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Gender and Migration

Gender and Migration

Isabel Rodriguez Mora | Monica Kiwanuka | Stavros Psaroudakis | Caroline Kihato | Khatidja Chantler | Sajida Ismail | Julie Middleton | Chandre Gould | Alexandra Zavos | Professor Erica Burman | Ingrid Palmary | Peace Kiguwa | Khatidja Chantler

(2010)

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Book Details

Abstract

Provocative and intellectually challenging, Gender and Migration critically analyses how gender has been taken up in studies of migration and its theories, practices and effects. Each essay uses feminist frameworks to highlight how more traditional tropes of gender eschew the complexities of gender and migration. In tackling this problem, this collection offers students and researchers of migration a more nuanced understanding of the topic.
Ingrid Palmary is a senior researcher in the Forced Migration Studies Progamme at the University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg. She has written on a range of topics including gender based violence in times of armed conflict, the gendered nature of displacement and the intersections of 'domestic' and 'political' violence. Peace Kiguwa lectures in Psychology and currently Gender and Human Rights at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Erica Burman is Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies in Manchester Metropolitan University. Her most recent books Deconstructing Developmental Psychology (2008) and Developments: child, image, nation (2008) reflect these themes. Khatidja Chantler is a lecturer and researcher in Social Work at the University of Manchester. She is also a counsellor and supervisor and has worked in health and social care settings for over 25 years.
'This original collection brings a feminist, intersectional and interdisciplinary lens to question the seemingly innocuous ‘and’ in discussions of gender and migration. Highly recommended.' Rosalind Gill, King’s College 'Reading this book, which is highly recommended, you are swept into postcolonial countries as well as into the old heart of Europe and you will necessarily loose the sense of innocence and neutrality in relation to your own thinking and conceptualizing.' Frigga Haug, The Berlin Institute of Critical Theory 'This book makes a significant contribution to the growing literature on the gendered character of migrations as well as that of states and societies' responses to them.' Nira Yuval-Davis 'This is a theoretically rich exploration of gender and migration. Each chapter covers crucial issues, but the collection as a whole makes key interventions in understandings of policy and humanitarian issues. It is provocative and imaginative in its careful, scholarly and accessible treatment of issues frequently taken for granted by governments, international agencies and human rights activists. It deserves to become essential reading, not only in a variety of academic disciplines, but by those working in, and legislating about, migration as well as the wider public.' Ann Phoenix, Institute of Education 'This is a must-read for anyone in the ever-widening fields of international relations and migration studies.' M. Brinton Lykes, Boston College 'This book is a critical resource for 21st century feminist scholars, practitioners, activists, students and policymakers.' Jude Clark, University of KwaZulu-Natal

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
About the Editors ii
1 | Gender and migration: feminist interventions 1
Interrogating the ‘and’ in gender and migration 1
Visibility, vulnerability, credibility 7
PART ONE: Visibility and Vulnerability 13
2 | Gender, migration and anti-racist politics in the continued project of the nation 15
Introduction 15
Genealogies of struggle: introducing ‘support action’ 16
The development of anti-racist discourses on ‘the problem’ of migration 18
Gendered anti-racist politics in practice 24
Conclusion 29
Note 30
3 | The problem of trafficking 31
Introduction 31
The problem of defining trafficking 32
Research methods and the problem of numbers 37
Critiques of the trafficking discourse 41
The securitisation of the problem of trafficking 44
Conclusion 47
Notes 48
4 | Sex, choice and exploitation: reflections on anti-trafficking discourse 50
Introduction 50
The problem of trafficking 51
Reflecting on choice and agency 53
Re-imagining home 58
Colonial legacies 60
Conclusion 62
Note 63
PART TWO: Asylum 65
5 | Barriers to protection: gender-related persecution and asylum in South Africa 67
The South African asylum system 68
Common crime vs. persecution (personal vs. political) 71
Safe/unsafe, peace/war? 76
Culture as political 80
Conclusion 83
Notes 84
6 | Safe to return? A case study of domestic violence, Pakistani women and the UK asylum system 86
Introduction 86
Background 87
A transnational focus on gender, culture, racism and domestic violence 89
Pakistan: specific issues 92
Pakistan and the UK: commonalities 93
Service provision in the UK: service ‘breakdown’ 95
Service provision in Pakistan 97
The 1951 Refugee Convention: protection ‘home’ and‘away’? 99
Evidence in asylum case-law 99
Conclusion: safe to return? 101
Notes 102
7 | Women seeking asylum in the UK: contesting conventions 104
Current statistical overview 105
1951 UN Convention and gender 108
The continuing importance of the 1951 UN Convention 111
Borders, public mandates and technology 113
Conclusion 116
8 | Explicating the tactics of banal exclusion: a British example 119
Introduction 119
Home Office discourse as performative 122
Talking institutions 123
(Un)Structuring the analysis 125
A cursory attempt at identifying discourses 128
Discursive motifs: structure vs. fluidity 129
From gender-specificity to being treated as an individual 131
Conclusion 133
Appendix: interview schedule 135
Notes 137
PART THREE: Depoliticising Migration 139
9 | Now you see me, now you don’t: methodologies and methods of the interstices 141
Introduction 141
The limits of words 142
Research method 143
Figure 9.1 The research group at one of our meetings 144
Women’s social economic and legal contexts in Johannesburg 146
Interrogating power in the research process 147
Research as performance 151
Identity building: migrant women’s self-portraits 154
Figure 9.2 Florence getting ready to go out 155
Figure 9.3 ‘Here is me, Mama Africa’ 155
Figure 9.4 Jean in front of a luxury car in a mall 157
Dialectic between visibility and invisibility 158
Conclusion 161
Notes 162
10 | For love or survival: migrant women’s narratives of survival and intimate partner violence in Johannesburg 163
Introduction 163
Background 164
The immigration context and migrant women’s undocumented status in South Africa 165
Survival love and intimate partner violence 167
Negotiating intimate partner violence for survival 173
Conclusion 176
Notes 178
11 | Re-housing trouble: post-disaste rreconstruction and exclusionary strategies in Venezuela 180
Introduction 180
Disaster in a divided society 181
Shelters and the temporary breakdown of social distances 183
Psychosocial interventions and the othering of the poor 184
Re-housing and the restoration of social distances 192
Conclusion 194
12 | An arm hanging in mid-air: a discussion on immigrant men and impossible relationships in Greece 196
Introduction 196
Figure 12.1 197
Small talk after the detention space: moments of silence and aporia 199
Aporias of mainstream immigration discourses vis-à-vis male immigrants’ desires 201
A discussion with Thanasis Tatavlalis on the Weast video: context and background 203
Figure 12.2 203
A discussion with Thanasis Tatavlalis 205
Figure 12.3 208
Conclusion 211
Notes 213
Bibliography 215
About the contributors 236
Index 238