Sub-Saharan African women in South Australia: work, money and changing gender roles.

Abstract

This study provides a gendered perspective on the social and economic consequences of Sub-Saharan African migration to Australia. This mixed methods study draws on a Survey as well as in-depth interviews and participant observation of the Sub-Saharan African women in South Australia, as well as analyses of secondary data from the Department of Immigration Movements and Settlement Database and the Australian Census of Population and Housing 2006. It examines three interconnected thematic areas in the migrant women’s lives. First, African women’s labour force patterns based on visa of entry to Australia, show that African migrant skilled women in Australia are able to compete favourably in the labour market and are able to get jobs commensurate to their skills. However the study shows women who enter Australia on humanitarian visas, many of whom have very low human capital endowments, find themselves completely shut out of the Australian workforce. The second theme provides a gendered perspective on remittance sending practices of Sub-Saharan African women and how these affect settlement outcomes. The study shows that remittance sending does have an impact on settlement of humanitarian migrants with implications for an individual migrants’ poverty and raises interesting arguments for host countries, especially in the area of retirement planning of migrants. The third thematic area examines gender role changes of Sub-Saharan African migrant women as a result of their migration to Australia. It takes into consideration the increasing “Feminisation of Migration” as many Sub-Saharan African women are the principal applicants leading their family’s migration, and in many cases were the primary breadwinners when their partners were unable to find work. The study also examines division of labour within the household, especially in regards to domestic work as well as parenting. The study concludes with implications for migration theory and policy. The study urges that there is need to integrate what is known about migration settlement from different migration theories and perspectives. It draws from a conceptual framework that examines the settlement of Sub-Saharan migrants from a systems structure that looks at the Macro, Meso and Micro factors, as well as transnational factors that affect the settlement of Sub-Saharan Africans in Australia. It urges the importance of recognising skilled women migrants in the discourse on women and work since skilled migration flows of women have largely been ignored in theorising about women in migration. There are important policy implications for developed countries such as Australia. Those unskilled find themselves excluded from the modern industrialised labour market. The questions raised in the section on remittances have important implications for developed countries in regards to their understanding of migrant poverty and policy issues such as migrant retirement planning. While the section on gender roles and gender relations in migration, contributes to gender and migration theory by calling for a change in focus in how gender roles are examined. The study explains that most of what is understood about gender roles has been influenced by western feminist ideology, and urges an understanding of migrant gender roles from a structural perspective taking into account modern migration flows such as the ‘feminisation of migration’. As women become more likely to lead migration flows from developing to developed countries, women are no longer ‘tied migrants’ but rather principal breadwinners for their families and this has enormous implications for theories on gender roles and the wider study of gender and migration.