Immigration and Gender

Abstract

International migration is one of the key processes shaping contemporary societies and affecting the lives of millions of people in sending and receiving countries. Driven by the needs of the global economy, opportunity gaps between Global North and South, ethnic conflicts, wars, and displacement, millions of men and women leave their homelands and resettle in countries promising greater personal and economic security and better futures for their children. Men and women experience migration differently due to their unequal statuses and personal resources; migration, in turn, affects the roles men and women have in every society. Destination countries are typically developed market economies with high living standards that allow immigration to meet their labor needs and comply with the moral norms of humanitarian aid and family unification. While settler societies of the New World (United States, Canada, Australia, and others) have always used immigration as their main nation‐building resource, European countries became migration hubs more recently and rather unwillingly, still struggling to realign their national identity with new multicultural reality. This entry traces the evolving field of study embracing migration and gender, documenting its expanding agenda and geographic scope, and offers two case studies that typify gender‐based problems in migrant incorporation.