Gender in Skilled Migration: Beyond Western Perspectives

Research on international skilled migration has proliferated but the underlying belief of the “skilled” worker as a white-male individual has largely stuck. The lack of attention to female skilled migrants was partly due to the definition of skills as technology/educational certificate-centered professions predominantly occupied by men. Another reason was the trailing wives’ barriers to or withdrawal from the labour market given caregiving responsibilities. Skilled migration is also often associated with corporate expatriation, a phenomenon often known for Western firms that tapped into new markets and where the assigned expatriates were predominantly (white Western) men. In this joint session, we seek contributions of papers reflecting on international skilled labour migration and gender around the globe, specifically in non-Western contexts. We invite empirical and conceptual contributions that focus on the following questions: How has scholarship on gender in skilled migration beyond the West advanced – or challenged – the theoretical perspectives that originated in Western research? How does the intersectionality of gender, class, race, and skills play out in international migration? What can postcolonial approaches contribute to the field? How have family migration dynamics and power balances between breadwinner and trailing spouse changed amidst increased global migration and a diversification of emigration and immigration countries? The panel is particularly interested in papers on developed or rapidly developing countries or global cities as destinations, by which it seeks to discuss new approaches to gender in skilled migration from a non-Western/non-Eurocentric perspective.