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Course of Study:
(ASC233) International Migration and Multicultural Societies

Title of work:
Gender and migration in Southern Europe (2000)

Section:
Metaphors of home : gendering new migrations to southern Europe pp. 15--47

Author/editor of work:
Lazaridis, Gabriella.; Anthias, Floya

Author of section:
Anthias, Floya

Name of Publisher:
Berg
 two

Metaphors of Home:,
Gendering New Migrations
to Southern Europe
FLOYA ANTHIAS

Introduction
The title of this chapter refers to how the migration of women involves
'metaphors of home', that is movement of homes in terms of a move­
ment physically in space, the movements and inter-relationships
between these spaces and the impacts that the related symbolic and
identity shifts have on women's lives in different ways. Migration, if
nothing else, is both an escape (forced or otherwise) from the original
homeland and a search for a better life and some kind of new home if
not a new homeland. In one sense it is not difficult to gender new
transnational migrations to southern Europe because, unlike earlier
migrations which were, paradigmatically, predominantly male (although
women have always also migrated on their own), much migration
today is female, particularly migration from the Philippines, Sri Lanka
and Latin America.
Gender is a relational concept as well as a central organizing principle
of social relations (Anthias 1998a, Indra 1999). Within most approaches
to women in migration, there has been a tendency to treat gender as
additive and to reduce it to looking at women migrants. However,
gendering migration-is not just a question of recognizing the propor­
tions of women migrants or their economic and social roles. It is also
important to consider the role of gender processes and discourses, as
well as identities, in the migration and settlement process. This requires
looking at the new processes that have given rise to the feminization
of migration as well as the particular forms of insertion and mobiliza­
tion that this involves. The extent to which this feminization may be

15
 16 Gender and Migration in Southern Europe

!part of the transformation of gender relations more broadly also needs

addressing. The family is a unit of reproduction and cultural trans­
mission and women within the family play a central role in this. This
involves what Walby (1997) amongst others now calls 'gender regimes'
(as a substitute for the much-criticized notion of patriarchy), meaning
broader sets of social relationships whose object of reference is the
construction and reproduction of gendered social practices. I prefer
using the term gendered social relations, treating gender as an ingre­
dient that enters into different societal mechanisms rather than being
constituted as a discrete system (see also Anthias 1998a).
Moreover, as I have argued before, there are two sets of gender
relations to consider with ethnic and migrant women: those within
their own society/group and those within the dominant group in the
state (see Anthias 1992, 1994, 1998a and 1998b). The focus on femini­
zation not only needs to be done within this context (which includes
the differential positioning of men), but must also pay attention to
'difference' of social positioning in terms of migration, racialization
and class subordination. In other words, the use of the gender category
must avoid homogenizing women's experiences and practices and
must be undertaken in relation to how gender intersects with other
social divisions, such as ethnicity, 'race' and class (Anthias and Yuval
Davis 1983 1 1992). Indeed, many of the chapters in this book point
to the diversity of experiences and positionings of men and women
in the migration process. However, the discourse and practice of
'otherness', on the basis of racism and ethnicity1 defines the otherness
of migrant women, where the European woman serves as the ideal
woman. Although some migrant women are pathologized as victims
(for example domestic maids from Sri Lanka), others are desired for
their supposed submissive nurturing natures (for example mail order
brides from the Philippines) and others for their exotic beauty and as
fitting better into Western lifestyles (for example Russian women).
According to Helma Lutz (1997), Muslim women, on the other hand,
are regarded as the 'other other' 1 thus representing a dichotomy with
the western European model of womanhood.
Although discussion of gender issues certainly cannot be reduced
to looking at the role of women, the latter has not been addressed
adequately by most migration approaches, as we noted in the introduc­
tion to this book. As Buijs (1993: 1) states: 'Women were invisible in
studies on migration and when they did emerge tended to do so within
the category of dependants on men.'
This is echoed in the European Forum of Left Feminists statement
 Metaphors of Home 17

(1993: 3), that 'black and migrant women's concerns are largely ignored
in policy, in campaigns and in research'. So although it is important
not to reduce gender to 'women', given the relative lack of focus on
women, it is imperative to make them visible, paying attention to
difference. There are at least 6.4 million women in Europe who are
not full citizens of the countries where they live. It is estimated that
there are more than one million domestic workers who are dependent
on the good will of their employers (Lutz 1997). Indeed, more than
14 million non-nationals constitute second class citizens in 'Fortress
Europe' (Lutz et al. 1995).
In this chapter, I will attempt to provide a conceptual framework
for gendering the migration process. I will draw on the case of Cyprus
(the Greek-Cypriot sector in the south, as the north of the island is
under the military control of Turkey) to explore more substantively
some of the issues relating to the feminization of migration within
new migration processes, particularly as they relate to southern Europe.

Theories of Migration: Gender-blind?

Ethnic pluralism exists in all societies to a greater or lesser extent, but
the phenomena of migration, as well as diasporization (see Cohen
1997), produce ethnic diversity in new ways. Nation state formation
usually involves the domination by one group, usually the larger or
the most powerful economically, over other groups and the hegemony
of its 'world view' and its conception of boundaries of belonging.
Migration can be seen as important in terms of testing the boundaries
of 'who belongs to the community' or the nation. Moreover, migration
from outside Europe tests the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion
within Europe itself.
Although migration is a world phenomenon, it is also a diverse one
(Moch 1992; Cohen 1995; Castles and Miller 1993). There have been
and still are different stages and forms of migration although they are
not necessarily either analytically or substantively distinct: the terms
gnstarbeiter, settler, refugee, exile, sojourner, denizen all denote partic­
ular forms, as well as ways, in which the phenomena of migration
have been distinguished. Much migration stems from economic
imperatives linked to rural or urban poverty and tends to be from
societies with a link to colonial powers, or involves people fleeing or
forcibly expelled from political regimes (Castles and Miller 1993). This
has certainly been the case with regard to European migration in the
post-war period.
18 Gender and Migration in Southern Europe

For a long time, the push-pull model, dependent on neo-liberal

economic theory, was used as the classic explanation for migration to
Europe, starting from the observation that individuals migrated pri­
marily for economic reasons and to better themselves and their
families. Although at the descriptive level this approach seemed to
capture the dual imperatives involved, it made a number of assump­
tions that are pertinent to issues of gender. In other words, gender
was not absent in this approach, but deeply embedded in it. Firstly,
men were the prototype migrant, being regarded as the decision
makers and bread winners. Women entered, therefore, as dependants.
Secondly, migration was seen as a rational choice ( cf. Indra's 1999 use
of 'forced migration'). Whilst giving a central role to human agency,
that agency was treated in the light of the ideal typical rational
economic action. Not only did this ignore the role of constraints
around choice (for example why did some individuals migrate when
others did not in similar circumstances) but it also ignored wider
structural constraints imposed by a long history of colonialist or
imperialist forms of domination. Moreover, it underplayed the role
of the rnythology of the West (not even adequately captured by the
idea of adventure migration found in the work of writers like Dench
197 S) and the continuing interaction between migrants and home­
lands (captured better by the notion of diaspora (for example see
Cohen 1997; Clifford 1994; Anthias 1998b). There is a case for looking
at migration in terms of a threefold positioning of social actors: within
the relations of the homeland, within the relations of the country of
migration and within their own ethnic communities and networks.
As an alternative, some of the important work by Marxists sought
to emphasize the role of the mode of production -the macro or system
level -as opposed to focusing on individual choices. The seminal text
that gave an impetus in this direction was that of Castles and Kosack
(1973). In this the focus was on migrants, not as discrete individuals
who made choices but as particular categories of labour power, linked
to the internationalization of the labour market. Broadly speaking,
i'vlarxist political economy, particularly through the work of Castles
and Kosack (1973) and Castells (1975) focused on migrants as a sub­
proletariat forged out of the uneven development of capitalism. Such
work has treated migrants as a reserve army of labour subjected to
the power of capital, or as in Phizacklea and Miles's (1980) work, as a
class fraction of the working class. The use of Marxist economic
categories (like that of the reserve army of labour) for particular
population categories, (like women or ethnic minorities) is itself
 Metaphors of Home 19

problematic (Anthias 1980). This analysis was not only economistic

but gender blind. 1
Moreover, although mainstream approaches to migration saw the
actor as exercising free choice, the Marxist approaches erred in the
opposite direction and deprived actors of any agency, thereby reducing
the migrant to a category of labour power in the global labour market.
Neither of these approaches consider how decision making takes place
within family and broader social networks, both within the sending
and receiving countries, nor the ways in which knowledge and com­
munication channels and opportunities for work are mediated by social
actors in specific social locations. The longing for return may also
fundamentally influence settlement (Dahya 1974). Class outcomes are
also related to the ways in which migrants may be oriented in complex
ways to a number of geographical locales including the homeland
(Anthias 1982, 1992). Similarly imaginaries of the boundaries of the
nation have been as important if often contradictory to class or econ­
omic relations in understanding migration and its reception. For
example the imaginary of the colonial power as a potential home
from home is found in much colonial migration. Most important,
the ways in which migrants have been received by the countries of
destination (involving, for example, practices of discrimination
and racism) cannot be explained fully by economistic explanations 1
whether neo-liberal or Marxist (Solomos 1986; Anthias 1990).
The bulk of the literature produced in Europe has been on post-war
migration to western Europe. More recently, the focus has shifted to
refugees and undocumented migrants (for example see Koser 1997).
The most important tendency, however, is the shift away from a
migration problematic altogether with the permanent settlements of
population that western Europe has experienced. This tendency is
characterized by a focus on incorporation and exclusion in the receiv­
ing countries and has tended to take a problem-oriented approach.
In Britain in particular, the 'race relations' and ethnic studies problem­
atic have dominated the field (see Anthias 1982, 1992; Miles 1989).
Even more recently, a concern with identity, with new ethnicities,
with difference and diversity has characterized debates in the area
(see Anthias and Yuval Davis 1992). Theories of diasporization and of
new diaspora social forms, including consciousness, have emerged
(Cohen 1997; Anthias 1998b). The issue of gender has become an
increasingly relevant issue (for example Phizacklea 1983; Anderson
and Phizacklea 1997; Anthias 1983, 1992; Brah 1996) as is the role
that women play in the reproduction of the ethnic boundary (Anthias
20 Gender and Migration in Southern Europe

and Yuval Davis 1989; Wilford and Miller 1998; Charles and Hintjens
1998).

New Migrations
New migration to Europe and particularly southern Europe in the
1990s has turned the attention of scholars once again to migration
processes (see King 1997; Koser and Lutz 1997, for example). The
paradigms used to explain earlier forms of migration, with their focus
on economic migrants from poorer sectors of their communities,
primarily men or families led by men, can no longer yield a fruitful
conceptual basis for understanding migration today. Such migration
is more diverse and includes large numbers of educated people from
the old Eastern bloc (Rudolph and Hillman 1997). Some of these may
experience downward economic mobility on migration (see Ribas
Mateos, this volume) rather than an improvement. It is diverse also
because large numbers of the older type economic migrants have to
come in as undocumented, as modern economies do not formally
want them within their territories, despite needing them; this is
particularly the case in Greece, for example, with its large informal
and unregulated sector. In addition a large part of this migration is
made up of women who migrate on their own, being involved in
what can be termed a solo migration project. The diversity of these
new forms of migration has therefore gone hand in hand with femini­
zation. Migrant women, however, have strong transnational family
links and major responsibilities for providing for families left in the
homelands. Migration is also diverse in terms of motivation: some
migrate for family reunification, some migrate simply for work; others
are asylum seekers (Koser 1997) and also what Mirjana Morokvasic
( 1994) has called commuter and brain drain migrants. The increasing
diversity of the people on the move is linked to the disintegration of
eastern Europe and crisis in various world economies. This is particu­
larly the case with regard to the more educated and 'brain drain1
migrants. Return migration and family reunification processes have
also been important in southern Europe, as in Europe as a whole,
being one of the few ways in which women can migrate legally (Lutz
I 997).
As Castles and Miller (1993) argue, in the wake of so many people
on the move, the old distinction between refugees, economic migrants
and exiles is diminishing. The notion of 'forced migration1 has been
advanced by others (for example Indra 1999). Such a notion however,
does not capture the multilayered processes for individuals and groups
 Metaphors of Home 21

in the migration process. Examples from Spain, Italy, Greece and

Cyprus (all in this book) show the extent to which movements are
multiple and statuses, both legal and other, of individual migrants
unstable and precarious. It is this tension between migrants as travellers
and migrants as settlers in new territories, that produces the new
phenomena of migration.
New approaches to migration, therefore, require us to avoid the
binary focus of traditional migration theory with it's emphasis on the
process of migration frorn and migration to particular nation states.
Migration needs to be seen as part of the globalizing tendencies in
the modern world and in terms of transnational processes. This involves
a set of contradictions between the continuing imperatives of nation­
hood, on the one hand, and increasing economic and cultural global­
ism on the other. Moreover, all transnational population movements
entail contradictory processes relating to particular forms of exclusion
and inclusion. These processes involve competing discourses: the idea
of human rights and equality of treatment of all persons is accomp­
anied by exclusion from full citizenship rights as well as the differential
racisms experienced by different categories of migrants. In the case of
southern Europe, as in much of the history of migration in the post­
war period generally, there are contradictions that lie, on the one hand,
in terms of the perceived needs of the economy (or at least action by
employers to fill cheaply their needs) and the perceived needs of the
'integrity of the nation' and the borders of 'otherness' or alterity, that
will construct migrants as a threat. Different discourses and practices
around ethnicity, or around civic rights, may be deployed in excluding
and including differentially different groups of migrants in different
countries and from different countries (for example see Triantafillidou
1997). This is particularly important where national identity is an
important part of the agenda as it is within many societies; this is
certainly the case in Cyprus, which will be drawn on substantively in
this chapter.
Transnational and global processes provide the context within which
new forms of gendered migration to southern Europe need to be
located. I will now examine them.

Transnationalisn1, Globalization and Exclusion

Transnational social spaces mean that the problematic of assimilation
and ethnic pluralism may not be adequate. Whilst the assimilation
problematic posits the potential disappearance of a migrant popula­
tion, the newer ethnic pluralism problematic found in multiculturalist
22 Gender and Migration in Southern Europe

discourse (see Anthias and Yuval Davis 1992) posits the reproduction
of ethnic culture. Both of these positions are no longer sustainable,
given that transnational processes involve border crossings where
migrants have complex relations to different locales and form new
and different communities. These include migrant networks involving
social, symbolic and material ties between homelands, destinations and
relations between destinations. Transnationalism is centred in two or
more national spaces; this is found particularly in the case of Filipina
maids, for example, discussed in many of the chapters in this volume.
Transnational population movements may be seen as part of the
globalizing tendencies in the modern world (Walters 1995). Globaliza­
tion involves a number of related processes: movement of capital in
its various forms; the global penetration of new technologies, forms
of communication and media; transnational political developments
and alliances (such as the European Union (EU), the European Court
of Human Rights and the Beijing Conference of Women); and the
penetration of ideologies producing a 'world system' (Wallerstein 1990)
or Global Village (McLuhan 1964). Appadurai's (1990: 297) conception
of the ethnoscape provides one way of understanding the movement
of people: 'By ethnoscape, I mean the landscape of persons who
constitute the shifting world in which we live; tourists, immigrants,
refugees, exiles, guest-workers and other moving groups and persons.'
Globalization challenges social scientific analysis with changing
forms of governance and political participation, changing identities,
values and, allegiances. These have a profound effect on social life
and our understanding of it, with serious implications for the future
of democracy, citizenship and nationalism (Eisenstein 1997). Some
categories have emerged excluded from society, through new tech­
nology and new flexible employment patterns. Many of those most
affected by these processes are women. This is partly because the drive
to attain greater flexibility in employment practices has encouraged
casualized employment practices and especially the feminization of
migration.
Although globalized economic structures potentially break national
borders, as well as established gender/patriarchal ones, they cannot
ensure the equality and growth of status and respect to all groups
equally and may reinforce borders in new ways. The state/welfare
system has become dominated by increasing privatization, dismantl­
ing the welfare states of liberal democratic societies and prohibiting
the development of welfare regimes in southern Europe. Moreover,
privatization and free markets are redefining the relationship between
 Metaphors of Home 23

the state and their economies, families and public life and political
and cultural life (Eisenstein 1997). This is likely to reinforce divisions
between rich and poor nations, on the one hand, and between differ­
ent categories of people within them on the other.
Moreover, despite globalization, the reconfiguration of ethnic bound­
aries and exceptions such as the European court of human rights,
nation states are still the determinants of juridical, social citizenship
and cultural citizenship (Turner 1990) and the ethno-national project
remains central. The borders of the nation state are still policed against
undesirable others in formal and informal ways through migration
controls, racism and the desire for the integration and management
of minorities within (in the present phase of multiculturalism) while
excluding others on the outside and the inside (such as Gypsies). Many
nation states wish to retain the ethnic identity of their diaspora
populations and encourage their reproduction as well as their return
to the homeland (unrecognizable for those who were born outside it),
a home no longer 'a home' or a place where they may feel 'at home'.
It may be the case that globalism as an ideology demands one culture
which can be shared (what has been termed a global village), found
in a more limited sense within the notion of Europe, but this involves
a particular construction of 'Europe' as Christian and White, thus
excluding Third World migrants and Muslims. Freedom of movement
and trade have made boundaries between one European Union country
and another less important, but in practice this is reserved for majority
ethnic group members who have full citizenship. For many Third
World and other migrants this process means that they need to carry
additional identification, with passport controls at airports reinforced
to exclude non-Europeans (Anthias and Yuval Davis 1992). Being Black
or obviously foreign is therefore an impediment to movement as
racialized minorities within Europe may be targeted because of the
growing ideology of Europeanism/whiteness (Lutz et al. 1995).
Moreover, there are different layers of citizenship and residence/
work permits for different groups and inequality both between the
countries of the European Union and between western Europe and
southern Europe. Therefore, in practice, privatization and exclusionary
nation state citizenships sit alongside differential border controls in
the management of movements of population within Appadurai's
ethnoscape. Nation states have always had ethnic 'outsiders' or minori­
ties within, who have demanded recognition of their practices. Within
eastern Europe, for example in Latvia, Rumanians are excluded from
eligibility for citizenship. In ex-Yugoslavia this has been particularly
24 Gender and Migration in Southern Europe

horrendous. 'Ethnic cleansing' may be a relatively new term but it

is an old experience. The European framework provides different
instances of ethnic and racist practices: racism and hostility in Spain
and Greece towards migrants from Tunisia (see Daly and Barot 1999)
and Albania (Lazaridis 1999 and Psimmenos this volume); in Germany
and the Netherlands the Turks have been targets of racist hostility
but more recently Rumanians and Poles in Germany have been the
subject of neo-Nazi attacks; in France, target populations are increas­
ingly Muslims and Jews (see Lloyd 1998); in Britain there has been a
growth of anti-Muslim racism (see Modood 1996). Such processes are
essentially gendered (see Anthias and Yuval Davis 1992, Brah 1996,
Lutz et al. 1995).

Gendering Migration
The idea of migration as a male phenomenon has been seriously
questioned since the mid-1980s by the focus on women migrants
making independent choices or taking the initiative for their own
families (for example, Phizacklea 1983; Anthias 1992; Buijs 1993; Lutz
et al. 1995; Indra 1999). The empirical picture of women that has
emerged shows the diversity of social positioning entailed. There are
class and ethnic differences amongst women migrants and the differ­
ent countries of origin and destination provide heterogeneous contexts
that need to be taken into account, but there are some broad areas
that allow us to posit some general features of the new feminization
of migration. It is not the case that women migrants migrate primarily
as dependants or for family reunification. Instead, women migrants
are more often than not a main source of family support and see their
role in terms of a family strategy. All the chapters in this volume show
instances of this role.
However, as noted previously, gendering migration is not simply
attending to women migrants. For gender as a relational social category
is implicated in a range of social relations linked to the process of
migration. Therefore it is necessary to look beyond merely economic
processes for understanding the position of migrant women and to
attend to ethnic and national boundaries. Whilst nationalism, as
Benedict Anderson (1983) notes, constructs imagined communities
with a sense of belonging, it also requires an 'other' from which it
can imagine itself as separate. The migrant 'other 'is gendered as well
as racialized and classed. Gender is a significant component of ethnic
landscapes. Cultural groups, nations and ethnic groups are imagined
as woman (see Anthias and Yuval Davis 1989) and women are partic-
 Metaphors of Home 25

ular objects of national and ethnic discourses and policies, in terms

of the biological reproduction of the group/nation, its social and
cultural reproduction and its symbolic figuration. In addition women
are active participants in economic processes and are particular political
actors 1 often playing specific roles within the nation. It is necessary
to incorporate women as active agents and to focus on the different
ways in which they manage the migration process. Women as social
actors are located at the intersection of their country of origin and
country of destination, as they are economic and ethnic subjects
within both locales. A contextual and situational analysis is therefore
needed. Moreover, the importance of transnational connections require
us to look beyond the interaction between countries of origin and
destination towards wider migratory networks.
The role of the state is central in understanding women's position.
This entails more than looking at legal rules or social provision,
although these are of fundamental importance. The public/private
divide, reflected within state practices, with the relegation of women
to the private space of the home and the family, has been extensively
critiqued by feminists (for example Lister 1997). In the receiving
countries, the personal lives and experiences of women are socially
constructed as private, so that for example, experiences of women
migrants in rape and 'trafficking' (for example see Campani 1997) is
treated as private, although the women who are discovered to be
illegally working in the sex trade, or who enter illegally as refugees,
may be punished if this comes to the attention of the police. Rape
and other forms of sexual abuse become explained as products of
individual pathology rather than emanating from social processes of
gender hierarchy and subordination.

Women A1igrants and Gendered Work

There is no doubt that economic incorporation into particular sectors
of the economy provides an important context for understanding the
position of migrant women, albeit in a heterogeneous manner. Women
migrants provide the flexibility that global capital needs. Approxim­
ately two-thirds of all part-time and temporary workers are women
(Eisenstein 1997). Women fill particular functions in the labour market,
being cheap and flexible labour for the service sectors, and in some
countries, small/light manufacturing industries. They are located
within a secondary, service-oriented or hidden labour market that is
divided into male and female sectors and reproduces an ethnically
and gendered divided labour market. Moreover, ethnic/migrant groups
26 Gender and Migration in Southern Europe

can use women as an economic resource. For example, family labour

was one central pattern for many migrant groups in the post war period
in western Europe (Anthias 1983; Ward and Jenkins 1984).
In terms of the economic role of migrant women in southern Europe,
there is a diversity in female participation, but there is a concentration
in the service sector, particularly domestic service and within the sex
or leisure industry. Moreover, many migrant women are either illegal
or do not have legal status as individuals1 their legality being depend­
ant on the permits held by employers. This places them under the
control of their employer and potentially and actually leads to super­
exploitation and other forms of abuse (see Anderson and Phizacklea
1997). The undocumented nature of much migration is therefore
important in structuring its relation to the market, in terms of the
hidden or private economies within the service sector1 the household
(as in domestic service) and the sex industry. This raises the issue of
the ways in which being deprived rights of entry and settlement, as
well as broader rights of citizenship1 are central reasons for the forms
of domination faced by migrant men and women.

Dornestic Maids The use of foreign domestic servants, many of whom

live in, constitutes a significant growth industry in southern Europe.
Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Albania and Latin America are favoured
countries for this form of female labour migration. Southern Europe
has increasing numbers of working women1 many of whom are mothers.
The inadequacy of state provision for the care of the very young and
the elderly, or the inability of the state to actually provide those
services has resulted in a massively increased demand for domestic
workers. Local women with more disposable family incomes turn to
poorer women, many of them migrant women, to take on the dom­
estic role and responsibilities traditionally associated with women's role
in the private sphere. Few domestic maids have a migration status
separate from their work entitlement on entry as domestic workers,
and they are therefore vulnerable; if they leave their employer they
could be deported. Some women are undocumented1 which makes
them particularly vulnerable and exploitable. Lack of formal regulation
and person rights deprives them of any ways of countering potential
forms of abuse and may trap them in unhappy and at times dangerous
dependencies on the families that employ them. Often their employers
complain loudly of the presence of too many foreigners in their country
on the one hand and yet happily employ a foreigner in their own
home because they are cheap (Anderson and Phizacklea 1997).
 Metaphors of Home 27

The multiple domestic tasks such maids are given 'as part of the
family' means the extension of the subordinate role of women as
unpaid family workers to paid family workers. The expectations that
families have on the wife and mother now are placed onto the dom­
estic maid but without the potential emotional and other rewards as
well as the reciprocities involved in family structures. Women from
poorer countries such as Eritrea, Sri Lanka, Albania and the Philippines
are subjected to oppression by women from more affluent countries.
This problematizes the view that the source of women's oppression is
men and shows how power relations not only exist between men
and women but also amongst women. This supports the view that
many of the gains that indigenous women have made have depended
on the exploitation of other women from poorer countries in the
international division of labour. It also shows the importance of state
processes in the facilitation of subordination within the employer/
employee relationship.
This is an important instance of how differential labour market
incorporation can be divisive for women. While women of the majority
improve their position it is at the expense of migrant women. More­
over, this pattern reproduces traditional family arrangements where
women remain responsible for the domestic sphere, even though they
work. The employment of maids facilitates changes in the female
participation of indigenous women whose reliance on the family (for
example their mother and other unpaid female kin) can no longer be
guaranteed. Women migrants also often bear the responsibility for
supporting their families back home and are an important familial
resource. They thus carry the 'burden of reproduction' for their families
and for its survival in the homeland or in the society of migration.
Changing class relations and the importance of material display also
mean maids are part of status symbolism in many societies such as
Greece, Italy, Spain and Cyprus.

Sex Related A1igration There has also been a growth of the entertain­
ment industry linked to sexual services such as in cabaret, dancing,
and massage parlours etc. The feminization of flows to southern
Europe is linked to changes in women's employment, with the re­
structuring of labour markets towards the service sector (see King 1997),
but the sex industry is also linked to continuing traditional mainte­
nance of the family for local women (see Vassiliadou 1999; Campani
1997). Prostitution, in fact, is hidden by some of these activities and
has become very lucrative, sometimes for co-ethnic employers or
28 Gender and Migration in Southern Europe

pimps. Traditionally such women tended to come from south-east

Asia and Africa, but today it is women from eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union who are increasingly used in this way; being
preferred as well as being more available with the collapse of eastern
Europe. The traffic in women in the sex industry is largely illegal and
undocum.ented. Where women are not illegal entrants they may be
documented as cabaret artistes and musicians as in the case of Cyprus
(Anthias forthcoming). Many of these women are promised jobs in
clubs and other forms of leisure but find themselves forced into
prostitution on arrival (see Psimmenos, this volume). If they are illegal
entrants any attempt to avoid prostitution could lead to deportation
(see Campani 1997). This shows how the illegality of women and the
fact that the abuse they face may be defined as stemming from the
private realm of relations with men, means that they cannot be pro­
tected by the state.
A related growth industry is that of mail order brides (Anderson
and Phizacklea 1997). In the past, women from south-east Asia were
favoured for their submissiveness and as good housewives. Eastern
European women are increasingly preferred, being promoted on grounds
that they will fit in and they are not physically distinguishable. Some
of these are educated women who may be escaping from countries
that may be in political or economic disarray, searching for a dream
in the West. The need to search for new homes involves recognizing
individual and subjective components of choices being made by some
of these women. If a mail-order bride wishes to leave the relationship
that secured her entry to the migration setting, she too will be liable
for deportation. Once women are shifted out of the private sphere, it
is immigration law that determines their status, not family law or the
laws against trafficking.

The Economy and Gendering 1\1igration in Cyprus

We can see some of these processes at work in the small country of
Cyprus. It was traditionally a country of migration (see Anthias 1992),
but the tables have now turned. In the 1990s Cyprus has become a
country that receives migrants from the Third World and from eastern
Europe. Like much of southern Europe it has experienced a feminiza­
tion of migration; with a strong distinction between the calls upon
men and women who migrate. More and more Cypriot women
have been incorporated into the labour force, along with growing
urbanization and the continuation of a gendered division of labour
within the Cypriot economy and within the home. Migrant women
 Metaphors of Home 29

are therefore important in terms of the changing configuration of

gender relations for Cypriot women. Cypriot women are more likely
to be in full time ernployment, unlike many married women workers in
western Europe (Crompton 1997), whereas care and services for families
are not provided through state agencies. This also relates to changing
relationships with elderly parents who can no longer be looked after
by their married daughters and who need a full time nurse at home.
The demand for child care is high given the increase in the proportion
of children under 5.5 years who are in child care: 60 per cent in 1996
compared to 27 per cent in 1987 according to published data (Dept
of Statistics). The expectations of women in the labour force 2 are for
greater parity, but there is continuing relative low pay for women
compared with men. There is a shortage of local women going into
nursing and care work but there are additional factors relating to the
cost of labour (cheapness) and the greater comfort felt by many women
in employing foreign maids compared with indigenous ones (also cited
in Anderson and Phizacklea 1997). The use of Filipina and Sri Lankan
maids and nannies can be understood in this context.
Women became an important source of labour after the 197 4 inva�
sion, particularly after 1978. The increasing participation of women
in higher education (the latter had to be abroad by necessity, until
the recent establishment of the University of Cyprus) provides oppor­
tunities for alternative lifestyles and concomitantly the development
of less traditional conceptions of gender relations. 3 However, there is
a disparity between the attitudes and practices/experiences of women
in Cyprus vis-a-vis an emancipatory and feminist consciousness
(Vassiliadou 1999). Although, as more and more Greek-Cypriot women
become active in the labour market (see House, Kyriakidou and
Stylianou 1989) some aspects of patriarchal control will be modified,
there has not been any great transformation of gender relations to
accompany economic participation. This issue has yet to be fully
explored through extensive empirical researcht but there is a continua­
tion of women's responsibility for household and child care, particu­
larly as the employment of maids has put on the back burner a
transformation of social roles within the family.
The latest figures show 27,500 legal migrants and calculate an
additional 10,000 illegal migrants resident in Cyprus in 1997 (Ministry
of Labour 1997). The employment of artists, maids and foreigners
working for offshore companies (calculated at 17,000) is regulated by
the Immigration Office, whilst other categories are regulated by the
Ministry of Labour. Over one-third of these are maids with about one-
30 Gender and Migration in Southern Europe

eighth as artists and musicians (all likely to be women); that is, women
constitute approximately 50 per cent of migrants who come into
Cyprus in this way. Major countries of migration to Cyprus are Greece,
Bulgaria, The Philippines, Sri Lanka and Syria. Of these the growth
over the last few years has been primarily maids from the Philippines
and Sri Lanka.-1 There has been an increasing need for foreign workers
over the last six years or so and this has extended to a need for
domestic workers, governesses, gardeners, barmen and workers in
offshore companies, which already employ a significant number of
foreign personnel. 5
Following the pattern found in the rest of southern Europe, women
generally come in as maids for middle class professional families, or
as artists and musicians, a euphemism for the sex industry, which in
Cyprus caters largely for the indigenous population although it is also
used by tourists. Sex-related migration has been very profitable and
an integral part of tourism in many countries in southern Europe as
noted earlier in this chapter. Sex workers come particularly from south­
east Asia, Thailand, eastern Europe and Russia. They come in as cabaret
dancers but may be recruited as prostitutes. Because their activity is
illegal they are heavily dependent on their employers. They are only
allowed to come in for six months and then they must be away for
six months before they are allowed to return (verbal communication,
Ministry of Labour, June 1997). In the case of domestic workers, they
come in on short-term contracts. Their employer has to apply for an
employer permit for up to three years with the possibility of renewal
for another year. At the end of the period, women may send a female
relative in their place or change employer. The likelihood is that a
large number of women are also operating illegally. The issue of mail­
order brides from south-east Asia and eastern Europe has not arisen
in Cyprus, although there is some evidence that domestic maids who
are brought in by single men may be used as mistresses and there
have been some publicized cases of marriages taking place with Filipina
women.
There is little regulation of the terms of employment of many of
these women. Regarding domestic maids who come largely from the
Philippines and Sri Lanka, for example, there is some evidence of super­
exploitation (see Anthias, forthcoming). They are also a status symbol:
in one middle class neighbourhood I visited in Nicosia out of 26
families living in a new prestigious development, 24 had a foreign
maid. This is not only confined to women who work, but women
who prefer leisure to doing their own child care and domestic work.
 Metaphors of Home 31

In addition, more and more women are taking maids as part of a

materialist status symbol, even within the lower middle classes. Filipinas
are regarded as top�class maids for status, being generally seen as
cleaner, more deferential and more sensitive to privacy. Many are
educated women, some of whom have degrees and were teachers or
accountants in their own country. The issue of racialization is relevant
here as they are regarded as less of an 'othee than Sri Lankans, largely
because they are Christian. Many of these women not only service
the family that employs them but that of the employer 1s elderly
parents, so they may be given tasks of cleaning parental homes and
looking after sick relatives, as well as looking after the children of
brothers and sisters. Bartering in maids is not unknown and a particu­
larly pleasing maid may be passed on to other relatives or friends.
The sisters and mothers of maids may also be brought in either
concurrently or sequentially and there are cases where a mother may
replace her daughter within a particular family. Most maids are not
treated as part of the family and eat separately, often sharing a bedroom
with the children, and they are not allowed boyfriends. They may be
used for the dirtiest work and have little protection.
Like maids, particularly Filipinas, in other countries, remittances
home form an important part of the transnational financial aspects
of female migration. Women also save to buy consumer goods (particu­
larly good electrical equipment) and fashionable clothes and jewellery
to send back home. Networking gives maids strong systems of support
(Campani 1997). A usual practice is renting a flat where they meet
and eat on their days off and they may be seen in the town squares
on Sunday morning congregating and picnicking together.
The different treatment of different groups of women from different
origins suggests that economic incorporation cannot fully account
for some of the ways in which migrant women have been received by
the countries to which they migrate. Issues of nation and ethnicity
are also important factors that structure women1s lives and I shall now
turn to these issues.

Migrant Won1en and the Ethnic Boundary

There is much evidence that women are central transmitters of ethnic
culture: they reproduce the culture and tradition of the group and its
religious and familial structures and ideologies. They reproduce the
group biologically and are used as symbols of the nation or ethnic
group. They are important as 1 mothers1 of patriots and represent the
nation (see Anthias and Yuval Davis 1989 for an analysis). For example
32 Gender and Migration in Southern Europe

in both Bosnia and in Cyprus, the rape of women involved the project
of forcing them to bear the children of the enemy and being violated
as mothers of the national enemy.
Migration can be seen in the context of the reproduction of national
identity and the boundaries of belonging, both for the receiving
countries (where it may lead to ethnic exclusion and racism) and the
sending countries (where it may lead to a concern with retaining the
ethnic bonds of migrants with their countries of origin). These pro­
cesses are not given or static; they change around specific economic
and political conditions. Gender processes may be regarded as impor­
tant in understanding how nationhood and belongingness are retained
and reconstituted, particularly through the role of women as ethnic
actors (see Walby 1996; Anthias and Yuval Davis 1989; Yuval Davis
1997). However, it could be argued, that women function as objects
of discursive practices and social relations whereas men are its active
agents. Wetherall and Potter ( 1992) argue that men are given the
authentic voice to represent their communities (see also Anthias and
Yuval Davis 1992).
It is not surprising that women as biological reproducers of the
nation play a central role given the importance that ideas of 'blood'
and 'common origin' have for constructing ethnic and national collect­
ivities. The importance of this for the formation of nations, however,
varies, from societies like Germany, which are based on ideas of
essential 'volknation' or true Germanness decided by blood and family,
to ideas of common culture (found in France; see Lloyd 1998) and
civic virtues that best characterize the Swiss and Belgian context
where several ethnic groups constitute a nation, as well as Italy (see
Trantafyllidou 1997). Societies like the US, Canada, South Africa and
Australia are largely what may be termed White settler societies (see
Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis 1995) and contain several ethnicities; nation­
hood is constructed out of the acceptance of the political reality of
the nation and identification with its future. This could be seen in
terms of the importance of 'collective destiny' rather than origin and
common parameters regarding cultural, political and legal rules. But
this may exclude those who are regarded as not being able to share in
this: Aboriginals in Australia are a case in point.
In all societies, women of different groups are encouraged to repro­
duce the nation differentially and some are encouraged to 'grow and
flourish' whereas others are seen as undesirable. For example, in many
Western societies ethnic minority women's fertility may be seen as a
threat to the nation, involving demographic and nationalist policing
 Metaphors of Home 33

and ideologies (Anthias and Yuval Davis 1989) and the use of depo­
provera and sterilization techniques against some (Anthias and Yuval
Davis 1992). Indigenous mothers who give birth to many children
(termed polytechna mothers in Cyprus) may be rewarded whereas
migrants and their descendants in this situation may be subjected to
policies and discourses of inferiorization. Although women are members
of collectivities they are subjected to different rules and experience them
differently.
As well as functioning as biological reproducers, with state policies
being geared to different women in these terms, women also reproduce
the nation culturally. Women may be seen as targets and agents of
national acculturation. The education of women becomes a key dimen­
sion in producing loyal citizens and in some cases there have been
highly publicized attempts to assimilate women into the dominant
culture, such as in France through the notorious scarf affair (Silverman
1992). As Anastasia Karakasidou (1996) points out, the education of
women in the Greek language and tradition was central after the
incorporation in 1913 of Thrace into Greece, in order to make women
suitable 1nothers. She quotes as an example a 1924 report to the
Governor General of Macedonia, the Superintendent of the Florina
Educational district, who maintained that it 1 was imperative to educate
women and very young children who spoke no Greek'. He warned
that children would come to harm if they lived in a 'foreign speaking'
home environment (1996: 104). Deniz Kandiyioti (1989), on the other
hand, shows how the modernization project of Turkey, at both political
and cultural levels, used the emancipation of women as a strategic
tool. She also argues that because the domestic sphere represents the
continuation of tradition, it becomes most subject to state discourses
under situations of political change (Kandiyoti 1991).
Women are also symbolic of the nation, but modesty and mother­
hood are key elements of this as in the French Patria and the symbol
of Cyprus as a martyred mother mourning for her loss (Anthias 1989).
In Nicaragua, the revolution was symbolized by a woman carrying a
baby in one hand and a gun in the other (Charles and Hintjens 1998:
4). Those women who are regarded outside the national collectivity,
unable to reproduce or symbolize it, may face particular forms of
racism and exclusion. Racism against women intersects with sexism
to produce particular forms of exclusion against different ethnic and
class groups. Filipina maids may experience it differently from women
involved in the 'porn' trade and differently from women 'brain drain'
migrants from eastern Europe.
34 Gender and Migration in Southern Europe

Gender and the Ethnic Boundary in Cyprus

In Cyprus, as in other societies, women may be seen as the direct
transmitters of the 'cultural stuff' of ethnicity because of their domi­
nant day-to-day role in domestic and familial life and in child rearing.
Amongst other cultural values, women transmit the values of 'good'
Greek-Cypriots or 'patriots': those of sexuality, the 'work-ethic' and
nationalist consciousness. 6 The mother-nation twin is important here
as is the notion of 'mother' of 'fighting men 1 (see Anthias and Yuval
Davis 1989).
Women may be seen as definers of the ethnic boundary. This works
in terms of the legal definition of citizenship. Only particular women
can reproduce citizens within the 'national boundary' (see WING 1985;
Anthias and Yuval Davis 1989; Anthias 1989); in Cyprus those who
are married to men of Cypriot origin. However another aspect of
ethnic boundary definition is entailed in conceptions about desirable
sexual or gender behaviour. This works in relation to processes of
reproduction of the group. For women, one of the ways of being a
good 'ethnic' subject entails behaving in ethnically appropriate ways
by conforming to the principle of sexual purity. For men it entails
maintaining control over women. In the case of Cypriot migrants in
Britain, for example, women have been the bearers, keepers and
symbolic signifiers of ethnic identity and constitute one of the most
important boundary markers between English and Cypriot ethnicity
(Anthias 1992).
In many Western societies, migrants are feared for importing foreign
cultural and moral elements, particularly if they are Muslims or Asians.
This is the case in Cyprus, with many reports in the press that Cypriot
culture is in danger of being undermined by undesirable foreign
influences. Maids are employed mainly for their physical work in cook­
ing, cleaning and menial child care, but public discourses (Trimikliniotis
1999) show how the fear of importing foreign culture is directed at
these women. There are different discourses around this, however,
and tourism is also seen as a threat (see Ayres 1999). In Cyprus, eastern
European women, on the other hand, are treated as morally loose or
likely to be involved in drugs or the porn trade. In addition, when
national feeling is strong such as during the recent events in the buffer
zone between Greek and Turkish Cyprus, more obvious hostility is
shown to foreign workers. The Cypriot press has made reference to
foreign workers with terms such as 'we are swamped' (for example
Agan 18 September 1996 and Philelleffheros l September 1996) and
talking about a 'flood of foreign workers'. The failure of people in
 Metaphors of Home 35

Cyprus to accept the co-existence of foreign workers on equal terms

has been noted in a number of public events and has prompted the
recent formation of an anti-racist group in Cyprus. The concern with
the national heritage found in public discourse is intimately linked
to the dominance of the national problem in public life for a large
part of the immediate Cyprus past.
Therefore new migration is in tension with the present phase of
the national problem with its imperatives with regard to the use of
ideas of 'national identity' in pursuing broader human rights with
reference to a solution to the Cyprus problem. In other words, econ­
omic interests legitimize foreign workers whereas nationalist discourse
sees them as undesirable. This also relates to how globalization and
Europeanization figure in Cypriot political discourse, with Cypriots
increasingly seeing themselves as European with their initiation into
the European Union and negotiations about entry. This requires the
reformulation of Cyprus as containing multiple ethnicities and new
forms of European citizenship (see Kostakopoulou 1999); as such what
is posed in Cyprus is the challenge of an increasingly ethnically and
culturally diverse society, over and above the ethnic divisions between
Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots.
However, to locate women at the intersection between economic
and ethnic processes is not enough and it is important to consider
them as active agents and in terms of their links to social networks,
households and families. In the next part of the chapter, I will look at
some of the issues that need to be added to the concerns I have
outlined above with regard to economic and ethnic processes, drawing
on a range of literature.

Women as Social Agents

Some attempts to gender migration have tended to overemphasize
the role of structures and constraints and at times have produced an
impression that women are victims of circumstances. Agency is con­
ducted in given structural and institutional contexts, but as Anderson
and Phizacklea (1997) point out, the narratives of women migrants,
whilst referring to the enforced response to economic hardship, also
, talk about migration as an escape route from patriarchal structures as
well as a motivation towards economic improvement for their families.
Therefore, women are not just passive receivers of social processes.
Women's agency can be explored in terms of household strategies
and the formation of social networks. Although many women suffer
from social isolation (see Chell and Escriva in this volume), friendship
 36 Gender and Migration in Southern Europe

I g�oups and other informal networks serve to provide important social

and other support. There is no doubt that national and local contexts
provide particular conditions for the enablement of migrant women's
agency. The national and local governments within each country will
determine their ability to find a fertile environment for the pursuit of
their aspirations in the new migration setting, as Orsini Jones and
Francesca Gattulo argue in this volume.
Nor are the links between migration and gender relations always
negative. Many approaches to women and migration examine the
extent to which migration may serve to counter patriarchal forms. of
social control (see the volume by Buijs 1993). This relates both to
women's social power and to the relationships between men and
women; what may be regarded as both the public and private social
realms. Literature on these issues has not produced simple answers to
the effects that transnationalism and migration have on women.
Thomas Faist (1998) writing about Turkish migrants in Germany says:
while communal reciprocity undoubtedly furthered the economic success
of Alihan residents, it also cemented gender relations controlled by
patriarchs of extended families ... relatively immobile women, most of
whom stayed behind in Turkey, shouldered the transnational life style
of Alihan men. [p. 228]
This example is one where men have been the main actors in the
transnational sphere. Howev.er, with women migrating, there may be
changes in the distribution of power in the family: for example, there
is some evidence that the new economic and social responsibilities of
Filipina women serves to give them a more powerful role in their
families (Campani 1997; Escriva and Ribas in this volume). Bhachu
( 1985) refers to the transformative powers of migration on Asian
women. In the case of Filipina and East European women, migration
involves women running away from their allotted place. For example,
Escriva in this volume discusses the avoidance of Somalian women of
men from their own group as does Walker ( 1990) when discussing
South African women. Analysis of migration also needs to take into
account women 1s hopes in terms of the concerns quoted in BuiWs
(1993) volume: the remaking of homes, the effects of individual
circumstances, the growth of independence, the pleasure as well as
the pain in the crossing of boundaries. The multi-faceted and complex
nature of women's position does not permit us to see migration in
simple terms as either leading always to a loss, or always to a gain, in
social status. The migration experience impacts differently on different
groups of migrant women, in terms of the role of state and labour
 Metaphors of Home 37

market practices and the way women have responded to the challenges
they face (Escriva, this volume). Nevertheless, migration may give
women more autonomy and control over economic resources than
in their country of origin.
Issues of 'difference' and diversity are now central dimensions for
all feminist research as well as research on ethnicity and racism. The
differences between Filipinas, who are predominantly Catholic, and
Somalian, Sri Lankan and Albanian women who are Muslims, shown
by various chapters in this volume, indicate the importance of religious
identity in relation to processes of 1 othering'. The former not only
tend to have a higher income than the latter (a finding also reported
in Anderson and Phizacklea 1997), but they are regarded as more
desirable domestic workers. However, irrespective of differences, most
women suffer by being divided from their families and being com­
pelled to live in an isolated nuclear family unit imposed by Western
norms. Moreover, they shoulder the responsibility for supporting their
families back home, a common feature of the burden placed on migrant
women.
Independent wage labour has a strong impact on the opening up
of choices for women although in practice socially learnt constraints
may limit the exercise of these choices (Anthias 1992). However, even
with changes in economic power, there may be pressure on women
to maintain customs of the group, for example the pressure or desire
to marry husbands or brides from the homeland is quoted as an
example of the retention of cultural traditions in Buijs (1993). Some
of the forms of agency may therefore be contradictory. Migration
sometimes indicates a willingness to cross class boundaries in a down­
ward direction. This is.the case for some Russian or Bulgarian women
with university degrees working in Greece and Cyprus as cabaret
artist_es or as domestic cleaners and waitresses (Anthias, forthcoming).
Escriva shows in this volume how many domestic maids have experi­
enced downward social mobility with migration, as many are highly
educated and have university diplomas. Despite this, most of the women
she researched saw the migration experience as positive because of
improved welfare provision and educational opportunities for them­
selves and their children.
As Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson say, talking about Eritrean
women in Canada (1999: 238):
the redefinition of gender roles among the diaspora population most
certainly were .shaped by practical constraints that Jed to the Joss of
economic control over the household by some men, more financial
38 Gender and Migration in Southern Europe

independence for some women, legal prohibitions against formerly

accepted practices, the absence of other family members and alternative
media images
It has also been argued that Iranian migrant and refugee women
have greater possibilities to find jobs and this 'provides women with
the feeling of self' (Ahmadi 199 7: 3). Hollands, writing about refugees
in the Netherlands (1996: 120), suggests: 'Refugee men tend to refer
to the past in which they were something, whereas women refer to
the present and future where they might become something.'
Moreover, Bhattacharjee ( 1997) has seen the sites of family, ethnicity
and nation as sites of gendered struggle where women challenge the
status quo. This might imply that such challenges are most effective
in the migration setting when the institutional apparatus for specific
patriarchal controls via these forms is absent. Orsini Jones and Gattullo,
for example, in this book, also highlight the potential of inter-ethnic
communication, in the context of enabling local structures. Indra
(1999) also suggests the potential for feminist transnational alliances.
In other words, there are possibilities for escaping oppressive social
codes and a basis for solidarity with other women. Such processes,
however, can go hand in hand with the persistence 1 albeit in a trans­
formed way, of gendered social relations that serve to subordinate
women, as well as racialized social relations. Assumptions that the
migration of women leads to more egalitarianism, as a general principle,
given the discussion above and the predominance of domestic work
and sex related activities in migrant women's lives, may therefore be
questioned.

Concluding Remarks: Citizenship Issues

Access to citizenship is a crucial issue relating to the experience of
southern European minorities, including women who are excluded
on different terms from full citizenship, and the provision of legal
and social rights could resolve some of the difficulties such women
face. Debates on citizenship in relation to minority or racialized groups
entail looking at civil, political and social rights. Citizenship can be
defined as sets of rights and responsibilities but these must also
be seen in a less narrow way than political rights and include social
rights. The classic work of T.H. Marshall (1950) has been the starting
point of many feminist critiques and developments of the notion of
citizenship (see Lister 1997). It has been argued that Marshaffs idea
of citizenship as entailing full membership of the community assumes
 Metaphors of Home 39

a homogeneous community: how is the latter to be defined? Who

constitutes the membership and who defines the boundaries? Who
are its representatives? Who is able to speak within it (Anthias and
Yuval Davis 1992, Anthias 1997, Feminist Review 1997)? Moreover,
the notion of citizenship in terms of individual rights (still very far
off for migrant groups in southern Europe anyway) raises problems
for the attainment of rights for groups who experience ethnic, race or
gender discrimination.
Perhaps the most central aspect for migrants in the new migrations
(given the large numbers of undocumented) is the right to enter, or,
once having entered, the right to stay. The racialized nature of border
restrictions is indicated by the differential rules relating to different
categories of individuals on the basis of European membership (the
freedom of movement within the European Union) and ethnocentric
rules found in many countries. Cypriots and Greeks born abroad, for
example, are permitted entry to Cyprus as they are treated as potential
members of the nation state. Black nationals in Britain are restricted,
on the other hand, through changing patriality rules or the informal
policing of borders.
The notion of citizenship, recently much debated (Turner 1990;
Feminist Review l 997, Lister 1997; Roche and van Berkel 1997), there­
fore needs to pay attention to inclusions and exclusions of entry, as
well as settlement. Furthermore, inclusive models of citizenship require
a split between notions of nationality (and therefore ethnic and
national belonging) and ideas about relations to the state or polity
and to the society more generally. Thus issues are raised about civic
entitlements, rights and obligations, which may be divorced from
nationality and notions of national belongingness and identification.
The political dimensions of participation, the social dimensions of
social entitlement and the national identities and sentiments attached
to these therefore need to be disassociated.
The European project of consolidation is dedicated to containing
migrant populations as well as reducing the number of people that
might eventually have to be recognized as having legal rights to some
form of citizenship. Undocumented workers, however, pose no such
problems and can be confined to the least desirable and lowest paid
jobs within the large unregulated sector of many southern European
countries. Moreover, instead of being encouraged to develop policies
of social inclusion for new migrants, southern European countries are
being urged to follow the increasingly powerful European Union (EU),
which wants them to secure and control the southern frontiers of
40 Gender and Migration in Southern Europe

Europe. This goes hand in hand with specific forms of ethnocentrism

and xenophobia in each country (see Anthias and Lazaridis 1999).
Allied to economic interests these produce a situation whereby large
numbers of people are subjected to increasingly unacceptable condi­
tions of human existence. The legalization of these workers has begun
in some countries but is patchy and uneven, as other chapters in this
volume show.
Moreover, the desire on the part of other states to join the EU and
the negotiations around entry, for example in the case of Cyprus, is
pulling them in two opposite and contradictory directions. On the
one hand, there is the impetus toward the recognition of intercultur­
ality with the breaking of national borders and the potential impact
of this (for Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot rapprochement in
Cyprus for example); the development of multiculturalism is one side
of this. On the other side 1 is the need to develop policies in harmony
with the powerful countries of the EU that involve the policing of
the borders of Europe against undesirable 'others'. Many of those
already in these countries are illegal 'undesirables' and yet are needed
by the economy. Turning a blind eye to these may no longer be
possible and threats of deportation and state violence are issues that
may very well come to the fore increasingly. However, even if issues
of illegality are resolved, there still remain broader issues of citizenship
that will need addressing, issues that still remain unresolved within
Europe as a whole.
This chapter has tried to show that migration needs to be located
in terms of the globalization of labour, as well as the continuing bonds
with ethnic and national territories and identities, on the one hand
and gender relations on the other. Any discussion of migration and
it's relationship to the economy and to ethnicity requires looking at
the issue of gender and ethnic difference; it must also attend to women
as active agents within these processes rather than treating them as
passive victims. This is quite an agenda to gender!

Notes
1. Although in much Marxist work the family is treated as a precondition
or a condition of existence of the capitalist mode of production (see the critique
made by Beechey 1979, for example)
 Metaphors of Home 41

2. The Census of Population of 1960 showed that 41 per cent of women

aged 15 and over were participating in economic activity, primarily in agri­
culture. This compares with 29 per cent in 1976, 41 per cent in 1981, 47 per
cent in 1987 and 43 per cent in 1992 (compared with around 75 per cent
since 1981 for men) (Dept of Statistics and Research). There has been an increase
in the proportion of women in the professional, technical and related cate­
gories, which are relatively well paid. There has also been an increase in the
proportion of women who are working proprietors from 12 per cent in 1976
to 21 per cent in 1995 (Dept of Statistics and Research). The dual labour market
is indicated by the fact women constitute 99 per cent of typists and maids
and 80 per cent of computer operators, building caretakers, spinners/weavers,
tobacco preparers, dressmakers and machinists. Out of 90 groups of two digit
ISCO occupational groups (that is excluding agricultural occupations) about
84 per cent of women were concentrated in only 19 such groups (House 1986),
which are low paid jobs. The average level for women's wages in 1989 was 54
per cent below that of men compared to 83 per cent in 1975.
3. In 1960 only 1 per cent of women and 2 per cent of men achieved tertiary
level education with 11 per cent of women and 21 per cent of men achieving
secondary education. In 1987, 12 per cent of women and 16 per cent of men
had reached this level and in 1992 the figure was 16 per cent of women and
19 per cent of men (with 34 per cent of women and 42 per cent of men at
secondary level) (Dept of Statistics and Research).
4. The information for 1996, issued by the Ministry of Labour, gives the
following figures for countries of origin: after Greece with 3,500, are Sri Lanka
(3,500), Philippines (3,300), Bulgaria (2,500), Rumania (1,900), Syria (1,800)
UK (1,300), Serbia (1,200), Egypt (1,000), Lebanon (900), Georgia (500), India
( 460) with a category of 1,800 others over and above from the following
countries: Ukraine, Germany, Sweden, Jordan Poland, Finland, France, China,
Australia, Canada, Holland, Austria, Denmark, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Norway.
The biggest increase between 1993 and 1996 is the number of maids from
the Philippines and Sri Lanka.
5. Decision No 33.210 of the 15 March 1990 of the Ministry of Council of
Ministers, and the agreement that was made between various social agents of
December 1991, stipulates the criteria that have to be met in order that the
employer can be granted a licence to employ foreigners (for further details,
see Anthias, forthcoming, Trimikliniotis 1999).
6. For an analysis of this issue in detail regarding women and the nation in
Cyprus see Anthias 1989.
42 Gender and Migration in Southern Europe

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