What do studies of gender tell us about African migration to Europe, and in what ways is this changing?

Because it has affected men and women differently, and because it has relied on gendered structures and relationships, migration has always been a gendered phenomenon. Thus, that most migration studies up to the 1970s failed to see the gendered nature of migration (and their own gendered assumptions) is surprising, although probably related to the fact that it was the work of men that defined those forms of knowledge understood as theory. That being said, and although much valuable work in feminist migration studies has been dedicated to make migrant women 'visible,' gender cannot be reduced to an 'add-women-and-stir' approach but has to be seen as relational, contextualised and multiscalar, and better understood through interdisciplinary approaches. Current studies of gender and migration in general and gender and African migration to Europe in particular have tended to stress what Castles and Miller have called the 'feminization of migration', a phenomenon that entails both a rapid increase in the number of migrant women in Europe and a series of gendered processes such as the development of service-based economies in the global North, and that is changing preconceived ideas of who migrates and why.

Most studies of (African) migration (to Europe) appear to be gender neutral while utilising models of migration based on the experiences of men as the prototype, primary migrant-worker; women are often rated as dependants, unproductive and illiterate secondary migrants. By only considering women migrants in terms of family reunion, many studies have perpetuated the stereotype of women as wives and mothers, ignoring the diversity of women's experiences and categories of migration. Thus, one of the first tasks of feminist studies of migration was to question push and pull theories of migration as a rational choice, as they obscure the many reasons why women migrate, ranging from escaping the (oppressive) household to providing for themselves and their families. Women have often used emigration as a way of negotiating difficult marital relations or overcoming gender hierarchies within their home country. Overemphasising the role of structures, as many Marxist studies do, can also be detrimental as it limits the role of women to that of victims. That being said, analyses of the role of international organizations and the state in creating the public/private divide are crucial to understanding why women move, where and into which jobs. 

With the diversification of migration has also come its 'feminization.' Although different post-war European countries have followed different migratory regimes with differing gendered norms and impacts, the ending of guest-workers programmes in many European countries in the 1970s was followed by a rapid increase of migrant women, due to both family reunion and the development of service-based economies in Western Europe. Despite their increasing role as primary migrants, women have been usually found in the lowest levels of the employment hierarchy in the service industry, commonly working irregularly and as domestic workers. Racial and sexual discrimination in the labour market has meant that migrant women are less often perceived to pose a threat to the employment of nationals, as they are relegated to the 'private' sphere. The work of migrant women has become central and functional to the new economic and cultural conditions of post-industrialised societies: although global neoliberalism has attempted to move capital to labour (i.e. to the Global South), reproductive work together with other sectors in which women represent a considerable part of the labour force remain site-specific. Women migrants, although not merely being passive agents, effectively provide the flexibility that global capital demands. Despite differing experiences among migrant women, many have shared the experience of deskilling. The question of whether migrant women experience a decline or an improvement in their social position through migration is contested, with some arguing that despite common downward mobility, migration can provide increased access to welfare and opportunity for education, and can potentially give women more autonomy and economic control over resources through independent waged labour. Moreover, in their role as active social agents women also follow specific strategies in the formation of social networks, such as the avoidance of Somalian men by Somalian women in receiving societies to escape from oppressive structures. Ultimately, although globalised economic structures could potentially break national borders as well as established gender/patriarchal ones, they cannot ensure equality and may reinforce borders in new ways, through privatization and exclusionary citizenship for example.

But the 'feminization of migration', part of what Castles and Miller have called the transformation of migration into a 'private solution to a public problem,' has not only entailed an increase of women migrants but also a loss of physical security, political rights and rights to bodily integrity, as seen with the politization of migration in European countries. Citizenship status thus has become key in the intersecting and mutually constituting axes of inequality and experience. This does not mean that immigration has substituted class or race as intersectional factors but, together with discourses of 'color-blind' society (as seen in the US), manages to cover them. Subordination is created through the 'feminization' of the migrant, which occurs both in the process of migration and in the access to the labour market. As citizenship becomes increasingly conditional on formal employment, many women migrants working in the reproductive economy are discriminated against; a good example is that the EU's social policy of equal opportunities for men and women has not been extended to migrants.

Jacqueline Andall

Jacqueline Andall's study of Cape Verdean women in Italy highlights some of the issues presented above, and also brings race into the equation, broadening our intersectional perspective by acknowledging the interconnectedness of different systems of subordination as stressed by black feminist thinkers. By focusing on pioneering African female migrants who migrated to Italy as autonomous primary migrants, she questions the view of 'women-and-children' frameworks which see women as dependent, secondary migrants. Questioning the overemphasis on 'pull' factors (conflict, material deprivation, lack of opportunities), she emphasises the gendered aspects of labour market opportunities, and the huge demand for (foreign) domestic labour that has become commonplace in many European countries. Despite increasing immigration controls, the demand for low-wage (migrant) female labour has remained stable. Gender is contextual and relational, and thus the relationship between migrant women and native women becomes ones of mistress and maid, employer and employee. By racialising the category of gender in Italy, Andall looks at how old systems of subordination in reproductive work such as live-in domestic work are perpetuated through racialised women such as Cape Verdean women. Their experiences become a reflection of both Italian women's transformed gender roles and Italian society's attachment to a particular conception of Italian family life. Italian middle-class women are empowered by the 'invisible' work of their maids, and men's role is ultimately unchallenged. Domestic work becomes, as feminized migration, a private solution to a collective problem, and its perpetuation through the labour of migrant women fails to transform women reproductive roles. Ethnic minority migrant women are denied other social identities than that of workers: here we see how women of different groups are encouraged to reproduce the nation differently, with some being encouraged to grow and flourish while others are deemed undesirable. Ethnic minority women's fertility is thus constructed as a threat to the nation, and their role as mothers is denied. Gender antagonism between Italian and Cape Verdean women appears: while the former want to disassociate themselves with the mothering role to which the Italian constitution confines them, the latter see their desire for maternity frustrated by their live-in domestic jobs. 

Andall successfully shows the different trends than from the 1970s onward have become the most important issues in studies of gender and migration, such as the feminization of migration under neoliberal globalization and migrant domestic work under the politization of immigration. She shows how native women and migrant women's experiences can sometimes be opposed, and we should add that even within migrant women themselves antagonisms and preferential treatment can occur, as is the case with Catholic Filipina workers in Italy who are preferred to Muslim Somali women. On an end note, two issues have been left out that would be interesting to consider in subsequent articles: first, the fact that migrants are not just displaced caretakers and mothering workers but also possess sexual desires, and these can come into conflict with implicit normative assumptions around the family, heterosexual reproduction and marriage. Sexuality as much as gender plays a key role in the formation and definitions of citizenship and the nation, and 'sexual migration' is an under-researched area which could elucidate new aspects of African migration to Europe. Second, this article has mostly focused on those female migrants that make it from Africa to Europe, but the question remains of what happens to those left behind, either at home or in the journey, and studies of gender and refugee camps can illuminate productive/reproductive tensions and reinforcement of hierarchies, as the case of Bantu Somalis in Kenya illustrates.