15 The Female Face of Migraon: towards the Empowerment of Migrant Women by Faith Mabera* The unfolding migrant crisis in Europe, depicted as the worst humanitarian and migrant crisis since World War II, has glaringly exposed a number of crucial issues in the discourse on internaonal mi- graon, especially as it pertains to forced migraon. Key among these issues are the rights of refugees and asylum seekers, the responsibilies of transit and desnaon countries, and even more pernent - ly, the rights of migrant women. The concept ‘mi- grant women’ is an umbrella term that may refer to a range of circumstances relevant to women on the move who are of different ages; vary in terms of le- gal status (legally resident, undocumented migrants or refugees); and who migrate for a myriad of rea- sons (voluntary or forced migraon). Women connue to make up a significant poron of internaonal migrants, with the Internaonal Orga- nizaon for Migraon (IOM) esmang that approx- imately half of the world’s 1 billion migrants and half of the esmated 51 million displaced persons are women. A concept which captures the centrality of gender in migraon is the ‘feminizaon of migra- on.’ 1 The feminizaon of migraon is premised on three noons. The first idea denotes the quantave increase in female migraon; the second noon en- tails the visibility of female migraon in the migra- on literature; and the third perspecve conceptual- izes feminizaon of migraon as an approach which addresses the gendered dimensions of migraon, emphasizing the agency of women in the migratory context as well as the potenal of migraon as an empowerment tool for women. Up unl the 1980’s, 1 Notes Swing, W.L.2015. ‘IOM Director General’s Message on Interna- tional Women’s Day 2015’ http://weblog.iom.int/iom-director-gener- al%E2%80%99s-message-international-womens-day-2015 women were largely ‘invisible’ in the migratory dis- course, translang to the absence of a gendered analysis of how issues such as gender roles, division of labour, equality and gender equity interact with the various forms of migraon. Prior to the uptake of gendered approaches to mi- graon, women were generally seen as passive sub- jects of internaonal migraon, dependent on male migrants and only moving as part of the household. However, the predominance of women in the care employment sector, in health, nursing, food service, housework, and care for children, elderly and ill peo- ple, illuminated the role of women as autonomous agents in the labour market and as breadwinners, thereby shiſting noons of tradional gender roles. Feminizaon of migraon has to be understood in the context of the ‘age of migraon’ 2 where, in ad- dion to its engendering, migraon has increasingly been characterized by globalizaon (variety of states impacted by migraon; acceleraon (quantave increase in migrant numbers); differenaon (mi- grants belong to a range of ethnicies and naonali- es) and policizaon (elevaon of migraon issues to the realm of high polics). On the posive side, migraon is an avenue for the empowerment of women as it provides an opportu- nity for them to improve their economic situaons as income earners and contributors to the upkeep of households. However, at the same me, migra- 2 Castles, S. and Miller, M.J. 1998. ‘The Age of migra- tion: International Population Movements in the Modern World,’in The Feminization of Migration: Dreams and Realities of Migrant Women in Four Latin American Countries edited by C. Lipszyc,p.8
The Female Face of Migration: towards the Empowerment of Migrant Women
Aug 04, 2023
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