Gendering Diaspora: The Work of Diasporic Women Film-Makers in Western Europe

Abstract

A number of recent Western European films about border crossings have featured the trajectories of contemporary migrant women in Europe, drawing attention to the increased feminisation of migration patterns and new types of female migrants in the era of globalisation and transnational capitalism (see Castles and Miller 2003). These films – which include Dirty Pretty Things (UK 2002, dir. Stephen Frears), Lilja 4-ever (Sweden/Denmark 2002, dir. Lukas Moodysson), Rezervni deli/Spare Parts (Slovenia 2003, dir. Damjan Kozole), Transe (Portugal 2006, dir. Teresa Villaverde) and Ghosts (UK 2006, dir. Nick Broomfield) – tend to highlight the ways in which migrant women may be the victims of such cross-border traffic, focusing on their vulnerability as exploited and often illegal workers or their trafficking as prostitutes. As Ljiljana Coklin points out, such films challenge the assumed notion of female liberation (the linear narrative transition from ‘oppression’ to ‘emancipation’) […]: women’s economic independence and geographic movement remain controlled by corporate interests and the needs and desires of male ‘guides’ and ‘protectors’. (2006: unpaginated)