Chattel slavery once made economic sense in the New World, but eventually wage labor developed and became more economical than slavery -- hence its abolition in the mid-nineteenth century.
Likewise, it has become more economical to pay a male worker enough to buy foods, meals, clothes, sexual services, etc. from respective industries than paying him enough to maintain a wife. Commodification makes production efficient. Each individual housewife preparing food for her family, even with the help of modern household appliances, still lacks the benefit of economy of scale that makes mass production faster and cheaper. Capital, by commodifying many aspects of previously domestic work, has thus gained new industries for surplus value extraction, cheapened the value of labor power, and expanded a reserve army of labor. At the same time, women, no longer dependent on their men, gained the objective material ground for struggles for equal rights; and both men and women, now able to live as urban singles and divorced from the peasant procreative ethic of producing many offsprings for farm labor, gained the objective material ground for the creation of such novelties as "sexuality as such" (pleasure independent of duty of procreation) and "sexual identities" ("gay," "lesbian," "bisexual," "heterosexual," "trans-gender," "trans-sexual," etc.).
The above analysis abstracts from actual vicissitudes of labor history. The first productive wage laborers in many nations -- for instance, Japan -- were predominantly women. Also, most working-class individuals -- especially most blacks -- probably never had the luxury of having or becoming a full-time housewife for her entire adult life, even during the heydays of the "family wage" in the post-WW2 economic upsurge. Moreover, in many colonial and neo-colonial settings, migrant workers are compelled to live independently of their families: migrant miners in South Africa, Filipina maids in Singapore and the Gulf states, etc. Migrant work is increasingly feminized: at least half of migrant workers in Asia are said to be women.
Cf.
***** FOREIGN AND FOREIGN-BORN RESIDENTS
According to UN estimates, there were in 1990 about 120 million foreigners or foreign-born persons in 214 countries and territories, meaning that 2.3 percent of the world's population were international migrants living outside their country of citizenship or birth for 12 months or more. According to the UN data, there were about 76 million international migrants in 1965, 84 million in 1975, 106 million in 1985, and 120 million in 1990. The percentage of the world's population considered migrants was 2.3 percent in 1965, 2.1 percent in 1975, and 2.2 percent in 1985.
Over the past 25 years, the foreign-born percentage of the population rose in developed countries, from 3 to 4.5 percent between 1965 and 1990, and fell in developing countries, from 1.9 to 1.6 percent.
In 1997, the IOM General Director told the UN General Assembly that there were 140 million migrants, including 70 million in developing countries.
These data mix together two fundamentally different concepts. Foreigners are non citizens of the country in which they are living. Foreigners can be immigrants who moved into their country of residence, such as a Turk who moved to Germany, or persons born in the country to foreign parents--most countries do not grant birthright citizenship, so such children are foreigners. For example, about one million of the seven million foreigners in Germany in 1995 were born in Germany, and their number increases by 100,000 per year.
Foreign-born persons move to the country in which they currently live; they can be naturalized citizens or non citizens, and legal or illegal immigrants. In countries such as the US and Canada, which confer citizenship on all persons born in their territory, there can be no "foreigners" born in the country, as in Germany.
Immigration countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the US tend to distinguish between foreign-born and native-born residents, and sometimes sub-divide the foreign born into naturalized citizens and non-citizens. Countries that do not consider themselves to be open to immigration, such as those in Europe and Asia, distinguish between foreigners and citizens, and sometimes distinguish foreigners born in the country and those born outside the country.
It is important to keep the foreign and foreign-born distinction in mind. In immigration countries such as the US, the migrant population can grow only through immigration; in Europe and Asia, by contrast, the foreign population can grow through immigration or because of births to resident foreigners. On the other hand, foreign-born persons remain identifiable in US data, but Turks who become naturalized Germans disappear from the foreigner population in Germany.
UN foreign and foreign born data do not distinguish migrants by their reason for migration, by their date of arrival, or by their duration of stay. The UN data also do not distinguish between people moving across borders (immigration into the US and Canada), and borders moving over people, as occurred in India and Pakistan, or with the break up of Yugoslavia and the USSR.
In 1990, by UN definitions, there were 54 million foreigners among the 1.2 billion residents in developed nations, and 66 million foreigners among the 3.6 billion residents of developing nations. The UN defines developed countries to include Europe, the ex-USSR, the US and Canada, and Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.
By region, foreign born persons were 17.8 percent of the population of Oceania in 1990, 8.6 percent in North America, and 5 percent in Europe. The lowest percentages of foreign-born persons were in southeast Asia, with 1.2 percent foreign-born residents, Latin America, 1.6 percent, and south Asia, with 1.8 percent.
There were 28 countries with one million or more foreign-born persons in 1990--they collectively included 77 percent of all foreigners--led by the US with 19.6 million, and followed by India with 8.6 million, Pakistan with 7.3 million, France with 5.9 million, Germany with 5 million, Canada with 4.3 million, Saudi Arabia with 4 million, and Australia with 3.9 million. Countries with just over 1 million foreign born residents included Venezuela and Zaire, and then Switzerland, Turkey, Malawi, Jordan, South Africa, and Brazil, which each had 1.1 million foreign-born residents in 1990.
Middle Eastern nations top the list of places ranked by the share of foreign-born residents in the total population. In 1990, 90 percent of the residents of the United Arab Emirates were foreign-born, followed by Kuwait, 72 percent, Qatar, 63 percent, Macau, 45 percent, and Hong Kong, 40 percent. <http://migration.ucdavis.edu/Data/pop.on.www/foreign_pop.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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