Incongruence between Employment Status and Employment Preference of Married Women in Cross-border Marriages

• In Event: 242 - Section on International Migration Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 20. Migration and Development

Abstract

A considerable number of empirical evidence revealed women in cross-border families have lower labour force participation rates (Choi, Cheung, & Cheung, 2012; Morrison & Lichter, 1988; DaVanzo, 1976; Duncan & Perrucci, 1976; Long, 1974), underscoring the impacts of the migration context and immigrant status on marriage migrants’ employment status. Nevertheless, these figures might have obscured the true picture of marriage migrants’ employment, as the majority of them have not considered the involuntary non-employment when calculating employment and unemployment rates. Without inquiring into the causes of the potential incongruence between employment status (behavioral outcomes) and employment preference (intentions to work), one may run the risks of, first, assuming those non-employed are not working voluntarily; second, neglecting potential workers who choose not to work out of involuntary reasons; and third, leading to inaccurate estimates of the unemployment rates. To fill these gaps, this paper uses data from ethnography including participation observation and 41 in-depth interviews with marriage migrants and their husbands in Mainland-Hong Kong cross-border marriages to examine whether marriage migrants’ employment status is in congruence with their employment preference. Findings revealed that migration has exacerbated features of the traditional system of marriage and family, rendering marriage migrants’ potential agency to incorporate breadwinning into motherhood and daughterhood not realized. The approach adopted in this paper adds insights into theories of gender, migration and work by explicating how immigration intersects with gender to intervene marriage migrants’ employment and how such incongruence become a significant source of marital conflicts.

Author

• Tuen Yi Chiu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong