Badante or Bride? Patterns of Female Migration in Italy, Japan, Korea, and Spain

This article investigates the intersection of care and migration regimes by comparing four carefully matched familialist countries—Italy, Japan, South Korea, and Spain. These four countries, while sharing a similar familialist culture and welfare regime, responded to the problem of eldercare deficits differently in the 1990s and the 2000s. Italy and Spain developed a ‘migrant-in-the-family model,’ relying heavily on informal eldercare provided by migrant workers whom Italians colloquially call badante. Korea and Japan, by contrast, relied more on marriage migrants, with Korea developing its own variant of the migrant-in-the-family model where the migrant is typically the daughter-in-law. In Japan, some marriage migrants became care workers in the formal eldercare sector. By tracing the historical trajectories of female migration to these four countries, the article identifies a recursive relationship between migration regimes and care regimes. Initial differences in migration regimes shaped the female migratory pathways in specific ways, which, in turn, affected the development of distinctive eldercare regimes. Once these new care regimes emerged, however, they influenced the migration regime in the next cycle. The article contributes to the literatures on the intersection of care and migration regimes by untangling the reciprocal feedback processes between these two systems.

The implications of migration policies on migrant worker mixed families: The case of Filipinos in Israel

The ever-growing worldwide phenomenon of transnational labor migration has resulted in the increase of families formed by migrant workers in destination countries. While scholarly attention has mainly focused on the transnational families of migrant workers, the formation of mixed families involving migrants in host countries has rarely been studied. Based on a qualitative and quantitative study of the Filipino migrant worker community in Israel, this paper explores the dynamics of mixed families within this community. The family formation of Filipino migrants in Israel reveals two main categories of mixed families: one consisting of a migrant worker and a local citizen, and the other consisting of two migrant workers of different origins. I proposed the terminologies “suspect mixed families” and “fragile mixed families” to emphasize the crucial impact of migration policies on the dynamics of these families.

The significance of resilience in mental health promotion of marriage immigrant women: a qualitative study of factors and processes

BACKGROUND

This study explores a series of processes in which marriage immigrant women achieve positive mental health status after experiencing various marriage- and migrant-related difficulties through the framework of resilience theory. As marriage immigrant women face greater barriers to public health services than non-immigrant women, it is necessary to understand the related factors, process, and context to address these barriers and strengthen available assets.

METHODS

A qualitative case study design was used with the phenomenological approach. Eleven mental health promotion program managers and 12 marriage immigrant women from who experienced resilience were recruited from four public-funded multicultural community centers in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, between December 2015 and March 2016. Using data from in-depth semi-structured face-to-face interviews, the author applied theme analysis informed by the resilience theory in order to identify factors that affect resilience and its development process.

RESULTS

Findings indicated that the process of resilience follows enduring difficulties, collapse of stability, access to professional help, professional and social support, and experience of growth. A combination of the staged process of growth, absence of partner support, children as a driving force for change, the need for economic activity, factors affecting difference in growth: satisfaction levels of women's need for recognition, respect, and reward, and level of spousal support were identified as factors affecting marriage immigrant women's resilience.

CONCLUSIONS

Spouses, children, and economic activity play key roles in resilience in positive and negative ways. The existing information barrier should be addressed at a structural level to improve the mental health of marriage immigrant women, and the optimum time for intervention is suggested within 2 years post-migration. Efforts to build supportive relationships with Korean spouses and meet the women's needs for recognition, respect, and reward may also help promote these women's resilience.

Migrant Assimilation in Europe: A Transnational Family Affair

The paper advances our empirical and theoretical understanding of migrant assimilation. It does so by focusing on a very particular group of individuals who appear more likely than other migrant types to “go native.” We call these individuals “mixed nationality relationship migrants” (i.e., migrants who have committed to a life outside their home country because of the presence of a foreign partner). The paper argues that the transnational family milieus that emerge from this form of international migration are critical to the assimilation process. Empirical material from 11 in-depth interviews with female migrants in Britain (Sheffield) and France (Paris) supports our argument. We also suggest that such “extreme” assimilation is more likely within a regional migratory system – like the EU – where the “identity frontiers” crossed in the formation of a transnational family are relatively shallow.

Road to better health and integration: a Delphi study on health service models for Hong Kong migrants

Introduction

In Hong Kong, migrants arriving from Mainland China often have multiple roles and responsibilities while adapting to new lives in their host destination. This paper explored the factors that contribute to the inequity in health services utilisation experienced by these migrants; and, identified the elements that could constitute an effective health delivery model to address the service gap.

Methods

Site visits and a focus group discussion (n = 13) were held with both public and private health providers before a number of innovative health delivery models were formulated. They were then circulated among the panel in two further rounds of Delphi survey (n = 11) from March-April 2012 to systematically collect opinions and select the most endorsed health service models to serve this target population.

Results

Focus group members perceived that most migrants were unaware of, or even ignored, their own physical and mental health needs, and had low utilisation of healthcare services, because of their pre-occupation with daily chores and hardship as well as differing health values, practices and expectations. They further identified that the structural issues such as the healthcare setting or the operation of current service provisions had failed to meet migrants’ health needs. Consequently, four new service models that incorporated professional advice and empowerment, which were identified as the two most important elements, were put forward. Thus, the model of having a nurse with social work training, supported by volunteer groups, was selected as the best option to familiarise and empower patients within the labyrinth of local healthcare services.

Conclusion

Implementation of a social empowerment model by way of targeted support and specific health information is recommended. Further evaluation of this model is needed to understand its effectiveness for improving health literacy and health status in this disadvantaged group in the long term.

Against the Grain: International Marriages between African Men and Japanese Women

International marriages (kokusai kekkon) in Japan have been steadily increasing with one out of eighteen matches involving a foreign spouse in 2008. Class intersects with race and gender in the discourse of international marriage in Japan. Whereas most research focuses on international marriages between rural Japanese men and Asian brides, the media's emphasis is on Japanese women who marry Western men. The main aim of this article is to expand the discussion on international marriage by looking at couples in which the male spouse is coming from a developing country. I will do this by looking at Sub-Saharan African spouses of Japanese women in Japan. By switching the perspective to men coming from developing countries marrying women in wealthier nations, new insights on the intersections of gender, class and race can be explored while conventional notions surrounding international marriage, such as hypergamy, are challenged.

Constructing Scales and Renegotiating Identities: Women Marriage Migrants in South Korea

This paper explores the politics of scale of women marriage migrants in a rural village in South Korea with particular focus on their agency. Drawing on a qualitative case study, I show the way these women deal with multilayered discriminations and negotiate their intersecting identities in and through daily spaces and scales. The study finds that they challenge the imposed identities, which are poor, sexualized and passive, by constructing scales of referencing, recognition and resistance. This includes constructing transnational social fields of alternative ethnic communities, the home as a safe space and the body as a site of resistance and self-imagination. This research is grounded on the agency-focused migration literature and the feminist approach to the micro-spatial politics in an intra-Asian context.