Women's movements and immigration
Women’s movements and immigration intersect in significant ways, particularly as global patterns of migration evolve. In recent decades, there has been a notable increase in the number of women participating in international migration, often driven by economic shifts in their home countries that limit traditional employment opportunities. This phenomenon, referred to as the "feminization of survival," highlights the crucial economic and cultural roles women play both in their households and in broader society. However, immigrant women often face unique challenges, entering host countries primarily as dependents and encountering gender-stratified labor markets that confine them to low-wage, unregulated jobs.
Women’s movements advocate for the rights and recognition of immigrant women, striving to address issues such as human rights abuses, discrimination, and violence. These movements encompass community organizations, advocacy groups, and public education initiatives aimed at raising awareness and promoting the legal rights of immigrant women. Despite progress, critics argue that mainstream feminist movements have historically centered the experiences of middle- and upper-class women, sometimes overlooking the needs of marginalized groups. Efforts continue to push for an inclusive approach that recognizes the intersectionality of gender with race, class, and immigration status, aiming to empower immigrant women to actively voice their interests and pursue equitable opportunities.
Women's movements and immigration
Definition: Campaigns and organizations dedicated to principles and agendas that promote the empowerment of women
Significance: Two goals have driven the involvement of women’s movements in issues affecting women immigrants. The first issue has been supporting affirmative action legislation that benefits women, and the second has been overturning gender stratification that has benefited the interests of men over those of women.
Advocates of the rights of immigrant women trace global developments emerging in the last quarter of the twentieth century to the increasing presence of women in international migration flows and their identification as immigrants. They argue the economic and cultural shifts in many less-developed nations have reduced employment opportunities for populations of men and women generally, but have also contributed to individuals finding alternatives to traditional means of making a living. The concept of the “feminization of survival” emphasizes both the public and the domestic contributions of women to state and household in an era of acute economic hardship and an increasingly global demand for so-called women’s work. One consequence of the “feminization of survival” phenomenon has been a growing proportion of women in migration flows across the globe, including those to North America.
Special Problems of Women Immigrants
Studies of immigrant women coming to the United States have found that they typically enter as wives and dependents of men who sponsor their admission. Research has also shown that one effect of gender stratification has been that women are usually less likely than men to enter the United States on humanitarian or economic grounds. Immigrant women have also faced a gender-stratified labor market in which they typically occupy positions regarded as “women’s jobs,” such as seamstresses, nannies, domestic workers, caregivers, and nurses. Moreover, such studies have revealed that immigrant women experience the negative impacts of gender stratification in combination with those of being immigrants. For this reason, many women’s movements have argued that immigrant women are doubly disadvantaged and consequently more likely to occupy marginal occupations that are poorly paid and unregulated by labor laws.
Established to protect the rights of women, including immigrants, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a federal government agency that administers, interprets, and enforces Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That law prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Although the EEOC is not part of any particular women’s movement, it has been influenced by women’s movements.
The Movements
Women’s movements have developed in a variety of forms, including community organizations that bring immigrant women and other members of a community together to confront the various forms of oppression immigrant women experience. Women’s movements also come in the form of advocacy groups that attempt to represent the interests of individuals in government agencies, as well as groups calling for benefits and lobbying for social and political change. Other groups have been involved in public education and awareness campaigns that aim to inform immigrants of their rights as well as to challenge generalizations and cultural stereotypes about immigrant women that tend to develop in their receiving communities.
One of the most urgent imperatives for movements concerned with immigrant women has been ensuring the human rights of both legal and illegal immigrant women. As such, various organizations have mobilized to combat human rights abuses such as violence against immigrant women along US borders, sexual abuse by employers, inhuman conditions in refugee camps, and domestic violence perpetrated by American spouses. Additionally, sex trafficking has become one of the largest international industries in the underground global economy. The gender inequality of many women around the globe contributes to the greater vulnerability of women compared to men. Women’s movements argue that sex-trade traffickers use the low status of women and stereotypes of women as sexual commodities to fuel the industry and perpetuate the extreme marginalization and exploitation of many women and girls.
Social, Cultural, and Political Implications
Although immigration to the United States has continued to offer women social and economic opportunities, these opportunities have not been evenly distributed, especially in terms of employment, and nonwhite immigrants face additional hurdles. Indeed, some immigrant women may be said to have been triply disadvantaged in the labor market by virtue of being female, foreign born, and nonwhite.
One of the most serious criticisms leveled against the feminist movement, including by many feminists themselves, has been that women’s movements have focused largely on the needs of middle- and upper-class white women, to the exclusion of lower-class women and members of racial or ethnic minorities. Some feminists have argued for the need for a more inclusive feminist strategy that focuses less on gender alone and more on its complex intersectionality with race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality.
Advocates for immigrant women have called for women’s movements to define “woman” in ways that go beyond class, race, and other categories. They further argue that a word such as “immigrant” is itself restrictive, in that an immigrant woman can have many identities. Such advocates have also argued that human rights and immigrant women’s movements should be more closely integrated and that such movements should focus more on enabling immigrant women to be more proactive in speaking out for their own interests.
Political Reform
Despite criticisms of the limited scope of some women’s movements, many feminists and women’s organizations dedicated to legal reform have successfully advocated on behalf of low-income and marginalized women through campaigning for decisive civil rights legislation. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994 was among the most significant results of these efforts. In addition to providing financial support to a wide variety of violence-prevention programs and agencies serving victims of violence, including shelters for abused women and a nationwide help hotline, the VAWA has allowed victims of gender-motivated violent crimes to seek redress against their abusers in civil courts.
When the VAWA was due for reauthorization in 2012, a number of Republicans in Congress objected to new provisions that would explicitly ensure protection for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) victims and would grant greater jurisdiction to tribal courts on reservations, enabling them to prosecute nonindigenous offenders for crimes committed against indigenous victims on tribal lands. Another sticking point was the amendment renewing the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, or the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) for short, which had lapsed in 2011. When first passed in 2000, the TVPA created two new types of temporary visas: the T visa, to be issued to undocumented immigrants who have been victims of human trafficking, and the U visa, for undocumented immigrants who have been victims of crimes that qualify as "substantial mental or physical abuse," including but not limited to domestic violence. A maximum of five thousand T visas and ten thousand U visas can be issued each year; while the annual cap on T visas has never been reached, as of January 2016 the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had a backlog of sixty-four thousand applications for U visas. Among the disputed provisions of the TVPA amendment were an increase in the number of U visas available per year and the expansion of circumstances under which immigrants can qualify for the visas. After a long legislative battle, the VAWA was reauthorized in February 2013 with all of its disputed provisions intact save for the increase in U visas, which had been dropped in order to facilitate the act's passage.
Bibliography
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Dutt, Mallika, et al., editors. Migrant Women’s Human Rights in G-7 Countries: Organizing Strategies. Family Violence Prevention Fund / Center for Women’s Global Leadership, 1997.
Fitzpatrick, Ellen F. Endless Crusade: Women Social Scientists and Progressive Reform. Oxford UP, 1990.
Kamm, Richard. “Extending the Progress of the Feminist Movement to Encompass the Rights of Migrant Farmworker Women.” Chicago-Kent Law Review, vol. 75, no. 3, 2000, pp. 765–83, scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/vol75/iss3/7. Accessed 18 Oct. 2016.
"US: Violence Against Women Act Renewed." Human Rights Watch, 28 Feb. 2013, www.hrw.org/news/2013/02/28/us-violence-against-women-act-renewed. Accessed 21 Oct. 2016.
Wang, Hansi Lo. "Immigration Relief Possible in Return for Crime Victims' Cooperation." NPR, 20 Jan. 2016, www.npr.org/2016/01/20/463619424/immigration-relief-possible-in-return-for-crime-victims-cooperation. Accessed 21 Oct. 2016.