Buying and selling gender equality

This research project will study the relation between gender equality and the global feminized migration of domestic workers and au pairs. The project is justified by a need for a better understanding of the significance of gender and ethnicity in the formulation of the equality politics of the Norwegian welfare state, with reference to equality between women and men, equality between ethnic majority and ethnic minorities and social/economic levelling. The project is informed by the concepts of intersectionality and complexity, and addresses the program's focus on the significance of inter- and transnational dimensions in the development of the welfare society. The research findings will achieve value for policymaking in the fields of labour market regulations, migration, gender equality and welfare. The research questions and conclusions will be put into a broader, comparative context via collaborations with an international network of researchers working in the field of racialization and feminized migration in Europe.

The project is based at Department of interdisciplinary Studies of Culture and funded by the Norwegian Research Council (NFR) under the programme Welfare, Working life and Migration (VAM) for the period 2011-2014.