Feminisation of migration

• Feminisation

  In the past most migrants were men. Today almost half of the global migrants are female.
• Female migrants

  Female migrants find that they are fitted into patriarchal gender stereotypes about women's roles as carers or providers of sexual services.
• Ehrenreich and Hochshild 2003

  They observe that care work, domestic work and sex work in the UK and USA are increasingly carried out by women from poor countries.
• Women from poor countries

  1. Expansion of service occupations in western countries has led to an increasing demand for female labour
  2. Western women joined the labour force and are less willing or able to perform domestic labour
  3. Western men remain unwilling to perform domestic labour
  4. The failure of the state to provide adequate childcare
• Shutes 2011

  40% of adult care nurses in the UK are migrants and most of these are female. There is a global transfer of women's emotional labour with an increase in migrant nannies providing care and affection for their employer's children while having to leave their own in their home country.
• Migrant women

  Migrant women enter the country as 'mail order brides' this often reflects racialised and gendered stereotypes. They also enter the UK illegally as trafficked sex workers, often kept in conditions of slavery.