Gendered Migrations A Gender Perspective on International Migration and Migration Politics

This chapter discusses the importance of a gender perspective on international migration. It shows that gender impacts migration decision making, individual experiences of migration, and immigration policies. The chapter starts by outlining the gendered composition of migration flows and stocks, noting that the share of male and female migrants is almost equal across a wide range of migratory categories. The following section discusses scholarship on gender and migration for five modes of international migration: labor migration, family migration, refugee migration, “irregular” migration, and return migration. For each of these categories, the chapter shows that migration decision making is gendered, and that migration changes the meanings and practices of femininity and masculinity. It also shows that political representations of migrant femininity and migrant masculinity are important to understand directions in immigration policy making. The chapter ends with promising new avenues for research on gender and migration and a call for a more nuanced understanding of men’s and women’s “vulnerability” in immigration policy making.