Family reunification politics in postwar Western Europe: migrant women, state control...

Family reunification politics in postwar Western Europe: migrant women, state control and reproductive bodies

Abstract

What did Überfremdung do to migrant women? This is the original question the project asks. It answers this question by looking into the fight against Überfremdung, the guiding goal of Swiss migration policy for most of the 20th century, as an emblematic case of what has been called in International Relations the ‘securitization of migration’. The project contributes to theory-building in IR as it provides a gender-sensitive formulation of the securitization framework. While this framework has traditionally accounted for cases where migration is severely restricted and migrants are subjected to violent repression, the project contends that securitization materializes differently in contexts of large-scale, state-sponsored foreign labor recruitment. In such a configuration, securitization translates into highly coercive measures aiming to admit migrant workers but prevent them from taking root. This gives way to a politics of family reunification whereby migrant women’s reproductive capacity is seen as a source of denationalization that threatens the identity fabric of the host society. If strict bans on family reunification affect both men and women migrants, it is argued that they weigh more directly and heavily on women, through multiple forms of illegalization (as spouses) and state control over their bodies (as mothers). This revised framework offers an insightful gendered perspective into postwar migration in Western Europe. While Switzerland was one of the states with the highest rates of labor migration during the ‘Trente Glorieuses’, it also had the most restrictive approach to migrants’ settlement and family reunification, as epitomized by the core instrument of this policy: the seasonal status. The project not only investigates how migrant women were affected by and responded to the ban on family reunification in Switzerland, but it also compares and contrasts their experiences with those of women who migrated to France, another major labor-importing state which nevertheless did not institutionalize a ‘securitized’ conception of migration. This comparative design is meant to assess in which ways variation in family reunification politics may have shaped different migration experiences in domains such as reproductive decision-making, parenting and participation in the labor market. Comparability is ensured by focusing on Spanish migration to Switzerland and France from 1961 to 1973. The project is deeply interdisciplinary as it borrows theoretical and empirical insights from political science, political economy, sociology and international relations while mobilizing oral history and archival methods. The project is also motivated by a sense of urgency since it is now nearly the last chance to collect and valorize the narratives of these women who migrated in the postwar period.

Keywords

• migrant women
• gender
• politics of family reunification
• postwar migration policies
• securitization of migration
• political economy of migration
• productive and reproductive labor
• bodies and embodiment
• feminist theories
• oral history
• Swiss history
• Switzerland
• France
• Spain