Gendered mobilities among high-skilled women

As high-skilled migration continues to increase, the proportion of women migrants within this mobile population, particularly from developing countries, has also increased. One driver is high-skilled women's concerns about gender discrimination in the labor market in their birth countries. Unfortunately, these immigrants often experience gender- and ethnicity-based constraints on their occupational mobility in their destination countries as well. Outside work, some female immigrants who move to more gender-equal societies are able to renegotiate the patriarchal bargain within their households. However, others may experience an increasing feminization of their social roles if they are unable to secure employment post-migration. It is not enough to say that gender conditions the mobilities of skilled female migrants while assuming that their gender affects all women migrants always in the same way. Instead, a comparativist and intersectional approach is needed to understand the differentially gendered landscapes in high-skilled female migrants’ origin and destination countries.