Abstract

BRAVO MORENO, Ana. Approaches to International Migration, Immigrant Women, and Identity. Migr. Inter [online]. 2002, vol.1, n.2, pp.64-92. ISSN 2594-0279.

This article attempts to demonstrate that each approach to immigration, immigrant women, and identity that appeared in the British literature from the 1970s through the 1990s was an attempt to create a theory to account for differences and similarities within the diverse immigrant groups in the United Kingdom. However, serious gaps exist in these approaches in that they do not address what constitutes culture for the immigrants themselves or how their construction of culture differs from what they perceive to be the culture of the country to which they migrate. This poses difficulties in understanding the meaning immigrants attribute to their cultural and gender identities and how these identities may evolve in the host country. This article argues that while it is important not to ignore the power of political and economic forces and history as contributors to women's formation of identities, it is at least as important to think about identity as an individual appropriation and a creation of individual meanings. There is a need to understand the intersection between culture, social structure, and biography in order to recognize differences in the shaping of cultural and gender identities.

Keywords : international migration; women's studies; race; post-modernism; United Kingdom.

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