Gender & Society

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Immigration "Reform": Gender, Migration, Citizenship, and SWS

Gender & Society 2006; 20; 569
DOI: 10.1177/0891243206291046

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 From the SWS President

IMMIGRATION “REFORM”
Gender, Migration, Citizenship, and SWS

A s I write this article in late spring 2006, there have been heated debates
and many demonstrations all over the United States against the various
provisions of presidential and congressional proposals for an immigration
reform act. Those in favor of a conservative reform try to argue that immi-
grants are “parasites,” are a threat to national unity, or pose post-9/11 secu-
rity concerns. They propose drastic measures such as closing our southern
border by constructing a wall or deploying National Guard troops to deter
the flow of undocumented workers. The opposition has provided data
undermining these claims, arguing that immigrants are productive contribu-
tors to the U.S. economy and satisfy many of its societal needs. They have
made demands that include immigrants’ full rights and access to education,
health care, and other social services; no deportations; no criminalization of
immigrants or of those giving aid to them; resistance to the vigilante tactics
of the Minutemen or other anti-immigrant groups; and support for an
amnesty program to legalize undocumented workers who are currently in
the United States. I imagine that many Sociologists for Women in Society
members have participated in some of the spring 2006 pro-immigrant
demonstrations and teach-ins, including the 1 May “Day without an
Immigrant” national strike. Many of us also have joined forces with our col-
leagues in Sociologists without Borders (Sociólogos sin Fronteras) to
address these issues.
How, as feminist sociologists, do we construct immigration issues and
join in this crucial debate? First, we need to remember that immigration to
the United States is not new but now has reached levels previously
achieved only in the 1880 to 1920 period. Unfortunately, then as now, there
were anti-immigration or anti-immigrant demonstrations and legal reforms
that resulted in the passage of both the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and
the Immigration Acts of 1921, 1924, and 1929, which vastly restricted
European immigration. These laws represented a retreat from globaliza-
tion; a national acquiescence to racism, prejudice, and intolerance; and an

GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 20 No. 5, October 2006 569-575

DOI: 10.1177/0891243206291046
© 2006 Sociologists for Women in Society

569
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570 GENDER & SOCIETY / October 2006

affront to the basic fabric of a nation built by the labor of many immigrant
nationalities.
Second, we should keep in mind that contemporary immigration concerns
are not unique to the United States. For example, the uprisings across France
in the fall of 2005, sparked by refusals to permit Muslim girls to wear veils at
school, demonstrated Europe’s difficulties in incorporating its Islamic popu-
lations. Furthermore, as illustrated by several articles in Gender & Society,
nations as diverse as Taiwan (Cheng 2003) and Israel (Raijman, Schammah-
Gesser, and Kemp 2003) have been restricting citizenship rights and immi-
gration to control their labor force and to maintain their current racial/ethnic
composition or ethnoscape. Of course, just because immigration restrictions
are common internationally does not mean that they are desirable or just.
Many nations have legislation that formally creates a migrant underclass,
by recruiting workers from a limited set of developing countries to be hired
in a limited set of dead-end, low-wage service, agricultural, or construction
jobs, and often on a limited time contract. Increasingly, those workers are
women transnational migrants—women whom the receiving country does
not want to have settle, marry local residents, have children, or mix in with
the rest of the population. These temporary workers are considered transna-
tional migrants and not immigrants because they do not intend to—and
indeed they are not allowed to—remain in the countries they move to. In
essence, this is a transnational “temp service,” with no national obligations
to the workers who must eventually return to their home countries. These
models represent the kinds of guidelines that U.S. conservatives and other
anti-immigrant groups would like to follow for importing labor to the
United States.
One such model, I hope not yet discovered by U.S. anti-immigration
forces, is the case of Taiwan, where women arrive as legal labor migrants
but their jobs are restricted according to nationality and they are excluded
from permanent settlement. As Cheng (2003) describes the situation,
Taiwan’s 1992 Employment Service Law limits foreign workers to three
unskilled labor occupations—domestics, caregivers, and construction or
manufacturing workers—as well as six white-collar job categories. Since
only workers from the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and
Vietnam are eligible for the unskilled jobs, there is an implicit association
between low skill and race or nationality. In other words, racial/ethnic occu-
pational segregation and stereotyping are fostered by the Taiwanese gov-
ernment’s immigration restrictions. This process is extended into a “legal
othering,” which is how Cheng refers to the extensive regulations that
accompany work permission. Foreign laborers must have regular health

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 Bose / FROM THE SWS PRESIDENT 571

exams every six months and cannot change jobs or employers, cannot bring
family members, and cannot marry other foreigners or locals. Cheng illus-
trates how migrant domestics’ citizenship rights also are delimited by ordi-
nary citizens, such as Taiwanese employers and employment agencies, who
enforce their government’s exclusionary practices. Since employers must
pay a guarantee deposit to cover the cost of deporting a worker who runs
away or does not finish his or her work contract, they impose restrictions to
be sure the deposit is refunded. Their strategies include confiscating domes-
tic workers’ passports, “forced savings,” restricting mobility outside the
employer’s home, and monitoring workers’ sexuality—strategies that cir-
cumscribe women workers’ private lives as well as their jobs and that are
applied unequally to women and men. In addition, a popular discourse rein-
forces the sense of a racial difference that is not desirable because South
Asians are seen as backward, as having different work ethics, and
as differentially sexualized. These forms of inequality among women in
Taiwan, according to social class and nationality, become institutionalized
in the global economy.
Outcomes in Taiwan are surprisingly similar to those in Israel, where
some migrant women’s labor is illegal. For example, Raijman, Schammah-
Gesser, and Kemp (2003) describe the consequences for Latinas who over-
stay their tourist visas to Israel in order to work. Their undocumented, illegal
status and their inability, as non-Jews, to obtain formal Israeli citizenship
exclude them from most jobs regardless of their previous employment or cur-
rent skills and segregate them into domestic work. It is easy to exploit these
women since they fear being deported and worry about not having a work
permit more than about trying to claim the wages that are owed them. In
addition, the government will not offer asylum or family reunification rights
or guarantee access to housing, social benefits, or medical care. As in
Taiwan, Israeli labor policies reflect the state’s desire to retain a particular
ethnoscape—a desire also embedded in U.S. anti-immigration arguments.
The U.S. anti-immigration arguments are founded on many faulty
assumptions. The most commonly cited myth is that immigrants cost con-
siderable money in services and contribute nothing toward funding those
services. Another less often-mentioned argument focuses on maintaining
the sanctity and permanency of U.S. borders. Anti–immigrant rights advo-
cates often forget that the current official southern border was created after
the United States provoked a war with Mexico in the mid-1840s that
resulted in the U.S. takeover of a substantial portion of Mexican territory
and that the U.S. victory created “immigrant” Mexicans who instantly
became U.S. residents without moving at all. Immigration from other Latin

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572 GENDER & SOCIETY / October 2006

American and Caribbean countries also has been influenced by conditions

created by the consequences of a long history of U.S. economic and politi-
cal intervention in some of these nations, such as the Dominican Republic,
Chile, or Nicaragua, or by the economic restructuring dominated by major
industrial powers and international monetary agencies.
There are many contradictions in the anti-immigrant arguments. For
example, in signing free trade agreements like NAFTA or CAFTA, the U.S.
government expects Latin American and Caribbean countries to open their
national markets and foster outside (e.g., U.S.) capital investment, but at the
same time, these U.S. proponents do not want to see the open flow of labor.
This is not just a political contradiction—it ignores the fact that capital and
markets would not function without those workers, although national pol-
icy and international agencies refuse officially to acknowledge this neces-
sity. Many transnational migrants leave their home countries in search of
work because neoliberal economic restructuring policies contributed to dry-
ing up jobs there; they come to developed countries to take on the lowest-
wage jobs in the economy and often send much of their earnings back home
as remittances to make up for the income lost to their families through
International Monetary Fund– or World Bank–mandated, export-led
economies and restructuring policies. The economic dynamics creating this
labor migration are the same whether workers from a particular country are
documented or not, and the situation reveals the difficulties in manipulating
the lives of millions of people driven by basic survival issues. Therefore, try-
ing to adjust immigration policy without adjusting international economic
policies is likely to be ineffective.
Although many voices supporting or opposing changes in immigration
laws are couched in gender-neutral terms, the reality is not gender neutral.
Worldwide, half of those who migrate for work are women, often travel-
ing alone and leaving their children behind in their home country, only to
perform transnational, long-distance motherhood for their own families
(Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila 1997; Parreñas 2000). For some countries,
such as the Philippines or Indonesia, more than 70 percent of labor out-
migrants are women. In other cases, men migrate by themselves in search
of work, and then they render their wives de facto single mothers, often
for extensive periods of time.
How can we use feminist sociology to aid women who are transnational
migrants? We are already doing something by making information and new
knowledge accessible. The Sociologists for Women in Society Web site
includes a “Women and Current U.S. Immigration Policies” fact sheet
(Clifford and Pearce 2004), and our journal publishes important and useful

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 Bose / FROM THE SWS PRESIDENT 573

research on many of the gendered concerns related to transnational migration

and citizenship rights. For those of you who might have been unaware of this
body of literature, the bibliography at the end of this article includes most
of the articles published in Gender & Society between 1995 and June 2006
that address these topics both in the United States and in other parts of the
world. Now, we can and should use these materials in various forms of
public sociology—teaching, writing newspaper editorials, serving as expert
witnesses, and so forth. In addition, we should address any gaps in our
knowledge of gendered migration, immigration, and citizenship. From my
point of view, more analysis needs to be done of the big picture. For exam-
ple, I think it would be useful to focus on those countries with the largest
sending and largest receiving transnational migrant populations and compar-
atively examine their immigration/labor policies. On an individual or micro
level, there are differences in outcomes to explore among women migrants,
especially according to their marital status and whether they migrate alone or
as part of a family. Finally, we need to frame our research in terms of how
gendered migration is interconnected with race/ethnicity, nation, and class as
they shape transnational, as well as national, labor systems.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

References marked with an asterisk indicate studies cited in this article.

Abraham, Margaret. 1995. Ethnicity, gender, and marital violence: South Asian
women’s organizations in the United States. Gender & Society 9:450-68.
Alicea, Marisa. 1997. “A chambered nautilus”: The contradictory nature of Puerto
Rican women’s role in the social construction of a transnational community.
Gender & Society 11:597-626.
Chapkis, Wendy. 2003. Trafficking, migration, and the law: Protecting innocents,
punishing immigrants. Gender & Society 17:923-37.
Chen, Carolyn. 2005. A self of one’s own: Taiwanese immigrant women and reli-
gious conversion. Gender & Society 19:336-57.
*Cheng, Shu-Ju Ada. 2003. Rethinking the globalization of domestic service:
Foreign domestics, state control, and the politics of identity in Taiwan. Gender
& Society 17:166-86.
*Clifford, Elizabeth J., and Susan C. Pearce. 2004. Women and current U.S.
immigration policies. Fact sheet. Available from www.socwomen.org.
Dreby, Joanna. 2006. Honor and virtue: Mexican parenting in transnational con-
text. Gender & Society 20:32-59.
Ferguson, Susan J. 2000. Challenging traditional marriage: Never married Chinese
American and Japanese American women. Gender & Society 14:136-59.

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© 2006 Sociologists for Women in Society. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized
distribution.
574 GENDER & SOCIETY / October 2006

Gupta, Monisha Das. 1997. “What is Indian about you?” A gendered, transna-
tional approach to ethnicity. Gender & Society 11:572-96.
*Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette, and Ernestine Avila. 1997. “I’m here, but I’m
there”: The meanings of Latina transnational motherhood. Gender & Society
11:548-71.
Huisman, Kimberly, and Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo. 2005. Dress matters:
Change and continuity in the dress practices of Bosnian Muslim refugee
women. Gender & Society 19:44-65.
Lan, Pei-Chia. 2003. Maid or madam? Filipina migrant workers and the continu-
ity of domestic labor. Gender & Society 17:187-208.
Lemish, Dafna. 2000. The whore and the other: Israeli images of female immi-
grants from the former USSR. Gender & Society 14:333-49.
Lim, In-Sook. 1997. Korean immigrant women’s challenge to gender inequality
at home: The interplay of economic resources, gender, and family. Gender &
Society 11:31-51.
Litt, Jacquelyn. 1996. Mothering, medicalization, and Jewish identity, 1928-
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Menjívar, Cecilia, and Olivia Salcido. 2002. Immigrant women and domestic vio-
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16:898–920.
Moon, Seungsook. 2003. Immigration and mothering: Case studies from two
generations of Korean immigrant women. Gender & Society 17:840-60.
*Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar. 2000. Migrant Filipina domestic workers and the
international division of reproductive labor. Gender & Society 14:560-80.
Predelli, Line Nyhagen. 2004. Interpreting gender in Islam: A case study of immi-
grant Muslim women in Oslo, Norway. Gender & Society 18:473-93.
*Raijman, Rebeca, Silvina Schammah-Gesser, and Adriana Kemp. 2003.
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17:727-49.
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tion: Double disadvantage and triple disadvantage among recent immigrant
women in the Israeli labor market. Gender & Society 11:108-25.
Read, Jen’Nan Ghazal, and John P. Bartkowski. 2000. To veil or not to veil? A
case study of identity negotiation among Muslim women in Austin, Texas.
Gender & Society 14:395-417.
Rudrappa, Sharmila. 2004. Radical caring in an ethnic shelter: South Asian American
women workers at Apna Ghar, Chicago. Gender & Society 18:588-609.
Shih, Johanna. 2006. Circumventing discrimination: Gender and ethnic strategies
in Silicon Valley. Gender & Society 20:17-26.
Solari, Cinzia. 2006. Professionals and saints: How immigrant careworkers nego-
tiate gender identities at work. Gender & Society 20:301-31.
Spitzer, Denise, Anne Neufeld, Margaret Harrison, Karen Hughes, and Miriam
Stewart. 2003. Caregiving in transnational context: “My wings have been cut;
where can I fly?” Gender & Society 17:267–86.

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distribution.
 Bose / FROM THE SWS PRESIDENT 575

Toro-Morn, Maura I. 1995. Gender, class, family, and migration: Puerto Rican
women in Chicago. Gender & Society 9:712-26.
Watkins, Susan Cotts, and Angela D. Danzi. 1995. Women’s gossip and social
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United States, 1920-1940. Gender & Society 9:469-90.
Welsh, Sandy, Jacquie Carr, Barbara MacQuarrie, and Audrey Huntley. 2006.
“I’m not thinking of it as sexual harassment”: Understanding harassment
across race and citizenship. Gender & Society 20:87-107.
Zentgraf, Kristine. 2002. Immigration and women’s empowerment: Salvadorans
in Los Angeles. Gender & Society 16:625-46.

CHRISTINE E. BOSE
University at Albany, SUNY

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