A “Special Category of Women” in Austria and Internationally: Migrant Women Workers, Trade Union Activists, and the Textile Industry, 1960s to 1980s

At the beginning of the 1960s, Austria joined Western and Northern European states in recruiting temporary migrant workers. While the European “guestworker” and migrant labour regimes have been subject to multiple studies in the last 40 years, migrant women have rarely been at the centre of these investigations, although their specific issues have comprised a facet of the international labour movement since the 1970s. Female migrant workers faced a double marginalization in the labour movement, both as migrants and as women. By analysing printed source material, archival documents, and interviews with women trade unionists, this chapter examines this specific double marginalization; how gender, class, and ethnicity shaped the labour activism of domestic and migrant working women; and how the international, national, and local levels interacted in the context of the deindustrialization of the Austrian textile industry.

Type

Book chapter

Date

2024-05-04

ISBN

978-90-04-68699-1

Identifiers

doi.org/10.1163/9789004686991_023

Collections

Gender Studies
Historical Studies