Women’s Work
Arlie Russell Hochschild explains why no one benefits when women from developing countries migrate to do the jobs Canadians don’t want
BY Susan McClelland
Photography by David Lee
Newspapers had a field day last fall with allegations that then-Immigration Minister Judy Sgro endorsed a visa extension for a Romanian stripper who had worked on the politician’s re-election campaign. The brouhaha touched on the growing trend involving the importation of women from developing countries to fill jobs that Canadians no longer want. Arlie Russell Hochschild, co-editor of Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy, talks about the usually under-reported phenomenon of women’s migration from poorer societies to the West. Hochschild is a sociology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in California with her husband, Adam Hochschild, co-founder of Mother Jones magazine.
Why are women migrating from the developing world to Western nations?
Traditional livelihoods, like farming, are no longer viable in many countries. The solution for many people is to move abroad, and in the West there is a demand for workers in jobs traditionally held by lower-class females, like prostitution, caregiving and domestic work.
How is the migration different from migration patterns of the past?
In some ways this migration is no different than the internal migration in the United States of black women moving north from the South in the 1800s and early 1900s. But today’s migration sees women travelling much farther than ever before. Furthermore, many of the ethnic groups involved are highly pro-natalistic, so these women often have children before they leave. So what is different today is the large numbers of women on the move, the distances they have to travel and the children left behind.
Leading Filipino feminist Ninotchka Rosca says that some countries, like the Philippines, promote migration as a solution to economic and social development. Is this a problem?
I think it is going to be a big problem. The Philippines is suffering already from a depletion of a highly important social resource: caregivers. If you were to go door to door and ask the Philippine population, “Would you rather have a vibrant economy that puts your job a mile away or one that puts your job 3,000 miles away,” I think you would see 100 percent of people choose the former. So this migration is not voluntary. People often defend globalization and free enterprise by saying that people are voting with their feet. But immigrants are leaving their families behind because their options are limited.
Some people blame Western women’s liberation, and increasing numbers of women in the workforce, as the cause of this migration. Do you agree?
It’s incorrect to say this because it leaves men completely out of the picture. It is also saying that women working is incompatible with child-rearing. I strongly dispute that childcare is not good for children. I think we need a progressive movement to put a check on hours of work and to keep the number of hours that children are in childcare down.
Do foreign domestic workers, nannies and caregivers symbolize the transfer of gender oppression from one group of women to another?
Absolutely. Why is it that caring for the young and the old is a hand-me-down occupation? Why aren’t caregiving and domestic work more prized by men as well as women? Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a turn-of-the-century feminist and economist, envisioned in one of her books a society in which it was so important to care for children that people had to go through a screening process to be eligible. My utopia would have men sharing in that kind of culture, too.
