Lauren Salvatore
April 9, 2010
Women’s Studies
Mid-term paper

All Work and No Play
The conditions in third world countries are continually worsening, causing endless turmoil and stress on the families who reside there. Immigration has been an on going issue in the United States, causing conflict, racism, and gender stereotypes. These challenges, constants, stereotypes and opportunities in which immigration brings to the U.S have created these transnational identities that are so controversial to the individuals who experience them. Hard working mothers are making next to nothing, leaving their children to make ends meet at a low paying job. Unfortunately, this is not good enough. Even with both the mother and father working, they cannot properly provide for their family, leaving them with only one option: the women must leave their families and come to America for work. Globalization has impacted not just the migrant women and created numerous gender stereotypes, but has also affected the third world countries themselves and the families who reside there. This essay will show specific accounts of migrant women and their experiences they have had while experiencing a transnational identity.
The impact that transnational identities have had on families in third world countries is larger than one may expect. Although it may seem as though they are abandoning their families, they have no other choice. Coming to America allows them to put food on the table for their children and provide a better future for the family. The women are able to make an exponentially larger amount of money becoming a nanny in Los Angeles than they would being a nurse in their home town.
Global Women speaks about the affects transnational identities have on migrant workers in the article “Love and Gold.” The fact that the woman are leaving their families and taking their knowledge, love, and care to other places, they are leaving their home worse-off than it once was (26). Their children are more likely to suffer from depression, anger issues, and have lack of focus in the classroom because of their loss of their parents (23). “Love and Gold” discusses the displacement of love and the suffering of a migrant worker named Maria and her Third World children:
[…] the nanny’s love is something at least partially produced by the conditions under which it is given- is Maria’s love of a first world child really being extracted from her own third world children? Yes, because her daily presence has been removed, and with it the daily expression of her love. It is, of course, the nanny herself who is doing the extraction. Still, if her children suffer the loss of her affection, she suffers with them. This, indeed, is globalization’s pound of flesh (26). The nannies are displacing the love they once were able to give to their own children and giving in to other children as they are acting as nannies in America (26).
The families are not the only ones being affected by globalization. The importation of care and love from poor countries to rich ones is making the rich nations richer and the poor countries poorer. The women are making much more money in the United States than they would in their home-land, for the middle class of the third world earns less than the poor of the first world (Love and Gold, 17). The fact that their labor and knowledge is being taken away from their own countries is causing the conditions to continually worsen. “Love and Gold” also describes how globalization is worsening the conditions of third world countries. Highly trained professionals of the Third world are leaving the beleaguered workplaces as doctors, teachers, and bankers and moving to better opportunities and much higher pay in the United States (17).
Stereotypes are also associated with migrant workers, some being positive and some being negative. The author states in “love and Gold” that, “it may be odd to say but the teachers aides we hire from