Keywords

Equal Rights Presented as Being Endangered by Migration

Equal rights are often presented as being endangered by migration. For example, in the case of Switzerland, a constitutional ban on minarets has been legitimised by a prominent feminist with reference to women’s rights.Footnote 1 In academia, two prominent political scientists have claimed that the ‘true clash of civilisations’ would concern ‘gender equality and sexual liberalisation’.Footnote 2 Today, when gender equality is perceived as being endangered by migration, suspicion is primarily focused on Muslim ‘migrants’. However, in the boom years after the Second World War, this was not a prominent issue in Switzerland. In the public debates of the 1960s, the religious affiliation of workers from Turkey and certain territories of former Yugoslavia in fact played a minor role.Footnote 3

Interestingly, in those years, ItaliansFootnote 4 were often presented in a similar way to Muslims today. Of course, this does not imply that there are no differences between the past depiction of Italian migration and the current representation of Muslim migration to Switzerland. For instance, even though Italians were seen as causing a religious imbalance in Switzerland, the image of the Italians was not reduced to religion and in fact oscillated between Italians as associated with either conservatism or communism. In addition, Italians were never linked as closely to the topic of terrorism as Muslims are today, even though ‘Italian Communists working in Switzerland […] were seen as a potential security threat’.Footnote 5 Furthermore, since Italians were perceived as being more fertile than the Swiss, it was feared that an ‘Italianisation’ of the Swiss population could not be prevented.Footnote 6 Likewise—and somewhat ironically, in a country where many prided themselves on owning a Swiss army knife and where men kept their military rifles at home—Italians men were perceived as dangerous because they were allegedly wont to carry switchblades.Footnote 7 Other customs that met with disapproval were the black mourning clothes worn by some Italian widows and the fact that, in church, certain Italian women wore a veil.Footnote 8 Moreover, ‘migrants’ liked to use railway stations as meeting points,Footnote 9 and such gatherings were viewed critically, in part because Italians were considered more likely to sexually harass Swiss women.Footnote 10 For example, in 1983, a snack bar in the town of Will refused to seat Italians towards the front of the premises, claiming that unaccompanied women would no longer dare to enter.Footnote 11 In addition, regardless of Swiss society’s own shortcomings regarding gender equality, Italian families were often characterised as patriarchal. Remarkably, the topic of the ‘isolated foreign wife’ can also be found in these years. In a report published in 1976 by the ‘Federal Advisory Commission for the Foreigner Problem’, it was acknowledged, for instance, that the employment rate among married foreign women was relatively high. Nonetheless, the report stated that wives coming from southern regions lived more narrowly within the family circle than Swiss women, having little opportunity for contact with the outside world.Footnote 12 The stereotypical images of the ‘oppressed and isolated Muslima’ and the ‘patriarchal Muslim’ thus possess some traits that, from a historical perspective, are quite familiar. Such a characterisation recalls once again the strategies of legitimisation associated with colonialism, condensed in Gayatri Spivak’s words that ‘White men are saving brown women from brown men’.Footnote 13 Given these recurring images, I believe it is crucial to engage in an in-depth historical analysis of situations where migration was a driving force for emancipatory change.

Migration and the Creation of New Ideas and Practices

In fact, the ‘contribution of migration to the creation of new ideas (not just their spread) has been underemphasised in previous analyses’.Footnote 14 Patrick Manning sees especially cross-community migration as driving development. However, by characterising this form of migration as male, he marginalises females as historical agents, as Donna Gabaccia has rightly pointed out.Footnote 15 Moreover, ‘[m]oving from the countryside to the nearest town or city can be just as much an occasion of knowledge creation as the relocation from one continent to another’, as Simone Lässig and Swen Steinberg have convincingly argued by, at the same time, highlighting how productive the intersection between the history of knowledge and the history of migration is.Footnote 16 It is therefore not a coincidence that people with some kind of migration experience have often developed a different view of history. In the field of migration research, too, scientific innovation often originated from people with migration experience.Footnote 17

Once our attention has been drawn to such historical processes, important aspects of the past appear in a new light. For instance, when certain privileges intersect with specific forms of discrimination, the resulting situations offer the potential for new social and political configurations, as we have seen in relation to various examples. Likewise, the knowledge and motivation needed to push for change can circulate through various forms of migration and new networks and alliances of resistance can thereby be forged.Footnote 18 Moreover, those who happen to not comply with a norm because they are used to different standards of behaviour may even unintentionally call these very norms into question. In addition, since relationships of power are naturalised by their everyday presence, they can sometimes be more easily perceived by newcomers. Their gaze can defamiliarise the familiarFootnote 19 and in this way produce an ‘awareness of alternatives’, as Peter Burke has pointed out.Footnote 20

As interviews with aging couples who migrated from Italy to Switzerland have shown, the experience of leaving a familiar environment and finding one’s way in a new one—which often does not classify ‘migrants’ as belonging—can provide specific resources.Footnote 21 These can be helpful in later stages of life, which are also associated with the loss of familiar contexts and thereby producing constraints for reorientation. Experiences of migration thus prove to be a specific ‘capital’ for dealing with changes and uncertainties. This is all the more important because individuals with experiences of migration are often confronted with specific difficulties upon retirement, for example, with regard to their pension. However, if today the so-called guest workers can also be seen as pioneers of globalisation,Footnote 22 then the burden often associated with this experience of migration must not be forgotten. Nor should globalisation be glorified. Nevertheless, it is important to emphasise such resources, as they usually fall out of the picture.Footnote 23

Changing the Perspective Under Which Our Past Is Told and Our Future Imagined

The approach proposed here does not merely consist in adding new information to an established account, but, in fact, to change perspectives and thereby to challenge some fundamental assumptions. For instance, assertions have been made which become much more complicated if the living conditions of ‘migrants’ are taken into account. See, for instance, the statement that in these boom years, the opportunity to live on a single income made the employment of women optional. If we look at ‘migrant’ families, the limitations of this statement immediately catch our eye.

Whereas over the past decades, ‘dozens of publications have thus appeared that started out by saying that the field of gender and migration is in general underresearched’,Footnote 24 this observation no longer holds true today. Nevertheless, the literature is still lopsided, and many stimulating questions await a systematic investigation, as we have seen.

Of course, the examples I have analysed in this contribution are not intended to suggest that, for all possible phenomena related to changing gender relations, migration was the decisive factor. Sometimes, migration is only one factor among many (new ideas and role models can, for instance, circulate via the media). In addition, I am obviously aware that migration characterises our society in many different and sometimes ambiguous ways and that my investigation necessarily privileges the ‘productive’ aspects of it. My findings do not imply therefore that migration can never be an obstacle in the struggle for gender equality. In regard to highly skilled ‘migrant’ women in Switzerland, Yvonne Riaño has shown, for instance, that traditional ideas about gender roles, discourses about ethnic difference, and discriminatory migration policies intersect and hinder these women from accessing the upper segments of the Swiss labour market. For them, ‘[m]igration, therefore, does not always imply empowerment and emancipation, but also generates new forms of social inequality’.Footnote 25 Mirjana Morokvasic also critises a simplistic perception of emigration as empowerment.Footnote 26 Nor do I argue that we should allow only those migrations that benefit the receiving society. From my perspective, the legitimacy of migration does not depend on whether it is useful for any particular individual or group.Footnote 27 Finally, my focus on the complex links between migration and gender equality should not be equated with the promotion of a single, linear success story. Ambiguity, counter-movements, setbacks, and moments of failure are, as we know, always part of history.Footnote 28 And of course, the argument is not that all ‘migrants’ are politically progressive, which is obviously not the case. It is quite well-known that the experience of migration can sometimes also lead to an increased conservatism, also in regard to gender relations. Moreover, there are clear limitations to this study. For instance, in the examples analysed in this book, the existence of two genders is not questioned. This book has therefore a direction, but no end. Many other fields would be worthwhile to investigate.

What my findings do show, however, is that contemporary and historiographical discourses which predominantly frame migration as a problem to be tackled neglect the historical evidence for sociopolitical innovation that can, at times, result from international, transnational, internal, and even indirect experiences of migration.Footnote 29 It is only from a historical perspective that we can recognise how profoundly the social and political developments are shaped by migration.Footnote 30

To illuminate the link between migration and what I call gender innovation does not mean to glorify migration or to propagate a naïve notion of diversity.Footnote 31 Migration is per se neither good nor bad, but the conditions under which it takes place are good or bad, and these conditions are made, not given. The political, economic, and social conditions under which migration takes place depend on how past and present migration is perceived. This is precisely why, today, we have to make visible these often hidden histories. Looking at history through the lens of migration not only adds some new insights to an established body of work, but changes the perspective under which our past and thus also our present is told—and our future imagined.