Women’s Work and Contemporary Migration Flows

The large increase in women migrating for reasons of work within and from Asia has been a key factor in propelling women into constituting a majority of contemporary labour migrants (Matsui 1996). Official figures continue to show a higher proportion of men migrating for reasons of work than women (Zlotnik 1995). But as all the regularisation programmes have indicated in Europe over the last ten years, official figures provide a misleading picture. Estimates for Indonesian departures, for example, indicate that the undocumented outnumber the documented by 7 to 1 (Lim and Oishi 1996: 87). Migration has become institutionalised in south-east Asia and, to some extent, the Indian subcontinent, from the state down. As Lim and Oishi argue, without the huge ensemble of recruitment agents, ‘overseas employment promoters, manpower suppliers and a host of other legal and illegal intermediaries, Asian labour migration since the mid-1970s would not have reached such a massive scale’ (1996: 90). Nine out of 10 foreign placements of Asian workers are now handled by recruiters. However, this growth has a number of genderspecific implications. The growth coincided with the increased demand for labour in specifically female-dominated sectors such as domestic work and ‘entertainment’ (Truong 1996). It is argued that because Asian countries now compete against each other for market share they have contributed to the institutionalisation of low wages in these femaledominated sectors (UN Secretariat 1995 quoted in Lim and Oishi 1996). It is also likely that women more than men are making use of these intermediary institutions, particularly those who will facilitate clandestine migration, because women have less access to information relating to migration through established social networks (Lim and Oishi 1996: 90).