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Gender Awareness in Migration Theory: Synthesizing Actor and Structure in Southern Africa
Author(s) -
Wright Caroline
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
development and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.267
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1467-7660
pISSN - 0012-155X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-7660.1995.tb00574.x
Subject(s) - writ , scholarship , agency (philosophy) , dialectic , dyad , context (archaeology) , sociology , perspective (graphical) , structure and agency , space (punctuation) , set (abstract data type) , epistemology , gender studies , political science , geography , social science , social psychology , psychology , law , philosophy , linguistics , archaeology , artificial intelligence , computer science , programming language
Recent developments in migration theory mirror two concerns writ large across the development literature, namely the attempt to reconcile structure and agency and the importance of gender. Using the specific context of southern Africa, this article analyses the development of migration theory over the last forty years and the dialectic between gender and the structure‐agency dyad. It is argued that gender is an essential tool for unpicking the migration process and that a gender perspective has enriched and been enriched by a model of migration allowing analytical space for both the agency of migrants and the structures which surround them. Juxtaposing the various theories which have been brought to bear on migration in southern Africa also reveals the extent to which new models and classificatory systems have developed on the basis of agendas set by preceding conceptual frameworks, distinctions between competing models rarely being as clear‐cut as the mode of scholarship would have them appear.