Gendering Migration Across Euro-Mediterranean Borders: Syrian refugee women on the way to the Europe

Abstract

The following paper explores a “hidden” aspect of the Syrian refugee movement across the Euro-Mediterranean that still has not grasped the attention of the researchers: the Syrian women passages across the Central Mediterranean border. Since half a decade, the Syrian women have been experiencing and coping various challenges across the land and sea borders on the Euro-Mediterranean route. Founded on gender-based “practice approach”, the following paper focuses on the ways Syrian women experience the Euro-Mediterranean border passages and how the regional and especially EU-led border security industry affect their lives in the Middle East and Europe. Based on empirical data retrieved through selected interviews, life-story reports and institutional and practice analyses of the situation of Syrian women in Lebanon and Jordan, the paper answers the following questions: -Why and how the Syrian women leave Lebanon and Jordan? - What physical, institutional and political borders and border performances they encounter during their journey from North Africa towards the Europe? - How the EU border security operations affect their passages and lives?