ABSTRACT
Why do individuals migrate? Many refugees do so for reasons relating to persecution or discrimination, but a major reason for much migration is economic benefit (Bartram 2010; Dean and Manzoni 2012) or ‘upward mobility’ by achieving higher-level employment (Pedraza 1991; Glaesser and Cooper 2014). But what are the gender implications of migration and, in particular, how do professional women fare? Such women are migrating in ever-increasing numbers. In fact, they are overtaking men as primary applicants (Docquier, Lowell and Marfouk 2009; Syed and Murray 2009; IOM 2010a). However, we understand little about these women’s experiences and outcomes (Cooke, Zhang and Wang 2013; Kofman 2013; Ressia 2014; Phan, Banerjee, Deacon and Taraky 2015), including how they progress professionally (Al Ariss 2010; González-Ferrer 2011; Pio and Essers 2014). This chapter concentrates on three issues: What happens when women migrants do not achieve expected outcomes of equivalent professional employment? Why does this occur and is there a relationship to gender and family responsibilities? What strategies do women migrants use to access employment? The experiences of 16 skilled professional women who migrated from various non-English-speaking-background (NESB) countries to Australia are considered to illustrate these arguments.
