ABSTRACT
Gender is an elusive topic in migration research - at once too general and too narrow for discussion in the way possible in a disciplinary focus such as political science, sociology or anthropology. This chapter nonetheless explores the research on gender as an issue in international migration to North America and Europe, and internal migration within historical Europe, focusing on studies by historians and sociologists. As an historian of European migration with a sociological perspective, I begin with a familiarity of Western European history and migration since 1650 (Moch, 2003). Here I investigate writing on gender and migration for two thirty-five year periods: the 'age of migration' (ca. 18801914, when migration to the U.S. and within Europe reached a peak) and that for the recent (since 1965 policy changes in the U.S. and European developments since the 1960s that encouraged immigration). In assessing the ways that this research has defined and struggled with the issue of gender, I will survey the perspectives and constructions utilized, explore omissions from the research agenda, and reflect on the ways that they may be redressed with future work.
