Across Europe, since the mid-2000s onwards, integration programmes designed specifically for incoming migrants point to gender equality as a key value of western European nations, which migrants must know and respect. Yet, when it comes to the concrete implementation of gender equality for migrant women, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, we are confronted with rather paradoxical situations. For instance, in a country like France, migrant women are asked to integrate by learning the art of proper motherhood. In fact, in order to be granted a visa newcomers from non-western countries must sign a contract with the state, specifically designed for non-western parents and that expects a special effort from migrant women. “Women play an essential role within the process of integration, especially of their families and children” as one can read on the website of the French Ministry of the Interior. More astonishingly, in a country such as the Netherlands, which likes to portray itself as the paradise of women’s freedom, migrant women undergoing integration programmes are pushed to work for free in social care (for elderly, disabled and children) or as domestic workers. The idea is that through volunteering in sectors with high demand for labour supply, they can learn the skills that supposedly will facilitate their future employment. In a bizarre twist of means and ends, migrant women thus are asked to conform to western models of liberated womanhood, but then are foregrounded as mothers; they are pushed to gain economic independence and be emancipated, but then are required to work for free as care and domestic workers.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 08:55:30 +0000
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