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Christine E. Bose,
"The Interconnections of Paid and Unpaid Domestic Work"
(page 3 of 3)
And, finally, transnational migrants often experience marginalization
based on the interconnections of gender, class (usually their social
class in the new country and not their class status at home), and
nationality (especially highlighting presumed racial-ethnic
characteristics). One consequence of globalized carework is that the
inequalities among women are intensifying and global stratification
systems are strengthened, rather than undermined. Middle- and
upper-class women in the United States and other developed countries
benefit from these migration chains, obtaining low-cost help with the
domestic and care work that is still defined as their responsibility.
My recent edited book with Minjeong Kim shows that migration for
domestic work is an important focus for feminist and gender researchers
in some regions, especially Asia and Latin American, as well as in the
United States.[7]
And, most recently, Professor Kim and I are beginning
to examine migration for marriage and how it is related to the demand
for reproductive and domestic labor. In contrast to paid carework,
unpaid carework gains little legal attention and is regulated primarily
through marriage (and citizenship) laws rather than by labor laws. Some
women migrate from former communist countries (such as Poland or Russia)
or from troubled economies in Asia (such as Thailand, Vietnam, or the
Philippines) as mail-order/email order brides, or perhaps arranged
through match-making agencies, to marry men from developed countries or
newly industrializing nations. Frequently, such women are motivated by
economic need; meanwhile, men are seeking traditional marriages in which
wives focus their activities on unpaid domestic work and carework. Some
of these future husbands adhere to the stereotype that "exotic" Asian
women will be home-oriented. In addition to seeking wives who perform
unpaid domestic and carework, others seek wives who are ethnically
similar to themselves, such as the South Korean farmers, studied by
Minjeong Kim, who seek brides from the Philippines, Vietnam, or Japan
because they live in rural areas from which local women have left in
order to find paid work in cities (and to avoid becoming farm wives).
Unfortunately, most studies of migration and carework labor do not
include marriage migrants in their analyses, perhaps because they seem
to be unaffected by labor regulations. Our new project comparatively
examines at least six countries (primarily, but not solely, in Asia)
that keep national aggregate data on the national origin of the "foreign
born" spouses of native born residents. We will contrast the
international origin of the spouses that men choose with those that
women choose, as well comparing those choices to the typical
race-ethnicity of domestic workers in each country.
As you can see, the relationship between paid and unpaid domestic
work is structured on a global level, as well as at the national level.
As more and more women in industrialized countries become unwilling to
bear the sole burden of domestic and care work, it may be taken on by
poor women of color or by women migrating from developing countries. But
as women in developing countries become less willing to marry into
traditional roles in their native countries, or other demographic
imbalances are in play (such as in China where there are more men than
women, due to their one child policy), more men will seek this type of
free labor abroad by connecting with marriage migrants. Of course, if
more men were willing to equally share in domestic and care labor, the
demand for either form of "feminized migration" would be reduced.
Endnotes
1. Christine E. Bose and Peter H. Rossi, "Gender
and Jobs: Prestige Standings of Occupations as Affected by Gender,"
American Sociological Review 48.3 (1983):
316-330. [Return to text]
2. Christine E. Bose, Philip Bereano, and Mary
Malloy, "Household Technology and the Social Construction of Housework,"
Technology and Culture 25.1 (1984): 53-82. [Return to text]
3. Christine E. Bose, Women in 1900: Gateway to
the Political Economy of the 20th Century (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2001). [Return to text]
4. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, "Migrant Filipina
Domestic Workers and the International Division of Reproductive Labor,"
Gender & Society 14.4 (2000): 560-580. [Return to text]
5. Mary K. Zimmerman, Jacqueline S. Litt, and
Christine E. Bose, eds., Global Dimensions of Gender and Carework
(Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). [Return to text]
6. Shu-Ju Ada Cheng, "Rethinking the Globalization
of Domestic Service: Foreign Domestics, State Control, and the Politics
of Identity in Taiwan." Gender & Society 17.2 (2003):
166-186. [Return to text]
7. Christine E. Bose and Minjeong Kim, eds.,
Global Gender Research: Transnational Perspectives (New York:
Routledge Press, 2009). [Return to text]
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