Migrant Worker - Women and Migrant Labor

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:

    The ships we sank with women and children aboard. The lifeboats we shelled. Mmm ... we were good at that.
    Emeric Pressburger (1902–1988)

    ... even if the right to vote brought to women no better work, no better pay, no better conditions in any way, she should have it for her own self-respect and to compel man’s respect for her.
    Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)

    As soon as the harvest is in, you’re a migrant worker. Afterwards just a bum.
    Nunnally Johnson (1897–1977)

    Poetry is the only life got, the only work done, the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when he has put all the world under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)