Paper short abstract:

The paper emphasizes the role that globalization and migration have played in shaping, situating and accessing the reproductive rights of women.

Paper long abstract:

A trend in migration that has attracted much interest in recent years is the growing feminisation of migrant flows. For the world, as a whole, the share of women immigrants has risen slowly from 47% in the early 1960s to almost 50% in 2005. Family migration is the dominant motive among inflows of permanent immigrants. Yet, more women are migrating on their own to improve their living conditions and not just following their fathers and husbands. The feminisation of migration is characterized by a stronger brain-drain of highly educated women from less developed countries. Globalization has provided a free flow of ideas, including changing ideas on what it means to be a woman and migration provides a physical site for the new ideas to take shape and be ascertained. It opens up possibilities for what women can achieve. Even then, the flipside to this position may also be true. In all of this, and an ever developing sense of identity how women negotiate their reproductive choices and interpret and demand reproductive rights is to be established. Though, much attention has been paid to research on these themes, the author feels that the emphasis must shift to other related aspects and impacts of this migration.

Keywords: Globalization, Migration, Feminization of Migration, Reproductive Rights