The Gendered Process of Migration: Labor-Market Behavior of Left-Behind Wives in Mexico

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This paper explores the effect of male emigration from Mexico on women’s labor-market behavior. It borrows from existing gender, labour-market, and migration literature to point to the unintended negative effects of economic dependence on migrants. It uses nonlongitudinal data extracted via an ethnosurvey approach by the Mexican Migration Project (MMP). The results show that Mexican women’s labor-market behavior may face normative constraints that limit their ability to undertake paid work. This is exacerbated by living in a household where the main provider is a migrant and whose absence results in an increased burden of unpaid domestic labor on his non-migrant spouse. This study contributes to a growing line of research suggesting that women’s economic choices in developing countries can be shaped by gender norms rather than by economic or institutional characteristics alone.