IngentaConnect Gender, Migration, and Law: Crossing Borders and Bridging Discipl...

Author: Calavita, Kitty¹

Source: International Migration Review, Volume 40, Number 1, March 2006 , pp. 104-132(29)

Abstract:

The gendered nature of the immigration experience is shaped and reinforced by law, legal consciousness, and the normative understandings they help constitute. This article provides an overview of the role of gender in migration processes from a law and society perspective, and includes an empirical focus on the new immigration to Italy and Spain as an illustration of the utility of such an approach. Beginning with a brief summary of the literatures of feminist jurisprudence and law and migration, respectively, the small body of scholarship at the intersection of these fields is reviewed. The author then examines the new immigration to Italy and Spain and argues that this immigration and the policies that shape it highlight the role of the state in gendering immigrant labor and offer new angles from which to consider the interplay of gender, race, migration status, and marginality. In concluding, the author proposes that such exploration of immigrants' experiences in southern Europe reveals the surprising complexity of immigrants' multiple marginalities, and exposes the powerful contingencies of economic context, prevailing stereotypes, the particulars of state policy, and the agentive power of people struggling to survive.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-7379.2006.00005.x

Affiliations: 1: University of California, Irvine

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Gender, Migration, and Law: Crossing Borders and Bridging Disciplines