Verschillen die verschil maken: Inleiding op het themanummer over gender, migratie en overheidsbeleid in Nederland en België in de periode 1945-2005
Marlou Schrover
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Differences that make a difference: introduction to the special issue on gender, migration and government policy in the Netherlands and Belgium in the period 1945-2005
This article is the introduction to a special issue on gender, migration and government policy. It describes first briefly the literature on gender and migration in general and then focuses on the main topic. The article shows how policies were originally partly phrased in gender-neutral terms, but always applied in gender-specific ways. Later the policy came to be phrased gender-specifically. The articles in this issue show how the assumptions underlying the policy were never gender-neutral, regardless of how they were phrased. Furthermore, genderspecific assumptions were combined with ethnic-specific assumptions, which in practice led to an enlargement of differences according to gender in migration and integration policies.

Gemengd huwen, nationaliteit en de verschillen voor mannen en vrouwen. Poolse oudgedienden en Ostarbeiterinnen in België tijdens de Koude Oorlog
Machteld Venken
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Mixed marriages, citizenship and the differences for men and women. Polish ex-combatants and Ostarbeiterinnen in Belgium during the Cold War
In the aftermath of World War II, Polish soldiers who had liberated parts of Flanders and Ostarbeiterinnen, Eastern European women who had been employed in the Nazi war industry, arrived in Belgium and married Belgian citizens. Belgian law required women, who married a foreigner, to exchange their original citizenship for that of their husbands. Scholars assume that derivative citizenship worked to immigrant women’s advantage, because they were granted the citizenship of the settlement country. My examination, however, made clear that in most daily practices, Ostarbeiterinnen were in a less advantageous position than Polish soldiers. I argue that scholars should focus on various context specific factors, the marriage contract, concepts of gendered citizenship, migration and naturalisation policies, the dual nature of citizenship and the geopolitical situation, in order to discover a framework of sometimes contradicting possibilities based on dominant gender presumptions in policy and daily practices that shaped different (dis)advantages for men and women with regard to the consequences of their marriages and citizenship on their lives.

Echtgenotes, mijnarbeiders, au-pairs en soldaten: de pionnen op het Europese schaakbord. Gender en de Europese migratieonderhandelingen, 1950-1968
Simone Goedings
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Spouses, miners, au pairs and soldiers: the pawns on the European chessboard. Gender and the European migration negotiations, 1950-1968
In the 1950s and 1960s the free movement of workers was discussed within the ECSC and the EEC. European migration legislation granted favourable migration rights to the citizens of the member states of the ECSC and the EEC. Most literature about the free movement of workers discussed the European legislation from the point of view of citizenship. Gender as a mechanism for inclusion and exclusion has not been researched in this context. This article examines whether or not gender played a role in the ideas of the negotiators in Brussels. The reason why European legislation did not distinguish between men and women was not the result of a sex-neutral policy on the European level, but more the result of ignoring of female labour migration.

Ongehuwd en kinderloos. Regels, sekseonderscheid en arbeidsmigratie naar Nederland 1945-2006
Tesseltje de Lange
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Unmarried and without children. Law, gender segregation and labour migration to the Netherlands 1945-2006
This article focuses on the laws regarding labour migration of women to the Netherlands. The question raised is how different norms applied to female and male labour migrants with regard to marital status and parenthood are justified. From 1945 until 1968 the law explicitly stated that female labour migrants had to be unmarried and without children. This is illustrated with case-studies of the migration of Philippine nurses and Yugoslavian women to the Netherlands. Although the laws changed in 1979 into gender neutral texts, in practice employers still required female labour migrants to come to the Netherlands without a husband and children. Also, the laws applicable for typical female work de facto limited the opportunity for female migrants to have spouse and children accompany them to the Netherlands. Again two case-studies on the temporary admittance of Asian nightclub dancers in the early 1990s and of Polish nurses at the turn of the twenty-first century illustrate the persisting sex difference in Dutch labour migration law and practice. Throughout the studied sixty years the difference can be explained by traditional family values. After 1979 an explanation can be found in the governments fear for a large influx of migrants and the employers wishes to profit as much as possible from these labour migrants.

Ambtelijke onmin rond gezinnen van gastarbeiders. Beleidsvorming inzake gezinsmigratie in Nederland, 1955-1970
Saskia Bonjour
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Discord among civil servants over families of guest workers. The making of family reunification policies in the Netherlands, 1955-1970
Unlike what has often been assumed, family reunification has been a priority issue for policymakers in the Netherlands not from the 1970s onwards, but as early as the 1950s. It was hotly debated not so much by politicians as by civil servants. Between 1955 and 1970, the conditions for family reunification were the object of continuous strife between the two ministries most involved: Social Affairs and Justice. Social Affairs strove for liberal family reunification policies; Justice would have preferred to prohibit the entrance of guest workers’ family members altogether. This article argues that the roots for these disputes should be sought in the fundamentally conflicting policy frames through which the civil servants of these two ministries approached the migration issue.