GRFDT

The International Migration of Women. Edited by Andrew R. Morrison, Maurice Schiff, Mirja Sjoblom. World Bank and Palgrave Macmillan Publications USA. 2007. 218 pages, ISBN 978-08213-7227-2

In today’s time the share of women in the world’s international migrant population is near to half. Despite the great number of women migrants and their significance for the development agenda in countries of origin, there has until recently been a striking lack of gender analysis in the economic literature on international migration and development. This book makes a valuable contribution in this context by providing eight new empirical studies focusing on the sequence between gender, international migration, and economic development.  The book is an in-depth study of international migration of women. The book is published in 2002 and seeks to provide the gender analysis of international migration of women drawing from both theoretical and empirical accounts and trends. The book ‘International Migration of Women’ is an edited collection. The book consists 218 pages and is divided into eight chapters on different issues of international migration of women.

Chapter one “Overview”, written by Andrew R. Morrison, Maurice Schiff, and Mirja Sjoblom discusses the key concepts of international migration and its relationship with trade and foreign direct investment. They examine the role of women in international migration and provided the data of migrant from 1960 to 2005. They argue that women played a vital role in international migration but still there has been a striking lack of gender analysis in the economic literature on international migration.  made an attempt to provide the overview of all the chapters. The chapter then made an attempt to provide a review of all the chapter included in this book. The authors not only provide the overview of the chapters but also focuses on the description of methodology, data sources, major findings and conclusion of all the chapters. He tried to develop an understanding about the book amongst the readers.

Chapter two Gender in Economic Research on International Migration and its Impact: A critical Review aims to provide a literature on international migration. The authors Pfeiffer, Richter, Flecher, and Taylor in this chapter contains a critical review of economic research on gender and migration and focuses on the current state of social science thinking about the role of gender in international migration. They systematically survey the relevant literature on international migration and gender and form a theoretical framework that serves as a beginning for thinking about women’s role in shaping international migration and its impacts. The authors also describe the model that has been used in this chapter to discuss gender and migration. They particularly focus on the joint models of migration, gender in split household model of migration (migration of few household members) and models that emphasize the role of international migration networks. The argue that sociologist and anthropologist have recognised the important role of women in migration. However, economist have been slow to include gender into the research on migration in a substantive way.

Chapter three Gender and the Determinants of International Migration From Rural Mexico Over Time focuses on the factors of migration in rural Mexico. The authors in this chapter analyse how the casual factors of international migration differ between men and women. They use a unique penal data set with backdated migration histories that is representative of the rural population of Mexico and apply it in random-effect and fixed-effect models. The results of the study shows that international migration selects male and female differently. Overall, female is less likely than male to migrate abroad. However, schooling is significantly associated with international migration of women, but not of men.

 Chapter four Gender and the Impacts of International Migration of Women in Origin Countries describes the hypothesis that the impact of international migration and remittances on economic activities of family members left behind varies as per the gender of the migrant. More particularly, they inspect the impact of migration and remittances on families crop production, livestock production, staple production non staple production, and local wage works. The authors also study the impact of men and women’s relocation on family’s investment in education and health by using the probit model. The findings of the study show the strikingly different impact on the men and women’s migration on production activities. With respect to family expenditure patterns, this study finds that family with women migrants spend insignificantly less on education than otherwise similar family without women migrant.

Chapter five The Impact of Remittances and Gender on Household Expenditure Patterns: Evidence from Ghana authored by Juan Carlos Guzmán, Andrew R. Morrison, and Mirja Sjöblomis focuses on the impact of migration and remittances focuses on Ghana.  They joined the literature on remittances with the literature on intrahousehold bargaining by exploring two questions first whether the sex of the family head affects family budget allocation of remittance receiving family and secondly whether or not the gender of the remitter has any impact on family expenditure allocation in these household.

Chapter six Immigrant Women’s Participation and Performance in the U.S. Labor Market by Çag˘lar Özden and Ileana Cristina Neagu examines the labour market participation and performance of women migrants in the United States, using census data from 1990 and 2000. They use two measures of performance i.e wage income and average educational requirement in the occupation in which the migrant is employed. The latter measures whether the migrant is in higher – or lower skilled professional relative to her education level especially compared to migrants from other countries with similar educational background. This is the first time that this type of measure has been used in an analysis of the labour market performance of female migrants, and it constitutes an important contribution in this chapter. Over all the authers discover that there is a significant variation in labor market participation and performance of female migrants according to their country of origin and their level of education. In this chapter the auther conclude that labor market participation is lower among women migrant from south Asia like Pakistan India and Bangladesh and middle east and north Africa while it is higher among migrants from Europe, sub–Saharan Africa, the east Asia and Caribbean.  

Chapter seven Looking Ahead: Future Directions for Research and Policy given Andrew R.Morrison and Maurice Schiff. The chapter discusses the important finding of this research volume, relates them with the policy, and highlights some of the burning research and policy issues in the field if gender and international migration. The chapter is set out to examine five issues such as the factor of women’s migration, the economic impact of women migration, the non-economic impact of women migration and issues related to temporary and circular migration. The final section of the chapter discusses some methodological issues. the authors in this chapter describe the relationship among gender inequality, women’s empowerment, and migration, how wages in sending countries are affected by women’s migration and other issues of related to the economic impact of this phenomenon migration like the impact of migration of family cohesion and children’s welfare as well as the trafficking of women. The chapter also highlights various understudies’ aspect of migration like influence of migration.

Thus, the book makes an important contribution in the knowledge system that is helpful in understanding of migration of women. All the contribution of this is book focuses on the economic development however there is a lack focus on the problems of women migrant. Migration is not only giving the financial boost to the family and the country but it also increases the issues of women that is less discussed in this volume.