Contested Voices

Women Immigrants in Today's World

M. Githens

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780312240202
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137363503
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Law
• Index: Social Sciences

A comprehensive and stimulating examination of how the migration of women affects attitudes in receiving countries, among the women themselves, and how changing women's attitudes shapes their relations with men and between generations within ethnic groups.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Structure and Agency

The Discourse on Immigration

Immigration is a major topic of discussion today. The United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, Africa, Latin America, or Asia—it makes no difference. In the postindustrial states of Europe and North America, which receive many of today’s immigrants, the media play an extensive role in publicizing various strands of the current debates. Television, radio, the Internet, blogs, and newspapers continually include stories about immigrants, undocumented “illegal” aliens, refugees, and asylum seekers. Popular magazines as well as serious journals cover the topic. There are photographs and descriptions of overcrowded refugee camps where inhabitants lack the most basic facilities, like running water and sanitation. Television and radio newscasts recount the misery of refugees in Darfur; the victims of earthquakes in Haiti, Pakistan, China, and Turkey; the devastation and dislocation following a tsunami in Indonesia; and Pakistanis and Afghanis fleeing from the Taliban. Articles depicting the plight of refugees seeking to escape from civil wars in Africa and Asia appear regularly, as do stories about immigrants who leave their home country simply to escape starvation or grinding poverty and who are trying to find a decent, stable life for themselves and their families.

Different parties are involved in these discussions. There is, of course, the general public. Their discussions and debates take place in myriad settings ranging from the family, to a church or synagogue, to a political party. Then there are the governments of both receiving and sending countries, which both influence national discussion and establish immigration policies. Immigrant communities in receiving states call attention to “the immigrant perspective” and press for its inclusion in public policy.

Each of these participants in the discussions seeks to frame the issues and influences the (re)construction of the social identity of immigrants. In conceptualizing “the immigrant” they implicitly and sometimes explicitly make certain assumptions about gender and gender roles. Government laws and policies as well as public discussion in many receiving countries are premised on a generic definition of immigrant, who is assumed to be a man. Such a presumption obscures the importance of the intersectionality of gender, ethnicity, and class for both immigrants and perceptions of them. This in turn affects the (re)construction of an immigrant’s social identity. For women attempting to (re)construct a social identity that allows them to function in a new physical, social, economic, and political environment such an oversight has important consequences for their well-being and adjustment.

Debates about immigration and public policy regulating it reflect a diverse range of views. Some views are sympathetic. Often they highlight the desperate efforts of those trying to escape poverty or oppression in their home country. In the United States, heartbreaking tales are recounted about undocumented aliens from Central America dying from heat prostration in vans in the Arizona desert or of Haitians crowded together on homemade life rafts, and there are even reports claiming that individuals from China and the Far East have attempted to hide in the landing gear of jets in the hope of reaching the United States. Similar stories appear in the European media. In Britain people are told about Asians suffocating in trucks carrying food across the English Channel and about children trafficked into the country for work in the drug trade or prostitution. The Spanish press and television often feature stories about desperate, exploited North Africans in rubber life rafts drowning off the coast. In Europe and North America there are exposés about mail-order brides who end up in a situation amounting to little more than domestic slavery. In the Netherlands one reads about young immigrant women—many of them from Eastern Europe—forced into prostitution. Both in the United States and in Europe there are sickening accounts of sex trafficking. Heart-wrenching descriptions are given of women and young girls brought from Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia, sometimes bought and sold several times before they reach their final destination—a European or North American brothel.

The exploitation of undocumented farm laborers and the terrible working conditions of those employed in sweatshops and food processing plants in the United States are described in detail, as were the practices of some big box stores like Walmart, which locked up foreign workers in the store overnight to make sure that the cleaning and stock replacement was finished before the store opened the following morning. There are touching stories about foreign college-age students recruited to work during the summer months at beach or mountain resorts in the United States and then cheated out of their wages or charged exorbitant fees for their room and board. Both here and in Europe stories of overworked nannies, some on virtually 24-hour-a-day call, of chambermaids who are cynically exploited, and of women working long hours in the garment trade under unhealthy conditions and for abysmally low wages are commonplace.

Sympathetic attitudes about immigrants do not always stress the theme of them as victim, however. Some emphasize the contributions that they make to their new country. In these instances immigrants are portrayed as a breath of fresh air, as courageous, determined individuals who contribute to both the culture and economy of their new homeland. Immigrants arriving in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for example, were applauded as risk takers who enriched the country through their hard work and determination to succeed. Fiction and nonfiction alike detail the bravery and success of sturdy, hardworking men and women who came and settled. The country’s immigrant heritage is frequently recalled and the United States proudly referred to as a nation of immigrants, a land of opportunity where all can prosper and contribute. Similarly Canada and Australia speak of the contributions of immigrants to the growth and prosperity of their country. Refugees displaced by World Wars I and II are applauded. Their survival and resiliency in the face of concentration camps, war, and upheaval are regarded as inspirational and have come to symbolize the ultimate triumph of good over evil. More recent arrivals to the United States from the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Cuba have also been welcomed and praised for their initiative, perseverance, and desire for freedom.

Positive attitudes about immigrants, however, are counterbalanced by negative ones that underscore the dangers they pose. This is particularly true in the case of those entering illegally or those who are culturally, religiously, ethnically, or racially distinctive. Current debates about women wearing the veil and the ban on the burka provide excellent examples of this. Muslim women in traditional dress are discussed in terms of the danger they pose to Western values and women’s rights. Depicted as hapless victims of male domination, they are viewed as an affront to women’s efforts to free themselves from oppressive patriarchy. In Western Europe, immigrants, especially those from Islamic countries, are considered a potential threat to national security. In some contexts, such as the United States, the danger is framed in terms of drugs. Cries to close the Mexican border center on drugs coming in from Latin America. In other instances immigrants are simply considered “other”—as people who must be kept out. They are depicted as taking jobs away from citizens and jeopardizing the hard-won rights of native-born workers. Descriptions such as “illegal,” “bogus asylum seekers,” “global terrorists,” and “economic immigrants” who are only interested in taking citizens’ jobs away from them are used to conjure up a host of threatening images (Jordan and Duvell 2002). For those holding such views, immigrants are characterized as a threat, a source of disease, literally as well as figuratively, and as a serious burden on the country’s financial resources, particularly its social services. Along with descriptions of immigrants as harbingers of disease, they are derided as parasites that come only to take advantage of the generous social services unavailable to them in their home country. In Germany, for example, immigrants and refugees seeking asylum have been labeled a “force that will swamp the boat,” a “flood,” an “influx”—comparisons that conjure up images of disease, contagion, destruction.

Similar opinions are expressed in the United States. For example, in State of Emergency (2006), Buchanan, a well-known political consultant who at one time sought the Republican nomination for president, argued that the United States is facing the greatest invasion in human history. He went on to claim that if immigration is not stopped America is finished as a nation. In an earlier speech he predicted that if the current pattern of immigration continued, young Americans would spend their golden years in a Third World America (2002). While comments such as these are considered extreme by many Americans, they resonate with some who believe that immigrants constitute a real danger to both the country’s cultural values and the continued use of the English language.

In the United States, as in Europe, anti-immigrant attitudes emphasize the burden immigrants place on already-overstretched social services. This is especially the case for women asylum seekers who are perceived as victims, vulnerable and having special needs (Hajdukowski-Ahmed, Khanlou, and Moussa 2008). A number of communities in the United States have proposed legislation that would eliminate social service benefits for all immigrants and in some cases deny schooling for the undocumented and their children. Some localities have even proposed eliminating benefits for legal immigrants and their children (Espenshade and Huber, 1999). Immigrant women are frequently vilified as another version of the “welfare queen” who lives on government subsidies and strains already-overtaxed social service budgets. Like “welfare mothers” they are accused of having babies simply for the sake of gaining welfare benefits for themselves and their families and citizenship for their children.

The growing numbers of asylum seekers in Europe have intensified anti-immigrant attitudes there. Accused of feigning claims of persecution simply to gain admittance and tagged “economic refugees,” they are viewed with suspicion and railed against. A recent report issued by the British Department for Communities and Local Government found that some people believed that immigrants were being unfairly advantaged in terms of housing and social benefits and that ethnic minorities were “jumping the queue” to the detriment of the English working class. As a former minister of Communities and Local Government commented, the (English) working-class people living on government housing estates just don’t feel that anyone is listening or speaking up for them (Summers 2009). These anti-immigrant feelings have fueled xenophobic organizations like the British National Party (BNP) and the English Defense League (EDL).

Acting on the notion that immigrants drain resources away from the native-born population, skinheads and those loosely affiliated with groups like the BNP and the EDL routinely harass and physically attack immigrants on the streets. Bullying African Caribbean and Asian immigrants has been virtually a daily occurrence in some British neighborhoods, and in some cases immigrants and their children have actually been murdered. Today Muslims are the targets. In France, Denmark, and the Netherlands, Muslims and Asians have been routinely harassed. In Germany immigrant housing has been set on fire with women and children dying in the blaze. In Italy anti-immigrant activities have intensified and serious episodes of anti-immigrant violence in southern Italy have been recently reported.

On occasion, instances of anti-immigrant violence have attracted media attention. In Britain, for example, several high-profile racially motivated murders and instances of police brutality involving African Caribbeans and Asians have received media attention and resulted in official investigations. In France attacks on North African immigrants by youthful supporters of the National Front, although quite frequent, are occasionally reported in the French press. Recent attacks on immigrants in southern Italy have also been covered in both Italian newspapers and the international press. Frequently, though, violence against immigrants is simply ignored by the authorities and goes unnoticed in the media.

Objections to immigrants center not only on the cost of providing social and health care services to them and on allegations that they exploit the welfare system, fail to pay taxes, and take jobs away from native-born citizens but also on the grounds that differences in language, culture, and religion challenge the cultural integrity and identity of the country. These differences are seen as endangering a shared national identity and undermining a common set of traditions and behavior that hold a country together. Diverse styles of dress, life-style, and even food preferences are seen as detrimental to core national values and differences that should not be tolerated. Indeed, interviews of voters in the first electoral district in Britain to cast their ballots for a member of the far right British National Party as local councilor revealed that many did so because the newly arrived immigrants cooked food that “smelled bad.” Newspapers and magazine articles have reported that religious differences are often mentioned as a cause for alarm. In France, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Denmark, the presence of Muslim immigrants has sparked a great deal of resentment and led to calls for bans on public displays of their religious beliefs, refusals to grant permits to build mosques, and, in Switzerland, to bans on minarets on mosques. In France a heated debate over the issue of Muslin women wearing the head scarf in schools centered on the claim that it violated the principle of secularism on which the state was built, and most recently a law has been passed that prohibits wearing a face veil in public, the justification being that the face veil indicated a refusal to accommodate to French culture. In Italy a bitter dispute erupted over a large, visible cross that was erected in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood. Muslim objections to the presence of such an overtly religious symbol in their community were met with the response that the cross was necessary to ensure the preeminence of Italian, Christian values. In Britain battles have raged over the observance of Sharia Law in Muslim communities, and government ministers have proposed legislation requiring Muslim women to be photographed without the veil, despite the fact that it would violate their religious practices, and have insisted that women go through a full-body scan at airports despite their religious objections to it. Recently there has even been an effort in Britain to require immigrants to pledge allegiance to the monarch, a practice that many of the Irish challenged in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and that Sinn Fein party members elected to the British Parliament still refuse to do.

Negative views about immigrants in the United States, particularly about those coming from Central and Latin America have also emphasized not only the cost of welfare benefits but also the problems created by social, cultural, and linguistic differences. Television, newspapers, and films, for example, have highlighted crime, drug trafficking, violent gangs, and a whole plethora of social problems in immigrant communities. These problems have been attributed to an increase in the number of immigrants, particularly undocumented aliens from Central and Latin America. A belief that social problems are a consequence of immigration has led to the growth of vigilante groups along the Mexican border and demands for a wall to be built between the two countries. In Arizona a law was passed permitting the police to pick up anyone who might appear to be an undocumented alien, and recently a draconian law was passed in Alabama. Advocates of such measures have justified them on the grounds that a wall and civilian border surveillance will protect the United States against the entrance of terrorists and drug traffickers, but many have contended that a primary goal is the prevention of culturally diverse immigrants from Central and Latin America coming into the country. The absence of similar measures along the Canadian border would seem to confirm some of these concerns about ethnic profiling.

Fears about the dangers posed by cultural differences have also motivated demands in some local American communities for the exclusive use of English. Although complaints about the difficulties and expense of programs for non-English-speaking people are often mentioned, an underlying issue is the growth of bilingualism in certain areas of the country and a determination to preserve the dominance of Anglo-American culture. The controversy over the use of English has reached such proportions in some communities that local governments have enacted English-language-only ordinances in an effort to curb the use of foreign languages. Other local jurisdictions have refrained from such drastic measures and instead turned to ridicule as a way of forcing the universal use of English.

Public debate and discussion is only one component of the current controversy over immigration. Government laws and regulations are also important, for they determine who is an immigrant, who may enter and under what conditions, who should be excluded, and what rights and privileges immigrants should have. Just as public debate reflects a series of assumptions about the assets and liabilities of immigration, so too do government policies. Generally speaking the policies of Western European countries and the United States and Canada assume that an immigrant is a male head of household who is accompanied by his immediate family. Government policies also assume that more highly skilled, better-educated foreigners are capable of making a contribution to the economy of the country and are therefore desirable. This translates into policies that permit those falling into the category of highly skilled professionals to enter with relative ease and to have the ability to become permanent residents and eventually even citizens. For the less well educated and less skilled the policies are different. Since people falling into this category are not thought of as being able to make a similar contribution, their entrance and right to remain is instead dependent on the fluctuating needs of the labor market and a demand for a low-wage, flexible work force.

Public debates and discussions of immigration policy have tended to focus on widely held assumptions about the high costs involved, and government policy has tended to concentrate on defining who is an immigrant and what his status is. However, several important issues have been largely overlooked. The first is gender. The common conception is that of the immigrant as male. When immigrant women are mentioned they are thought of as nonworking dependent members of the immigrant family or they are associated with welfare dependency, prostitution, the transmission of sexual diseases, or criminal activities such as petty thievery and backwardness (Chattopadhyay 1997). When they are seen as wives or mothers or daughters, the belief is that they are dutifully accompanying a male head of household. Immigrant women are not thought of as individuals with their own aspirations or as persons who have contributed to the decision to immigrate. Such oversights are unfortunate, for today the typical immigrant is a woman. Statistics report that women now constitute a majority of today’s immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. According to the UNHCR Statistical Yearbook (2006), there are 32.9 million refugees and persons of concern. Of this group data on gender is available for only 13.9 million of which 49 percent are female. Many of these women are accompanied only by their children. When women refugees, asylum seekers, those accompanying their male-headed family, those coming on visas as temporary workers, and those entering illegally are combined, the total number of women immigrants is even larger than the United Nations data on refugees indicates. The large number of women immigrants has led to the description of immigration today as feminized.

A variety of statistical studies done by individual countries further confirms this pattern. In 1986 approximately one-half of all the foreign born in the United States were women, but by 2002 the percentage of women had climbed to over 60 percent (US Census Bureau Statistical Abstracts of the United States). This represents approximately a 10 percent increase in 26 years. In Canada the number of foreign-born females has increased by approximately 7 percent. Figures for countries in the European Union show a similar trend.

A second factor that is often overlooked is the status of women immigrants. Today the typical immigrant woman is likely to be married but not accompanied by a husband or an adult male family member. Her children may come with her or have been left behind in her home country in the care of family members there. Some women do come as part of a male-headed family group, but others do not. Some seeking refugee status come with only their children. Some come alone as temporary workers. Still others enter illegally in the hope of finding employment. This phenomenon of feminized immigration represents a significant change from the pattern that prevailed during most of the twentieth century and resembles instead immigration during the nineteenth century, when women arrived in receiving countries on their own. In the United States, for example, although the number of men and women immigrants was virtually equal throughout the nineteenth century, the majority of women came on their own. Unlike women immigrating today, however, those leaving home in the nineteenth century were likely to be young, single, and unaccompanied by children. In the early part of the twentieth century this pattern changed when government policy in the United States and elsewhere adopted the principle of family unification, which made it easier for women to enter as part of a family unit but made the right to residency dependent on family membership. Since the 1980s the trend has reverted to the nineteenth-century prototype. At the same time twentieth-century official family reunification policies have continued to define women as members of an immigrating family unit.

Present government policies continue to be based on the assumption of a male immigrant accompanied by his wife and children. For the most part women are still considered traditional wives—“tagalongs”—who dutifully acquiesce to the wishes of their husbands. On those rare occasions when feminized immigration is acknowledged, women are thought to be motivated by either a desire for Western feminism or the wish to escape patriarchal oppression at home (Andrall 2000). Reality often tells a quite different story. For women reasons to immigrate are wide ranging and complicated. Sometimes they immigrate to earn money, sometimes to escape from a dangerous situation, and sometimes to escape the chaos of civil war. Western women’s increased participation in the work force has created a strong demand for child and elder care. Aging populations in Western nations have increased the demand for caregivers. Low-wage female immigrant domestic workers fit this niche perfectly. At the same time economic conditions in Third World countries and Eastern Europe and a decline in demand for ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1
• Section 1
• Section 2
• Section 3
• Selected Bibliography