Race, Ethnicity, Immigration, and Women

The SAGE Encyclopedia of World Poverty Race, Ethnicity, Immigration, and Women

Contributors: Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi Edited by: Mehmet Odekon Book Title: The SAGE Encyclopedia of World Poverty Chapter Title: "Race, Ethnicity, Immigration, and Women" Pub. Date: 2015 Access Date: May 6, 2017 Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc City: Thousand Oaks Print ISBN: 9781483345703 Online ISBN: 9781483345727 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483345727.n678 Print pages: 1303-1305 ©2015 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

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Poverty by race, ethnicity, immigration, and gender is present and visible worldwide. This disparity results in deprivation, social exclusion, gender and racial discrimination, and relative inequality. Imposed or conditioned social exclusion of minority groups, migrants, ethnic communities, and women deprives them of equal opportunities for income, housing, health, education, culture, and knowledge, and this relative inequality entails poverty and harms social cohesion. A group of people having similar physical characteristics, ethnic affiliation, national origin, and cultural practices is known as race. The most common arguments for why certain races and ethnic groups are poor are their corrupt and incapacitated governments, retrograde cultures, lack of human and natural capital, severe ecological conditions, lack of innovation, and geopolitics. Geography, corrupt authorities, and cultural norms chiefly create conditions that result in 40 percent of the world’s population being poor or extremely poor. There are more than 1 billion people around the world who are ill, hungry, and destitute. Ninety percent of the population worldwide, including 9.07 percent of people in East Asia and the Pacific, 8.63 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, 31.08 percent in South Asia, 41.09 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, 0.95 percent in Europe and Central Asia, and 1.47 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, live and survive on $1 a day. The poor do exist in developed countries too, but the “poorest of the poor” and “extremely poor” are to be found in developing and underdeveloped countries. There are 4 million poor black children in the United States. In 2006, the poverty rate of whites was 8.2 percent, whereas 24.9 percent of all African Americans were poor. Tribal people of Rourkela, Odisha, and Chotanagpur, West Bengal, as well as other parts of India, often move to big cities. Every year, poverty, unemployment, and the attractions of modern life drive over 7,000 tribal girls from the Sundargarh district, Odisha, alone to different cities and metropolises in India. Bipin Jojo has estimated that 200,000 girls from the tribal belt work in three cities—Mumbai, Kolkata, and Delhi. Emigration and immigration are both forms of migration, which involves geographical and spatial mobility. The chief elements that determine migration are demographics, expansion, agricultural stagnation, inadequate job opportunities, educational development, and the failure of state-level institutions to provide the required support and environment for the growth of the secondary and tertiary sectors. When the national boundary of the country is involved, it is called international migration, and if the migration takes place within the national boundary, it is termed internal migration. A young girl from a local slum helps her mother carry firewood home in the Railway Colony, Gujarat, India, January 7, 2007. Cultural and religious norms in India block the role of women by denying them their rights and education. (Flickr)

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The SAGE Encyclopedia of World Poverty

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The founder of modern migration research, Ernst Georg Ravenstein, states that migration increases in volume as industries and commerce develop and transport improves. Lee speaks about “pushes” from the areas of origin and “pulls” to the destination areas. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels argue that the productive power of capitalism exerts pressure on the working

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The SAGE Encyclopedia of World Poverty

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classes to move from their place of origin. The new economic approaches focus on international migration or global migration. Legal immigration is an act of investment that tends to convert a situation of temporary poverty to a better livelihood. But illegal and self-inflicted immigration inflates the number of poor across countries; the most affected countries are the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and India, which have 40 percent of the world’s migrants. There is a close relationship between industrialization, migration, and urbanization. Each year, the United States attracts 800,000 illegal immigrants, and the legal immigration system attracts and favors low-skilled immigrants over high-skilled immigrants. And when the supply of skilled labor decreases relative to the supply of unskilled labor, the result is increased inequality in wages. In 2000, more than 10 percent of the U.S. population were foreign-born; as a result, one-quarter of all poor in the United States were immigrants and their progeny. The chief reasons for immigration are poverty, unemployment, and low wages in the native country and higher-paying jobs and better living conditions in the foreign country. Migration of people of different religious and ethnic affiliations creates dynamic living realities. A. P. Joshi studied the religious demography of India; Indian religions vary in their degree of urbanization and migration: Hindus, 26.38 percent; Muslims, 35.74 percent; and Christians, 34 percent. While Christians constitute less than 3 percent of the total population, they show the highest trend in migration and urbanization. Women and Poverty Poverty is worldwide, but when we consider it from a gender perspective, it is known as the feminization of poverty. Women’s poverty is a result of political and sociocultural practices across the globe that make them 70 percent of the poor people in the world. Domesticity and quasi-domesticity impede their attempt to get remuneration. The domestic chores along with their other work make up 67 percent of the world’s work, but they earn less than 15 percent of the world’s total income. Women receive lower pay than men for the same work, and their domestic labor remains unaccounted and unpaid for. Cultural or religious norms in society may block the role of women by denying them their rights and education. In India, the birth of a female child is not welcome; consequently, parents tend to spend less on their daughters. Poor households encourage the birth of many children because the woman’s role is seen mainly as child rearing. Women receive fewer calories and lower levels of education than men, and this results in jobs with lower wages than their male counterparts. Married working mothers do mostly temporary or part-time work. These types of work increase women’s dependency and poverty. Much research on poverty and fertility in India and across the world has found that poverty is the cause of high fertility and high infant mortality rates in developing countries. Feminization of Migration The feminization of migration focuses on the gender dimensions of women’s migration. This female form of migration includes the commercialized migration of domestic workers, caregivers, and health workers; the migration and trafficking of women for the sex industry; and the organized migration of women for marriage. There are 175 million international migrants worldwide, which makes up 3.5 percent of the global population, half of whom are women. The global estimate by sex confirms that since 1960, the number of female cross-

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border migrants equals that of male migrants. Nearly 47 out of every 100 migrants were female in 1960. Migration for women is not only a way to get a better livelihood and an opportunity to accompany and join their male relatives, but it is also an escape from the limitations imposed by traditional societies, oppressive laws, abuse, and violence. Women migrating independently is a trend where women are also economically motivated. Female labor migration from Asia is characterized by a concentration in gender-specific types of jobs that are menial and low-paying, with poor working conditions and fewer career opportunities. These jobs are typically domestic service, entertainment, and factory work. The extensive documentation of the exploitation of migrant women states that government authorities have failed to secure the rights of migrant women. The government of Nepal estimated that in 1992, more than 200,000 Nepali women and girls were working in brothels in India. Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University See Also:Exploitation; Feminization of Poverty; Gender Discrimination; Migration; Women and Poverty. Further Readings Jojo, Bipin K. “The Advocacy of Raid, Rescue and Restore.” A study on tribal domestic workers in Mumbai City. Mumbai, India: Domestic Workers Link, May 2005. Joshi, A. P., M. D. Srinivas, and J. K. Bajaj. Religious Demography of India. Chennai, India: Centre for Policy Studies, 2001. Lang, Kevin. Poverty and Discrimination. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. Stanislaus, L., and Jose Joseph, eds. Migration and Mission in India. New Delhi, India: Ishvani Kendra, 2007. Wilson, Mike, ed. Poverty. London: Greenhaven Press, 2009. Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483345727.n678 10.4135/9781483345727.n678

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The SAGE Encyclopedia of World Poverty