Gendering Migration

Abstract

Migration patterns, migration discourse and underlying representations, migrants’ experiences, obligations and duties as well as the expectations relative to their migration are gendered. Since the pioneering feminist migration scholars’ questioning of men as a universal reference and the invisibility of women or their stereotypical representations as dependents in the mainstream production of knowledge on migration, the scholarship has evolved considerably. It is argued in the paper that the ongoing process of cross-fertilization of developments in two separate epistemologies, each initially questioning monolithic and essentialist visions of a “migrant” on one hand and a “woman” on the other, produced a fecund subfield of research “migration and gender”. The paper provides an insight into this, reviewing work on the issues related to gendering different phases of migration. Bridging migration and gender brought to the top of research agendas issues that used to be on the margins, creating new visibilities but leaving out other gendered dimensions of complex realities of migrant experience.