Family-Work Dilemma?: Female Migrants’ Strategies

This paper focuses on the association between ‘family and work’ and presents research-based evidence to address varying strategies of female migrants to deal with the paradoxical combination of family and work. In particular, this analysis aims to examine appropriate theoretical models regarding the association between family characteristics and female immigrants’ work outside the home in multicultural and multiethnic context. It highlights native-migrant differentials, and the differentials between migrants by ethnic origins with regard to the association between ‘family and work’. The multivariate results of this analysis support the key fact that the substantial effects of family on women’s work outside the home tend to persist beyond the influence of migration status and ethnic diversity. Further, the results confirm that the strategies of female migrants to deal with the paradoxical combination of family and work vary substantially in terms of their ethnic backgrounds.