Women and Migrant Labor
Economic conditions in developing countries have created the need for a new wave of migrant workers, predominantly young females. Turnover rate in many of these migrant jobs is very high due to harsh working conditions. This occurs on both a national and transnational basis. In Europe alone there are 3 million female migrant workers. The 1970s and 1980s have seen an increase in female migrant laborers in France and Belgium. Female migrants work in domestic occupations which are considered part of the informal sector and lack a degree of government regulation and protection. Minimum wages and work hour requirements are ignored and piece-rates are sometimes also implemented. Migrant labor allows large companies to keep up with the changes in the market and fashions but still keep production inexpensive at home. Women's wages are kept lower than men because they are not regarded as the primary source of income in the family.
Read more about this topic: Migrant Worker
Famous quotes containing the words women and, women, migrant and/or labor:
“Women and negroes, being seven-twelfths of the people, are a majority; and according to our republican theory, are the rightful rulers of the nation.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“Contrary to all we hear about women and their empty-nest problem, it may be fathers more often than mothers who are pained by the children’s imminent or actual departure—fathers who want to hold back the clock, to keep the children in the home for just a little longer. Repeatedly women compare their own relief to their husband’s distress”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“As soon as the harvest is in, you’re a migrant worker. Afterwards just a bum.”
—Nunnally Johnson (1897–1977)
“The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme,—a principle which should never be followed but with circumspection,—to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation,... and for these oversights successive generations have to pay.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)