Legal status, gender, and the division of household labour among African couples

Abstract

Legal status is a pivotal axis of stratification in the United States. Yet individuals do not migrate alone. Two-thirds of migrants are married, and migrant spouses receive a separate – and often dependent – legal categorization from that of their husband or wife. International student visa dependents, for instance, are legally tied to their spouse, and they cannot work or attend school full-time themselves. These constraints raise important theoretical questions about how immigration laws, via dependent visas, contribute to gender inequalities in migrant households. Drawing on 52 in-depth interviews with members of 26 African student visa couples, this article illustrates how dependent visas produce different household divisions of labour depending on the dependent visa holder's gender. Women on dependent visas maintain traditional domesticated roles, blaming their lack of agency on US law. Men, by contrast, respond to visa restrictions in one of two ways. Some men resist domesticated household roles, leaving their full-time student wives to pick up the ‘second shift’ at home. Others adjust to household responsibilities by invoking their agency over the adjustment, rather than the law’s – masculinising their domesticity through language of self-sacrifice. The law interacts with gender ideology and individual agency to structure household labour decisions.