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, migrant and/or labor:
“Why, since man and woman were created for each other, had He made their desires so dissimilar? Why should one class of women be able to dwell in luxurious seclusion from the trials of life, while another class performed their loathsome tasks? Surely His wisdom had not decreed that one set of women should live in degradation and in the end should perish that others might live in security, preserve their frappeed chastity, and in the end be saved.”
—Madeleine [Blair], U.S. prostitute and “madam.” Madeleine, ch. 10 (1919)
“As soon as the harvest is in, you’re a migrant worker. Afterwards just a bum.”
—Nunnally Johnson (1897–1977)
“Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that to-day is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)