exploring the power relations that are shaped by, reinforced by, and inscribed in the bodies of migrants in specific locations and throughout space is another goal of feminist migration study. Critical migration research ultimately aims to contribute to more progressive future geographies of mobility through persistent feminist engagement with these themes, through reclaiming bodies as analytically central and as lived sites of power, and through understanding borders as liminal arenas of control and possibility in the lives of migrants.

Reference :
Silvey, R. (2005). Borders, Embodiment, and Mobility: Feminist Migration Studies in Geography. A Companion to Feminist Geography, 10(2), 139 - 145.