Family Migration and the Path to an Occupation

The (Early) Experiences of Skilled Taiwanese and Chinese ‘Wives’

Chieh Hsu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780367516109
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000088281
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Emigration & Immigration
• Index: Social Sciences

This book sheds light on the invisible early post-arrival period of female family migrants, traditionally considered to be low skilled or professionally quiescent. With attention to the experiences of Chinese and Taiwanese women married to German men, it examines the ways in which the private sphere—marked by intermarriage couple dynamics and native–foreigner relations—constitutes the main locus of women's socialization in the host country, as interactions with their intimate partners in the family realm shape both their self-conceptions and their employment intentions. Based on interviews with migrant women and their spouses, the author outlines the subject positions that characterize female migrants' attitudes to external constructs and entering the labor market, showing that female family migrants frequently take on family migrant and wife roles that permeate intimate relationships and impede employment intentions, but also often strive to realign with their pre-departure independent selves and thus regain agency. A study of gender dynamics and labor market entry among newly arrived female migrants, this volume will appeal to scholars of sociology with interests in gender, migration, and work.

Part 1

Placing women in the migration context

1 Professionals? Migrants? Wives? Who are these women?

International migration used to be equated with men’s cross-border movements. The imagery of a single male economic migrant was so pervasive—as was befitting the time before the 1970s and mirroring the prevalence of post-war guest-worker programs—that it dominated scholarly inquiries in the field (Kofman 1999:269). This absence of a female perspective on global mobility was only redressed during the last quarter of the 20th century when researchers began to recognize, theorize, and nuance the trend of the “feminization of international migration” (Castles and Miller 2009, King 2002, Kofman 1999, Kofman et al. 2000, Morokvasic 1984). Previously altogether invisible (Kofman 2000), female migrants first received academic attention as wives trailing or joining their husbands through the pathway of family reunification. Though later recast as independent actors who exercise international mobility (King 2002), migrant women inspiring early studies were still predominantly the unskilled or lowly skilled workers. Only of late, riding the wave of research emphasis on the global movements of highly skilled and professional migrants during the 1980s, did qualified skilled female migration begin to garner ascending interests (King 2002, Koser and Salt 1997, Salt 1992). As a result, initiatives in investigating the trajectories of skilled female professional migrants prospered as the trends of studying female and skilled migration converge. Women thus became the subjects of a burgeoning subfield that explores the experiences of skilled female economic migrants (Castles and Miller 2009, Catarino and Morokvasic 2013, Docquier, Lowell and Marfouk 2009, Docquier et al. 2012, Ho 2006, Iredale 2005, Kofman 1999, Kofman 2000, Kofman et al. 2000, Koser and Salt 1997, Morokvasic 1984, Salt 1992, Zlotnik 1990, 1995).

While projects examining skilled female labor migration continue to yield fecund insights into why women move, their work-related performance in the host society, and their level of long-term integration, only a paucity of research is dedicated to female family migrants who are highly skilled. Professional migrant workers and dependent family migrants seem to be conceptually distinct and discrete categories that women concurrently exhibiting qualities or traits of both have consistently, if not thoroughly, been overlooked as potential research subjects. Another issue no less perturbing in studying migrant women, however, is the distorted lenses that have inhabited and monopolized our imagination and through which we have come to simplify and homogenize these women’s migratory experiences.

It is precisely against the above backdrop that this research contributes to a more layered and dynamic analysis of highly skilled female family migrants’ early adaptation. I first and foremost recognize that these women acquire their “family migrant” status much later than their pre-migration specialized training and professional life. Their post-arrival experiences thus cannot be viewed without factoring in the dimension of pre-departure occupational engagement. In addition, the intimate relations with their significant others and the private sphere of the family are bound to exert influence over not only their day-to-day accommodation in the host society, but also their employment-related considerations and decisions. I also stress in this research how we should not underestimate the challenge migration triggers, even when looking at “voluntary” as opposed to “forced” migration. I strive to nuance the multitude of facets that call for these women’s adjustment due to their “gendered” role in the family and as migrants. On the other hand, I seek to “rectify” the false “voiceless, subservient” stereotype attached to these women and emphasize the various ways they exercise agency once hurled into the destination country.

Below I provide a sketch of the two overlooked subjects that have less often been conjointly and thematically treated in the study of female family migration. An overview of the research on which this book is based, including its scope, design and methodology, and the data collected, follows.

The hidden intersection of female skilled and family migration

The conceptual shift that prompted scholars to consider the unique juncture of female family migrants and their skills can be attributed to the European Union-wide migratory regime change in the 1970s. The guest-worker regime practiced by countries such as Germany, France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands in the post-war eras (Kofman et al. 2000, Kofman et al. 2011, Raghuram 2004) was followed by family migration in its most quintessential form, “depicted as consisting primarily of family reunification with the pioneering male being followed by the dependent female who only marginally, if at all, participated in the labor market” (Kofman et al. 2011:14). Yet, upon the termination of guest-worker programs and the enforcement of further restrictions on labor migration, family formation or marriage migration became “almost the sole means of entry to, and continuing residence in, the EU for third-country nationals, especially those who do not have the recognised skills” (Kofman et al. 2011:18). A seismic regime transition as such sparked renewed economic interests in understanding how existing stocks of family migrants in destination countries, consisting mostly of women, can best utilize their skills and be integrated into the labor force.

This fast-growing recognition of women as professional migrants (Mollard and Gagnon 2014) coincided with numerous studies that target female family migrants as research subjects. Most of those on the latter are nonetheless engrossed with the visible cultural, ideological, and economic hurdles of their becoming properly integrated marriage migrants (Bonjour and de Hart 2013, Bonjour and Kraler 2015). The inquiry into their employment prospects in the host country consequently stays overshadowed by their principal status as a family migrant and is grounded in the prominent impression of their inadequate training and credentials, which augments the presumption of their below-average labor market participation (Bonjour and Kraler 2015, Kofman, Saharso and Vacchelli 2013). As a result, there has been a dearth of studies that regard female family migrants as skill bearers, let alone those setting out to unravel their post-migration employment trajectories in the country of immigration. Among the available work primarily located in the field of labor migration that attend to or underscore female migrants’ skills, types and patterns of their employment, along with the level of their skill transfer and utilization, appear to be common themes of these studies. The conclusions drawn unequivocally suggest that women practicing family or tied migration are particularly vulnerable to lowered employment status (Bailey and Cooke 1998, Boyle et al. 2001). It is nevertheless to be noted that literature thoroughly devoted to the experiences of highly skilled female migrants is sporadic at best (Meares 2010). Research dedicated to the direct linkage between marriage migrants and their subsequent employment situations in host countries is even more sparse (Jakobsen and Liversage 2017). The unveiling of skilled female migrants’ migratory trajectories, especially those primarily distinguished by their family or marriage dependent status, has therefore been piecemeal and accrued relatively fragmented knowledge. There are “relatively” few studies at hand (Aure 2013, Liversage 2009a, 2009b, Man 2004, Purkayastha 2005, Raghuram 2004, Riaño 2011, 2014, 2015, Yeoh and Willis 2005) that cater to skilled women who enter host countries through tied migration, for love, or as spouses, hence the category’s exclusion and low visibility within the study of female migration.

Distorted and reductionist lenses

If the skill aspect of female family migration has largely been overlooked, the unimodal lens through which female spouses are scrutinized and the consequent monotony in presenting them as actors in international migration are disproportionately overpowering. In Europe, where family reunification remains the dominant channel through which migrants arrive, women, constituting the majority of family migrants, occupy the center stage of most analyses on this migrant cohort (Kofman 2004, Kofman et al. 2000, Kofman, Saharso and Vacchelli 2013). Characterized at first as “an unintended consequence of the stoppage of mass labour migration in the 1970s” (Kofman 2004:248), the steady flow of dependent, primarily female, migrants from Muslim countries and the subsequent contestation over multiculturalism and the European identity have fueled debates on integration (Bonjour and de Hart 2013, Kofman, Saharso and Vacchelli 2013, Koopmans 2013, Lutz 1991). The multilayered and hardened pre-entry and post-arrival policies that many European countries began to impose on third-country family migrants were framed by a rhetoric promoting and facilitating immigrants’ future incorporation, at times even by one championing gender equality and liberating Muslim women from oppression. As discerned by researchers studying these pre-entry and post-arrival measures (Block and Bonjour 2013, Grote 2017, Scholten et al. 2012, Strik et al. 2010), such restrictive policies are meant to verify the worthiness of these migrants and implemented to curb forced marriages and stem the flow of spousal migrants (Kofman, Saharso and Vacchelli 2013), often portrayed as lowly educated, submissive, and victimized Muslim women (Bonjour and de Hart 2013, Kofman et al. 2011, Kofman, Saharso and Vacchelli 2013, Razack 2004, Roggeband and Verloo 2007, Rostock and Berghahn 2008). This tendency to envisage marriage and family migrants as obedient, meek bodies and problematic groups that require emancipation was amplified and tackled by studies that elucidate the value-laden and boundary-drawing political, legal, and social responses to family migration (Bonjour and de Hart 2013, Bonjour and Kraler 2015, Razack 2004, Roggeband and Verloo 2007, Rostock and Berghahn 2008). Such a “homogenised image” (Kofman, Saharso and Vacchelli 2013:77), however, belies the heterogeneity that exists among female family migrants and obscures the reality that these women too have and can exercise agency throughout their migration process and bring expertise and professional knowledge into the receiving societies.

Yet another extreme at viewing female family migration, should it be liberated from the “vulnerable women trapped in migration” frame, is the propensity to downplay the challenges following voluntary and (partly) self-initiated migration. It is assumed that many of the same institutional hurdles and on-the-ground hardships facing family migrants have less effect on those blessed with a more sure-footed social position (i.e., higher skills, education, or socioeconomic status). While having the freedom and ability to embark on purposeful migration (in this case for marriage or family reunion) is nothing short of a prerogative, it by no means suggests that the journey to gain admission is less controlled. In fact, goal-oriented migration is subject to minutely standardized prerequisites—often hidden from the public eye—just as well, which aptly captures the normative regime of family migration.

What is hardly mentioned is the indwelling paradox between “immaculately listed and contained” migration policies and the turbulent nature of to-be-immigrants’ grappling with those demands. Between how destination countries envisage and sanitize migration in and through statutes and how active migrant agents live through the actual “move” are many missing pieces left to be located. Entry, for example, is just the beginning of the migratory process and experience. Whereas obtaining admission to the receiving country can be a daunting task involving much bureaucracy, the real hurdle of settling, rebuilding life, and positioning oneself in the host society—collective steps that can be encapsulated by “integrating”—is a whole other beast. With respect to how immigrants’ post-arrival stage unfolds and how integration occurs, there are no fewer misconceptions. Conventional wisdom has it that migrants equipped with higher human capital will be able to orient themselves in the host-country labor market with relative ease, find positions commensurate with experiences and qualifications, and hence integrate better than those who are less or lowly skilled. This view, nevertheless, pertains chiefly to the imagery of an economic migrant. As the current political climate in Europe has made glaringly obvious, and for that matter also in Germany, integration is in essence, and always has been, a call to safeguard cultural heritage that has little to do with the economic dimension.

That is exactly what a third-country family migrant in Germany is expected to showcase—a strong willingness to integrate by attaining a basic level of German proficiency prior to entry—and adhere to—the obligation to attend integration courses that impart Germany’s history, laws, politics, and core values and beliefs after arrival. For family migrants who are third-country nationals (a few exemptions apply; see Chapter 3 for details), their status comes with a clearly established perimeter, within which integration is not optional, but mandatory.

This nonetheless breeds and harbors reductionism. A reduction of behavior that the state may ordain where a family migrant sits for an entire year for the purpose of taking courses to ultimately integrate. A reduction of will and preferences that the state has the authority to actively prohibit an individual from undertaking other activities he or she deems more valuable. A reduction of standing that the state by wielding its rightful power tilts the balance in couple relationships and “unwittingly” places the migrant spouse in a weaker position. “Family migrant” seems enough of a category to unite all those labeled as such and rationalize reductionism when in reality the heterogeneity of its subjects precludes the possibility of their being “reduced” to a cohesive bunch.

The lurking peril of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• PART 1: Placing women in the migration context
• PART 2: Understanding skilled “wives’” experiences
• PART 3: Navigating the new and bridging the gap
• Index