Introduction: Gender, migration and policy effects

As feminist migration scholars have highlighted, in contrast to gender- blind conceptions of migration, women have formed, and continue to form, a significant part of migratory flows. Furthermore, the conditions that structure migrants’ options, positions and experiences in both sending and receiving countries are gendered (see, e.g., Phizacklea 1983; Morokvasic 1984; Kofman 1999; Kofman et al. 2000). Cultural constraints, in particular, related to dominant ideas about male and female roles in the private and public spheres are underpinned by, and help to reproduce, gendered power relations and inequalities. These affect the nature and extent of men's and women's economic, social and political participation in sending countries and imply differences in their experiences and resources held, in turn impacting upon the migration and settlement process. Furthermore, while there are tendencies to emphasise the (gendered) cultural baggage that migrants bring with them to Western ‘host’ societies, gender inequalities in the West also continue to shape the position and experience of both migrant and non-migrant women.

Lack of attention to gender differences has meant that migration and migrant incorporation policies in receiving countries have often not considered their potentially gendered effects, particularly ways in which policies may disadvantage women. Migration research has shown that policies regarding asylum, labour migration and family migration have set different conditions for the migration and settlement of men and women (see, e.g., Boyd 1999; Kofman 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007; Kontos 2009; Piper 2006). The pitfalls of a universal, ‘gender-neutral’, conception of rights have also been underscored in feminist literature on citizenship. This literature has illustrated, amongst other things, that gendered (and racialised) individuals have different levels of access to rights and privileges, and they are differently able to enjoy, in practice, the rights they are granted on paper (see, e.g., Pateman 1988; Boris 1995; Siim 2000; Lister 2003; Yuval-Davis 1997).

This chapter considers the effects of Swedish policies regarding migrant incorporation on the position of migrant women. The term ‘incorporation’ is used to refer to the range of policies that are designed to facilitate migrants’ settlement in the host society. Although the term ‘integration’ is often generically used to refer to such policies, in this chapter that term is used only in reference to policies that themselves use the term, in order to emphasise the particular values and assumptions involved.