With Migrant Women's Voices: Talking about Life and Work in the UK Since 1945, Linda McDowell selects, contextualizes, and strategically arranges more than seventy deeply personal oral narratives of diverse female subjects’ work experiences that span the postwar years to the present. In so doing, she not only highlights migrant women's different kinds of labor, bravery, and agency, but also challenges conventional histories and geographies, countering “malestream” migration accounts as well as long-standing popular misconceptions.
Chapters 1 and 9 bookend seven chapters themed around common experiences of migration, paid work, and unpaid labor. Chapter 2 focuses on stories about moving to the United Kingdom across the decades, while chapters 3 through 8 link different (sometimes seemingly disparate) forms of work in revealing ways, for example chapter 3, “Making Things: Textiles, Toys, Shirts, Seat Covers and Engines”; chapter 6, “Brain Work: Banking, Medicine, Scientific Research and Teaching”; and chapter 8, “Housework, Family, Community and Retirement.”
McDowell's including this range of experience is commendable in that it counters stereotypes of migrant women, for example, that they are “trailing spouses” and do not engage in paid work, or, if they do, are only found in highly circumscribed employment in terms of skill and remuneration. Of course, there are familiar refrains as migrant women describe having to de-skill or find themselves doing feminized, undervalued labor, but we also hear about Harshini on the plant floor building engines, Eidothea working for a hedge fund, and Shami the academic. Moreover, characterizations of “docile” immigrant women are refuted with stories of leaving work despite being in highly precarious positions or of seeking union or community support after experiencing discrimination and abuse.
McDowell situates these voices by clearly and concisely fleshing out significant continuities and changes over time in chapter 1, and through brief explanatory notes that frame the personal narratives in the subsequent chapters. In the afterword, she also uses the insights gleaned from these women's experiences to reflect on the current situation, including the 2015 British general election and lead up to the Brexit vote. Additional, helpful information is found in four appendices: (1) an overview of over half a century's (1951–2001) transformations and continuities for women on issues that include strikes, sport, and domestic appliances; (2) a chart of subjects’ names (pseudonyms), their countries and dates of birth, and their years of arrival in the United Kingdom; (3) a list of changes to immigration legislation between 1948 and 2014; and (4) questions for further contemplation and discussion. McDowell also provides a selective bibliography thoughtfully organized by subject area, and the book includes several evocative historical photographs, on the cover and throughout.
As a result, beyond being an informative, must-read work for scholars specializing in related topics, it is also accessible, engaging book for students at various levels, as well as for the broader public. Indeed, because this work is intended for a wide audience, McDowell does not want to weigh it down with “a carapace of academic argument, multiple references to other texts, or lengthy interpretation” (xi).
Nonetheless, there were two areas that McDowell could have fleshed out to a greater extent, which would be illuminating for readers of all kinds. The first is a methodological point, and the second deals with concepts that require closer attention. In the preface McDowell explains why and when these 74 narratives were collected, and how “this is the first time that these women's voices have been presented in full or at greater academic length” (xi). Yet here and in chapter 1, she also appropriately acknowledges her subjective and directive hand in conducting interviews and in presenting the findings. However, aside from these comments (and the list of subjects in Appendix 2), details regarding the actual interview methodology, such as format, duration, and specific location, are not provided. This information could assist scholars and students wishing to adopt, adapt, or build on McDowell's important qualitative research. To add further nuance to the stories featured, McDowell could have included a few significant concepts or greater theorization. For example, McDowell begins by acknowledging the difference that race makes, noting that from the late 1940s onward, “the idea of migrants as people of colour became firmly set in the British imagination” (3). But because instances of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and religion are found throughout the book, it would have been useful to include a discussion of racialization, underscoring how and why different groups become “othered” over time, and not necessarily solely due to skin color. Racialization, then, could be considered vis-à-vis anti-Semitism or the historic “othering” of Irish Catholics, or at present, in relation to Polish migrants or Islamophobia.
Another significant concept, and one typically connected to racialization, is that of securitization. Differential treatment after 9/11 is noted by Hana, for instance (50), but this event and the subsequent terrorist attacks in London and elsewhere have intensified the “homeland” politics discussed here and at the book's end (225), affecting migrants’ work life and life beyond work. Therefore, the contested links between migration and security could be made more explicit. The notion of “home” could also be explored to a greater extent. McDowell assumes that “home” amounts to migrants’ countries of origin: “These stories reveal the complexities and difficulties involved in leaving home” (53). However, migrants’ understandings of home can be denser, multisited, and gendered. A more comprehensive treatment of the concept would add depth to discussions around belonging, multiculturalism, and cohesion. Finally, while McDowell does focus on “social reproductive,” unpaid labor and slow transformations in this realm, the time-consuming transnational care work typically done by migrant women is left unexplored.
All in all, however, I was eager to read this book, and I was not disappointed. It is eye-opening, highly recommended reading for scholars, practitioners, and the public alike.
