Gender, Migration and Social Change

This paper provides a critical review of existing studies about how migration alters women's position in the course of social change. Two major goals are accomplished. First, the conceptual and methodological issues that bear on the assessment of changing gender relations are distilled from the existing literature. Second, for heuristic purposes we delineate three alternative outcomes for migrant women using the distribution-redistribution analytical framework, although we acknowledge the difficulty of distinguishing among them empirically. Finally, we provide a selective review of case studies illustrating alternative outcomes for migrant women in Africa and Latin America. The concluding discussion summarises the major findings in an attempt to distinguish issues that cross-cut social settings from those which are country-specific.