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Women on the Move: Stalled Gender Revolution in Global Migration

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Handbook of the Sociology of Gender

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Abstract

This chapter examines how structural inequalities of gender including the ideology of female domesticity, non-egalitarian division of household labor, sex-segmented labor market, and a glass ceiling shape the independent migration of women. It empirically traces gendered inequalities in transnational households, labor migration, and educational migration. Questioning the dominant feminist paradigm on gender and migration which assumes that migration is a gender equalizing process, we argue that while women achieve some gains in status and in their interpersonal relations, their experiences remain unequivocally structured by gender inequities resulting in a gender stall in women’s global migration.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In Poland, the children of domestic workers are commonly referred to as “Euro Orphans,” a term suggesting the ‘abandonment’ of children for the care of families in Western Europe.

  2. 2.

    ILO, http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:11300:0::NO::P11300_INSTRUMENT_ID:2551460. Accessed April 10, 2017.

  3. 3.

    Hondagneu-Sotelo (2001) defines “strategic personalism” as a domestic employer’s selective cultivation of personal or family-like relationships with a domestic worker due the view that cultivating deep personal ties are time consuming. These employers are often women and come from dual earning households.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

    Carolyn Choi & Rhacel Salazar Parreñas

  2. Brown University, Providence, USA

    Maria Cecilia Hwang

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  1. Carolyn Choi
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  2. Maria Cecilia Hwang
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  3. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas
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Correspondence to Carolyn Choi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Barbara J. Risman

  2. University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa, USA

    Carissa M. Froyum

  3. University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    William J. Scarborough

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Choi, C., Hwang, M.C., Parreñas, R.S. (2018). Women on the Move: Stalled Gender Revolution in Global Migration. In: Risman, B., Froyum, C., Scarborough, W. (eds) Handbook of the Sociology of Gender. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76333-0_36

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