ABSTRACT
In the early 1980s Mirjana Morokvasic drew attention to the ways in which migration theory to that date had been largely gender blind, (Morokvasic, 1983). Writing nearly 20 years later four commentators concluded that: ‘over the last fi fteen years feminists have highlighted the heterogeneity of women’s position within the migration stream, their presence in the labour market, their contribution to welfare and their increasing political activities. Yet, the migration of women continues to receive little attention in mainstream literature and migration theorists have not adequately taken on board the signifi cance of gender in understanding migration to-day’ (Kofman et al., 2000, p. 3). It is not the aim of this chapter to give a detailed account of contemporary migration fl ows in a gendered way, but initially to provide a critique of some of the assumptions in migration theory over time and in the second section to test some of the propositions that emerge from this by examining the fi ndings of a study carried out by Anderson and Phizacklea of migrant women domestic workers in London.1
