Christina Ho

Migration and Gender Identity: Chinese Women's Experiences of Work, Family and Identity in Australia Christina Ho

Throughout the Western world, governments increasingly view migration through the lens of economic efficiency, arguing that skilled professionals are the 'best' or most successful migrants. This book critically analyses this assumption. It focuses on one group of skilled migrants in Australia, Chinese women, showing that they do not always experience the prevailing 'success story'. After migrating, Chinese women's employment falls while their domestic workloads rise. This often changes their sense of gender identity, as they shift from 'career women' to traditional 'female' roles as wives and mothers. Thus this book shows that migration is highly gendered. Of women in the workforce, those from China fare much worse than those from Hong Kong, despite similar levels of qualifications, showing that migrants' birthplace can dramatically affect how their qualifications are valued. Ultimately, this book argues that governments' economistic approach to migration fails to understand the complexities of migrants' experiences as social beings, whose cultural and gender identities can make all the difference to their settlement in a new country.