A Migrant World of Services

This article analyzes historical concepts that marginalize women's domestic, caring and sexual labour as non-work, and the impact on female migrant workers in Europe. In her discussion of the non-recognition of housework and sexual labour as productive work, the author notes that these forms of labour are precisely those widely offered to migrant women. Furthermore, she argues that the international community's fixation on trafficking and prostitution ignores the day-to-day situation of women migrants who are expected to provide sexual services alongside domestic and care work. She concludes that "the world of services in which migrant women live [&] could be ameliorated considerably by the adjustment of long-pending gender inequalities in the consideration of what is work". [Descriptors: Migration - Labour Migration, International - Europe]