ABSTRACT
There is a dominant consensus in the labour migration literature that the employment characteristics and quality of life of female partners often suffer as a result of long-distance family migration (McCollum 1990). Female partners have therefore been referred to as ‘tied migrants’ (Mincer 1978; Bielby and Bielby 1992) in a literature which usually adopts the human capital hypothesis (Spitz 1984; Mohlo 1986) as a starting point (Cooke and Bailey 1996). In short, the human capital hypothesis posits that family migration is motivated by the search for higher household (or family) incomes and may entail the female partner undertaking employment sacrifices in order for the family unit to reap the post-migration benefits obtained by the male ‘breadwinner’ (Halfacree 1995). It is assumed, according to the thesis of rational economic behaviour, that the potential income increment of the male partner will outweigh the loss of the female partner’s income (Blau and Duncan 1967; Shihadeh 1991). While this simple conceptualization of labour migration underpinned many of the early empirical studies (e.g. Sandell 1977; Mincer 1978), the view that long-distance migration gives rise to constrained and detrimental employment opportunities for female partners has been challenged (Finch 1983; Bonney and Love 1991). The most recent departure has been provided by Cooke and Bailey (1996), in their study in the Midwestern United States, who concluded that family migration increases the probability of married women finding employment by 9 per cent. This led Cooke and Bailey to question strongly the limitations of the human capital hypothesis and call for the reconceptualization of labour migration. Importantly, Cooke and Bailey stress the need to ascertain how the effect of migration on married women’s labour force participation, or quality of employment, is influenced by household structure-an issue considered in this chapter.
