For a Better Life: The Integration of Thai Marriage, Family, and Labor Migrants in Iceland
Open Access
- Author:
- Bissat, Johanna Gisladottir
- Graduate Program:
- Anthropology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- December 09, 2011
- Committee Members:
- Stephen Augustus Matthews, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Ralph Salvador Oropesa, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Edward Paul Durrenberger, Committee Member
Patricia Lyons Johnson, Committee Member
Catherine Wanner, Committee Member - Keywords:
- International migration
marriage migration
labor migration
Iceland
Thailand
integration - Abstract:
- In recent decades Thai women began coming to Iceland for a better life, whether by marrying an Icelandic man, reuniting with Thai family already in Iceland, or through employer sponsorship. These three means are termed the “auspices of migration.” By 2006, however, Iceland’s policy of prioritizing workers from the European Economic Area made it nearly impossible for Thais and other non-Europeans to secure a work permit, leading to an increase in marriage-based migrations among this group. The main objective of this dissertation is to examine how the auspices of migration affect host country language skills and economic integration, the power and influence of Thai women in homes shared with Icelandic men, and reciprocal exchange networks between Thais and Icelanders. 858 Thai adults were living in Iceland at the time of the study, including 665 women. Fieldwork among this population took place over a period of 22 months. In my analyses I focus on qualitative interviews with factory workers, participant-observation in the Thai community, and quantitative survey data from a sample of 109 Thai women. Results have shown that women who came to Iceland under the auspices of an employer had the best Icelandic language skills of all three groups of women, and as a result they also had better economic outcomes than those who came by other means. Additionally, employer-sponsored migrants reported belonging to more egalitarian households with less-traditional divisions of labor and more equitable distributions of decision-making power. In contrast, migrants sponsored by an Icelandic spouse reported the highest levels of cross-ethnic exchanges when compared to those who came to Iceland under other auspices. Migrants sponsored by employers were far more likely to be limited to Thais-only in their exchange networks. These results suggest that the auspices of migration matter, and that Icelandic labor and migration policies constrain migrants’ choices in reaching Iceland. Such policies also condition the incentives and disincentives to linguistic, economic, cultural and social integration that migrants encounter upon arrival.