The losses that women faced before, during, and after immigration were immense and greater than the gains attached. These negative effects range from the basic losses in society to the adverse deaths of children, relatives, and husbands. Oishi performed a field assessment involving 9 countries from Asia to demonstrate the differences of the origin, social effects, and cultural setup for women migrating within and outside a country as domestic workers.
The conceptual orientation of working as domestic workers abroad is based on the economic destabilization of their relatively stable countries in order to send money to their families. Occurring in this position, these women tend to have higher salaries than their origin country can offer under its prevailing conditions. However, such salaries are still low in the hosted country, making value appears only in the country of origin.
The migrating women sacrifice their livelihoods and family cares in order to seek employments that their families cannot live without while resigning their roles as mothers and wives. Furthermore, women also live within unique cultures and language barriers that make social life restricted after migration. In fact, men may be much more adaptive to host nations than women, as Hofstetter argues (Hofstetter 163).
The parental care offered by the mother is exceptional and may not be replaced by a father in a family. Gemmeke urges that the mother should take care of the children and let the father provide for daily needs as she continues to give birth and develop the family (Gemmeke 94). Ideally, she is the one who can mother more children even when the father is away and visiting occasionally. In this respect, it is not only the mother who loses the opportunity to give birth but also the whole family is affected greatly. At times, women’s migration results from violence where people are displaced. They face sexual violations, war, life losses, and vacate to a peaceful area with children (Levchenko 232).
However, these women and children must meet their daily needs, which implies that they have to seek employment from the host regions and countries. Women carry children and stay with them when men are either trapped or killed in such terror. When women are saved from these regions, they start to lose edges of war since their husbands are killed. They grieve for their children and husbands while taking responsibility for the remaining ones.
Social attributes, linked to migration, also affect the females since they are separated from friends and communities. They must restart their social lives with new people and communities (Ndiaye 48). Espiritu examined society from a gender perspective where women’s employment and wage laboring are influenced by restrictions and opportunities associated with economies of host and origin countries within Asia (Espiritu 83).
Asian women are not able to change their patriarchal family relationships because it is restricted by the social positions within American society. Other issues include the charges linked to relocation agencies where immigrants pay placement fees in order to get recruitments. However, these women’s challenges do not appear without several advantages, as Espiritu points out (Espiritu 83). The preferences of sexists and racists tend to favor women for employment, which expands their outputs and gains more than those of men. Most of the migration’s impact strikes women negatively, leading to adverse disorientation of their ways of life.
Works Cited
Espiritu, Yen Le. “Gender and Labor in Asian Immigrant Families.” Gender and U.S. Immigration Contemporary Trends (2003): 81-100. Web.
Gemmeke, Amber. “Women and Magic in Dakar Rural Immigrants Coping with Urban Uncertainties.” African Perspectives Urban Life-Worlds in Motion 4.5 (2012). Web.
Hofstetter, Eleanore O. Women in Global Migration: 1945-2000: A Comprehensive Multidisciplinary Bibliography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2001. Print.
Levchenko, K. V. Women and Migration. Kyiv: Prava Ludyny, 2010. Print.
Ndiaye, Ndioro. “Women, Reproduction, and Migration.” The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration 5.8 (2013). Web.
Oishi, Nana. Women in Motion: Globalization, State Policies, and Labor Migration in Asia. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2005. Print.