The Hindu Business Line : International migration: The gender angle

A gender perspective on migration is important, not only in itself, but because when women migrate it can have different implications for remittances over the business cycle. C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh examine trends in male and female cross-border migration and the effects of women’s migration.

International migration has received much public attention in recent years, especially short-term migration for work. But the gender aspect is often less talked about, even though it is increasingly significant.

Chart 1 shows that while recorded international migration has remained relatively constant as a share of total world population, the average figure hides substantial differences between developed and developing countries.

For the developed world (excluding the former USSR) migration has increased quite significantly as a proportion of the total population, and indeed more than doubled between 1960 and 2005, from 4 per cent to nearly 10 per cent.

However, for less developed countries, the proportion of migrants in population, which was already quite low at around 2 per cent, had fallen to only 1.35 per cent by 2005. (It should be noted that the data in this and subsequent tables and charts are based on official data on recorded permanent migrants, including those with refugee status, and therefore are likely to underestimate actual migration.)

Women on the move

Women currently make up around half of the world’s migrant population, and this is without taking into consideration short-term and seasonal movements, many of which are unrecorded.

Globally, the number of female migrants has been large and increasing, both in terms of the sheer number of women involved and their share of the world’s migrant stock. Chart 2 provides some indication of the quantitative significance of women migrants in the total stock of migrants in 1970 and 2000.

Within this overall pattern, there are significant differences by region, and a few regions and countries account for the bulk of both total and female migrants. Table 1 shows that Northern America, Western Europe and Asia accounted for 55 per cent of the stock of all migrants in 1990 and this proportion grew to more than 60 per cent in 2005.

The share of these regions in the stock of female migrants has been slightly less, at 52 per cent and 57.5 per cent in these two years.

The regional patterns over time show substantial variation even in terms of the proportion of female migrants.

Regional patterns

As Chart 3 shows, both the proportion of migrants to total population (left-hand scale) and the share of women migrants (right-hand scale) in western Europe have increased steadily since the early 1970s. Nearly one out of every eight residents in this region is a migrant, and around half of them are now women.

A similar trajectory is evident for northern Europe, as shown in Chart 4, where more than 53 per cent of recorded permanent migrants are women and where the trends have been of continuous increase. However, in southern Europe, indicated in Chart 5, in-migration appears to have been a more recent phenomenon, rising sharply in share of population since the early 1990s and nearly doubling between 1995 and 2005. (This is exemplified by the case of Italy, which moved from being a net emigration country to a net immigration country only in the late 1980s, and subsequently has experienced a dramatic rise in immigration.)

Unlike other parts of Europe, however, the share of women migrants appears to have fallen as the total migrants have increased. Eastern Europe has moved from being a region of net in-migration to one of net out-migration.

Northern America — essentially the US and Canada — shows a pattern similar to that of southern Europe, with a significant increase in migrants as a proportion of population especially between 1990 and 2000, with a subsequent tapering off by 2005 as immigration rules have been tightened. Note that these data obviously exclude the presumably large numbers of illegal migrants into these countries, who are likely to be dominantly male. The proportion of females among the legal migrants has fallen since 1980s, but still remains more than half.

Australia and New Zealand (Chart 7) still account for relatively small shares of the total number of permanent migrants, as Table 1 shows, but in terms of their own population they became significant destination countries especially from the early 1980s, and now permanent migrants account for around one-fifth of the resident population. The share of women in such migration has increased steadily and quite substantially, such that they are now nearly 52 per cent of all migrants. The share of migrants in total population has subsequently fallen to less than 20 per cent. But even so, in 2005, one out of every five resident women in Australia and one out of six in New Zealand were likely to be women.

Migration into West Asia (Chart 8) shows somewhat different characteristics. Here too, rates of migration are high compared to total population, but since migration into these countries is typically strictly regulated and closely monitored, there is likely to be less illegal or irregular migration, and the data are more likely to capture non-permanent migration, in the form of contractual migration for work for periods of a few years.

The proportion of females in such migration is relatively low compared to the other regions of high in-migration, and furthermore seems to have declined over time. This reflects a relative, rather an absolute, decline: the number of female migrants in this region has nearly doubled between 1985 and 2005. Even so, the fact that many migrants into this region, and particularly into the oil-exporting countries, are from neighbouring countries that have legal and other restrictions on the emigration of women, is likely to have played a major role in preventing more women from engaging in such migration. It is estimated therefore that most women migrants in this region are from countries in South and Southeast Asia, where restrictions on the outward movement of women are less binding, rather than from other Arab countries.

Despite the widespread prevalence of female migration, there are still some common stereotypes about its nature: that it is mostly women and girls accompanying their male heads of household, or dominantly by young, unmarried women, mostly for marriage or for some defined work enabled by contractors. Yet the migration of women for reasons other than marriage is both more widespread and more complex than is often suspected.

Reasons FOR migration

Indeed, there is a remarkable diversity of migration patterns among women, and such diversity has increased along with recent economic and social changes in both sending and receiving locations. Women migrate for long and short periods, over short and long distances. They move for many reasons, of which marriage is only one and among which work is becoming increasingly significant. Young women dominate in migration, but older women migrate as well. They move with or without their families. Both single and married women migrate. Indeed, there is growing evidence of women who have borne children moving for work, leaving the care of their children with family members who remain at home.

International migration for work shows clear demarcations and separate niches for male and female labour. Male migrants tend to be concentrated in the production and construction sectors, and to a much lesser extent in service activities. Female migrants, by contrast, are dominantly found to be working in specific service activities — in the domestic work and care sectors, as well as in entertainment work.

While the driver of the supply of migrant workers may be similar across men and women, the basic demand forces driving women’s migration for work are quite different from those of men. This is particularly true for cross-border migration.

Since female migrant workers are dominantly in the care and entertainment sectors, demand for such workers is less dependent upon the economic cycle and more dependent upon longer run demographic and social tendencies in the receiving countries. Aging societies require more care providers. Societies in which women are more active in paid work participation, especially in higher-income activities, need more domestic workers.

Impact on remittances

One significant feature that flows from this gendered migration is the impact on remittances. Total remittance flows to developing countries are estimated to be nearly $300 billion in 2009, significantly more than all forms of capital flows put together. This has provided crucial foreign exchange and been a major contributor to balance of payments stability to countries as far apart as the Philippines and Guatemala, and even for large countries such as India and China has played a significant role in domestic consumption.

What has been more surprising to several observers is that remittance flows have not declined in many countries despite the onset of the global recession. This is contrary to the projections made by the World Bank and others that predicted substantial decline in remittances.

But to some extent this too can be expected, because even if the crisis leads to large-scale retrenchment of migrant workers who are forced to come home, they would obviously return with their accumulated savings. In such a case, there could even be a (temporary) spike in remittances rather than a continuous or sharp decline because of the crisis. Eventually, as the adverse conditions for overseas employment further aggravate, this would then lead to decline in remittance inflows.

But even that need not happen, and remittance could continue to increase — and one factor behind this is the gender dimension. In the first place, female migrants are far more likely to send remittances home, and typically send a greater proportion of their earnings back. Also, male migrant workers find that incomes are much more linked to the business cycle in the host economy, so their employment and wages tend to vary with output behaviour. Thus job losses in the North during this crisis have been concentrated in construction, financial services and manufacturing, all dominated by male workers.

By contrast, the care activities dominantly performed by women workers tend to be affected by other variables such a demographic tendencies, institutional arrangements, and the extent to which women work outside the home in the host country. So employment in such activities is often relatively invariant to the business cycle, or at least responds to a lesser extent. Therefore, female migrant workers’ incomes are more stable over the cycle and do not immediately rise or fall to the same extent.

This in turn means that source countries that have a disproportionately higher share of women out-migrants (such as the Philippines and Sri Lanka) would tend to experience less adverse impact in terms of downturn of remittances.

Indeed, in both countries, most recent data indicate that remittance flows are still increasing. This does not mean that there will be no impact at all, but certainly the adverse effects will be less and will take longer to work through than if the migration had been dominated by male workers.

The extent to which migration is empowering for women or simply reinforces oppressive and patriarchal patterns depends on the nature of the migration. But it also depends on official policy. Currently, very few host countries have legislation specifically designed to protect migrant workers, and there is little official recognition of the problems faced by women migrants in particular. The same is true for the sending countries, which accept the remittances sent by such migrants, but without much fanfare or gratitude, and tend to make little attempt to improve the conditions of these workers in the employment abroad.

Indeed, as noted earlier, there are often additional legal restrictions on the migration of women, which put additional constraints on their mobility. Women migrants, who typically are drawn by the attraction of better incomes and living conditions or by very adverse material or social conditions at home, are therefore in a “no-woman’s land” characterised by a generalised lack of protection. It is now more important than ever to fill this very obvious policy gap.

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Capital, labour flows and the women of East Asia

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