Migrant Women Transforming Citizenship develops essential insights concerning the notion of transnational citizenship by means of the life stories of skilled and educated migrant women from Turkey in Germany and Britain. It interweaves and develops theories of citizenship, identity and culture with the lived experiences of an immigrant group that has so far received insufficient attention. By focusing on the British and German contexts, it introduces a much needed European and comparative perspective, whilst exploring the ways in which diverging concepts and policies of citizenship allow for a differentiated examination of ethnicity, gender, multiculturalism and citizenship in Europe. Presenting a significant and welcome contribution to our understanding of the complexities of multiculturalism it challenges Orientalist images of women as backward and oppressed. Through engagement with the changing realities of education, work, intimacy, family and social activism, this volume provides a situated account of how the concepts of citizenship, transnationality and culture play out in actual social relations. With its rich empirical material the book explores how migrant women create new practices and meanings of belonging across boundaries. Critiquing dominant multiculturalist and anti-multiculturalist accounts, this book suggests how citizenship debates can be reframed to be inclusive of migrant women as actors. As such it will appeal to those working across a range of social sciences, including sociology and the sociology of work, race and ethnicity; citizenship, cultural and gender studies, as well as anthropology and social and public policy.

Given the recent and rapid changes to migration patterns and citizenship processes, this volume provides a timely, compelling, empirical and theoretical study of the gendered implications of such developments. More specifically, it draws out the multiple connections between migration and citizenship concerns and practices for women. The collection features original research that examines women's diverse im/migrant and refugee experiences and exposes how gender ideologies and practices organize migrant citizenship, in its various dimensions, at the local, national and transnational levels. The volume contributes to theoretical debates on gender, migration and citizenship and provides new insights into their interrelation. It includes rich case studies that range from the Philippines and Somalia to the Caribbean and from Australasia to Canada and Britain. Designed to have a multidisciplinary appeal, it is suitable for courses on migration, diversity, gender, race, ethnicity, law and public policy, comparative politics and international relations.

How do racialized migrant mothers contest hegemonic racialized formations of citizenship? Bringing together leading scholars from international and multi-disciplinary perspectives, this book shows how migrant mothers realise and problematise their role in bringing up future citizens in modern societies, increasingly characterised by racial, ethnic, religious, cultural and social diversity. The book stimulates critical thinking on how migrant mothers creatively intervene into citizenship by reworking its racialized meanings and creating new, racially plural practices and challenging boundaries. The contributions explore the processes that shape migrant mothers’ cultural and caring work in enabling their children to occupy a place as future citizens despite and against their racialized subordination. The book contributes to disciplinary fields of politics, sociology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, participatory arts practice and theory, geography, queer and gender studies, looking at the thematic areas of participatory arts, family forms, social activism, and education in the US, Canada, the UK, France, Portugal. These cross-cultural and disciplinary perspectives contribute to the exciting emergence of a distinctive field of research engaging with pressing intellectual and social issues of how ideas and practices of citizenship develop in the face of increasing spatial mobility and across boundaries of generation and ethnicity, in the process requiring new, creative interventions into how we think about and do citizenship. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Negotiating Citizenship explores the growing inequalities associated with nation-based citizenship from the perspective of migrant women workers who have made their way from impoverished Third World countries to work in Canada in the caregiving industries of domestic service and nursing. The study demonstrates the impact of the global political economy, public and private gatekeeping mechanisms, and racialized and gendered stereotypes on the contested relationship between citizen-employers and non-citizen female migrant workers in Canada.

Gender roles, relations, and ideologies are major aspects of migration. This timely book argues that understanding gender relations is vital to a full and more nuanced explanation of both the causes and the consequences of migration, in the past and at present. Through an exploration of gendered labor markets, laws and policies, and the transnational model of migration, Caroline Brettell tackles a variety of issues such as how gender shapes the roles that men and women play in the construction of immigrant family and community life, debates concerning transnational motherhood, and how gender structures the immigrant experience for men and women more broadly. This book will appeal to students and scholars of immigration, race and ethnicity, and gender studies and offers a definitive guide to the key conceptual issues surrounding gender and migration.

In an increasingly globalized world of collapsing economic borders and extending formal political and legal equality rights, active citizenship has the potential to expand as well as deepen. At the same time, with the rise of neo-liberalism, welfare state retrenchment, decline of state employment, re-privatization and the rising gap between rich and poor, the economic, social and political citizenship rights of certain categories of people are increasingly curtailed. This book examines the complexity of citizenship in historical and contemporary contexts. It draws on empirical research from a range of countries, contexts and approaches in addressing women and citizenship in a global/local world and covers a selection of diverse issues, both present and past, to include immigration, ethnicity, class, nationality, political and economic participation, institutions and the private and public spheres. This rich collection informs our understanding of the pitfalls and possibilities for women in the persistence and changes within the contours of citizenship.