Who Is Doing the Housework within Immigrant Families? Cultural vs. Socio-Economic Factors

Ariane Pailhé , Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

Migration challenges gender relations. Immigrants who come from countries where social norms support a strong separation of male and female roles find more egalitarian norms and a less marked division of labour in France. This paper analyses how the socialisation context shapes the gender division of housework after migration, whether this influence diminish over time and across generations of immigration and to what extent are the observed differences are related to socio-economic and/or cultural factors. To answer these questions, we use new data from the Trajectories and Origins survey 2 (Insee and Ined 2020) that contains information on the gender division of housework within the individual and his/her parent’s couple. We show that the division of domestic housework is unequal for all, with meal preparation being more unequal among immigrants, while shopping is better shared among immigrants and descendants of immigrants than among the majority population. Socio economic factors explain the gender division of housework among Maghrebi and Turkish couples. However, meal preparation remains more unequal for them than for the native-born, because of cultural factors. The division of labour becomes less unequal with the length of stay.

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 Presented in Session 82. Migrant Populations, Family Life and Gender