Gendering migration management

Abstract

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) formally adopted the principle of gender mainstreaming in 1995, at the same time as it embraced its new mandate in Toward the 21st Century. This chapter examines the process of ‘gendering’ the IOM, with particular attention to its understanding of transnational care chains. It argues that, in many ways, the IOM’s gender discourse has been shaped to fit the IOM’s migration management discourse, a discourse that forms part of the broader international migration narrative. On the issue of transnational care chains, however, the IOM has commissioned a set of important studies that break with the gendered subset of these narratives. The IOM’s closer relationship with the UN also holds the promise of increasing the impact of the more critical discourse on its field operations.