ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with non-European immigrant women who arrived in France for reasons connected with employment. Our culture has an ambivalent attitude toward these women. Both host countries' view of immigration and the particular processes involved in the immigration of women account for the silence that reigned for many years over the presence of foreign women in immigrant-rich European countries. The 1804 Civil Code opted for citizenship based on descent (jus sanguinis), and made married women legal minors in civil law. Children born in France were citizens only if their father was a French citizen. In southern European countries, the wave of legalisation of immigrants that has occurred reveals the reality of women's place in immigration. Even when immigrant women began to enter the labour market, they were not depicted as a threat to the employment prospects of French nationals. Although immigrant women clearly do not represent a homogeneous group, they do share a number of features.
