Abstract
Gender and migration have gained attention in fields such as demography, sociology, anthropology, and geography, and increasingly in psychology (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1999). Feminist scholars have been on the forefront of this exploration. In 1992, Women and Therapy published an initial collection of articles on the mental health issues of immigrant and refugee women (Cole, Espín, & Rothblum, 1992). However, understanding and serving the mental health needs of immigrant women continue to be new frontiers for American counselors and research scholars.
Immigrant Women Tell Their Stories takes a strong step toward giving more visibility to women who continue to be invisible in this society because of their immigration status. This book gives voice to 18 women who have emigrated from countries such as Cuba, Lebanon, Israel, India, Austria, the Philippines, and the former Soviet Union to the United States, Israel, Australia, and New Zealand. Women's stories come alive as they share both about their struggles and the triumphs of their immigration journeys.
Berger provides an excellent review of the psychological aspects of immigration and gives a feminist critique of the status quo perspectives that have tended to pathologize immigrants and ignore gendered aspects of migration. Berger's feminist qualitative approach allows her to be present on the book's pages along with her participants and infuses her understanding of her own experiences as an “immigrant daughter of an immigrant mother” (p. 49). She highlights commonalities among women's stories, such as their struggles, resilience, and strategies for dealing with assimilation, loneliness, sense of duality, and shifting gender relations. Counselors and human service providers who work with immigrant women will find her suggestions valuable and informative.
The book's greatest limitation is the absence of a consistent feminist lens for viewing women's stories. Berger seems to assume that the Western host cultures in which she conducted her interviews are more “gender liberal” in all aspects of women's lives than women's home cultures. In reality, because women are often seen as the carriers and preservers of cultural norms through their primary participation in childbearing and child raising, the pressure on women to assume traditional gender roles in the new culture can be even greater than in their home environment (Espín, 1999; Toren, 2001). In addition, immigrant women who are relocating from socialist or postsocialist countries arrive from societies where the majority of women have had many more political and occupational opportunities and greater women-friendly resources such as an extensive system of child care (Clason, 1992). Kagitcibasi and Berry (1989), who wrote about women's employment in Pakistan and Turkey, have suggested that in many gender-segregated societies women report experiencing more occupational and professional freedom than in gender-integrated Western societies such as the United States. Immigrant women's sense of loss or experience of duality may reflect women's continued internalized struggle with the sexist gendered systems not only in their own culture but also in their host cultures.
A final limitation is that the voices of women from the largest immigrant group to the United States, Mexican women, were not heard in Berger's book. Perhaps their voices can be heard in subsequent work of feminist scholars and practitioners who work toward making immigrant women's experiences more visible. On balance, this book represents an excellent step toward increasing our understanding of women's immigration experiences.