ABSTRACT
One area where the anthropological contribution to migration research has been particularly influential is in contributing to a focus on gender in empirical migration studies. The gender order is maintained through social practices which reproduce and embody ideas about how men and women are, and what men and women should do, in people's daily lives and life-long biographies. Because of the overwhelming importance of the social relations of reproduction in people's lives, the rhetoric of family relations is powerful as an explanatory device and as a means to justify one's own and other people's actions. The reproduction of people is governed by cultural rules and norms in all societies. The difference between male and female migration patterns depends partly on the difference in available opportunities at home and abroad, but also on the organisation of reproduction and domestic work in the home communities, and on the relative autonomy of women there.
