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Focusing on Europe's reconciliation policies, aimed to balance family and labor market work, this paper explores whether some of the legislative efforts introduced in Europe during the past decade could be applied to Latin American countries with important migrant populations, such as Bolivia and Ecuador. This paper argues that there are differences between Northern and Southern countries that would influence the effectiveness of these kinds of policies in the South. Three differences in particular - the availability of domestic service, the extent of the informal economy, and international migration - are taken into consideration. Using the capabilities approach framework, this paper outlines other lines of public policy action that can be useful in designing reconciliation policies for the South. Finally, the paper argues that there is an urgent need for re-thinking gender equity within the emerging gender order across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although skilled migration now represents the only `acceptable' form of migration into the UK there has so far been little analysis of the ways in which the shift in the skills of the primary migrant reconfigures family migration. In this paper I outline some reasons for this neglect, highlighting the ways in which two related sets of debates, that on gender and international migration into Europe and that on tied migration, have not yet adequately addressed the changing role of migrant women in contemporary labour markets. Both offer a critique of patriarchy within the household but neither have examined the ways in which immigration regulations intersect with labour market conditions in influencing family strategies around labour market participation of men and women in migrant households. Through the example of medical labour markets I argue that such an analysis is necessary for understanding family migration amongst the skilled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being the dominant mode of legal entry for the past two decades in European Union states, the study of family migration has been marginalised theoretically, methodologically and empirically. In settler societies, family migration has been interpreted more loosely and has been encouraged. The definition of who constitutes the family is determined by the state and is generally interpreted in highly restrictive terms in EU states. Family-related migration has been neglected because of the emphasis in migration studies on the individual, a heavily economic focus, and an association with female migration based on the dichotomy of male producer and female reproducer. In policy terms it is treated as a secondary form of migration subordinate to and divorced from labour markets. However since the late 1980s family-related migrations have become the subject of scholarly research, especially North American and Asian-Pacific, using network analysis and, more recently, concepts of transnationalism. In this paper I firstly explore the reasons for the relative neglect of family-linked migration in European research which has focused on the integration of migrant families in receiving societies and the legal and policy conditions of family reunification. Secondly, I examine some of the implications of changing family-led migration, especially at key moments and stages of the lifecourse, and the increasing restrictions imposed on this form of migration, highlighting the continuing role of the nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]