Women and Migration, Latin America and the Caribbean: A Selective Annotated Bibliography

Garcia Castro, Mary, Jean Gearing & Margaret Gill, Women and migration, Latin America and the Caribbean: a selective annotated bibliography, Gainesville: Center for Latin American Studies, University of Florida, February, 1984.

From the Introduction (II. The Importance of Gender in Migration Studies):

Most of the Studies in this bibliography date from 1978 or later. Many of them can be criticized for their single-minded preoccupation with removing female migrants from invisibility. Their analysis is often limited to descriptions of female migrants’ characteristics and experiences, focusing on women’s living and working conditions, cultural and psychological profiles, and individual effects of participation in migration. These studies sometimes recall the strident feminist tones of the mid-1970s, as they stress the oppression and exploitation of women and emphasize women’s position as passive victims of the patriarchal social order. Of the approximately 220 studies on women and migration reviewed for this bibliography, less than half can be considered as having a feminist perspective. A feminist perspective must go further than the analysis of sex to consider the issues of gender. Sex is a demographic category, while gender, a more inclusive term, is a socioeconomic political category.