Introduction

This chapter looks at some of the key contributions to debates about migrant women in Sweden. Research and literature concerned with the position and experience of migrant and/or minority ethnic women in the Swedish labour market and wider society has illustrated both the structural obstacles encountered by women and the forms of agency they employ in order to negotiate or overcome them. Apart from providing valuable insights into the lives of these women, this literature has furthermore contributed to our understanding, more broadly, of social structures and processes along lines of gender and ethnicity. As such, it forms an important line of critique of the internationally celebrated Swedish ‘model’ status in the areas of gender equality, and with regard to the (supposedly equal) rights and opportunities of migrants and ethnic minorities.

The labour market and workplace have been central to theoretical debates surrounding migrant women in Sweden, and this chapter will begin by looking at some of the literature concerned with migrant women's participation and status within the Swedish labour market (notably Knocke 1986, 1994, 1999, 2001; de los Reyes 2000). This literature first of all disrupted accounts of migration that have assumed ‘the migrant’ to be a (rational) male individual, by accounting for the important roles migrant women have played on the Swedish labour market. As part of this move, the invisibility of migrant women, as well as the stereotypes that have commonly filled the void of representation, have been significantly challenged.