Event by Stellamarina Donato (Università LUMSA, Rome, Italy) and Alexandra Yingst (University of Iceland)
Zoom, 12 January 2021
One key objective of the Women on the Move (WEMov) COST Action is to reflect on equal gender representation within the field of gender and migration studies. To understand why both within the Action and in academia in general, women seem to be the most involved in female migration research, the Action held a meeting in January. The objective of the meeting was to show that men and women are equally concerned by female migration and that this is not a gendered field.
Members of the Action were asked to come to this discussion with the answers of two prompts in mind. Those who identify as male in the group were asked to describe why they are personally concerned with female migration, and women were asked to answer why they feel that men should be concerned about female migration. Both men and women were then asked to share a story of men’s involvement in female migration, from a historical, contemporary, or personal perspective.
As everyone in the Action agrees, women have long been labor migrants who have characterized what Europe is today and will determine how Europe will be defined in the future. Some narratives claim that women are vulnerable or do not contribute much to the economy as migrants. This group rejects those narratives and instead highlights the unique experiences that both genders have in migration, as well as the contributions that both genders have made to migration studies.
One key finding from the discussion is that gender equality is not a women’s issue, especially not when it comes to migration. A member said that, “Gendered construction has led to abuses of men who are not seen as vulnerable and then do not receive the same protection as women.” Whereas women are often seen as vulnerable and without power upon migration, men are generally not seen as vulnerable, which obscures many issues that men face upon migrating. According to one member of the Action, “Male migrants are all making money to send back, they don’t talk about their own health, and they statistically die sooner than non-migrant men.” For the sake of men, female migration needs to be researched.
Additionally, in the home, female migration almost always affects men. For example, if the mother of a family migrates to another country, the responsibility of childcare often falls on the father. Another member talked about how in his research, sometimes the male partners of female migrants cannot find a job after migrating, which changes the home dynamic.
Some of the researchers in the Action are female migrants themselves. One member discussed how her dad migrated first and her mother followed. However, as an adult female migrant, our colleague from WEMov was the one to migrate first, and the men in her life followed. Another group member talked about her brothers-in-law who live and work in Germany and who have brought their wives with them. However, those women are working and are financially independent. Their migration was motivated by the mobility of men.
When speaking about migration, one member said, “Men are not just observers in the process, they are actually involved.” As the above examples show, in both migration and in the study of migration, this is very true. The involvement of more men in researching female migration would be beneficial in bringing the topic of female migration to light. Female mobility can be a marginalized topic, and one member stated that we “need to mainstream the studies of female migration into the general framework of migration studies.”
Some members of WEMov also suggested different theoretical and methodological ways to address the issue. Among them there was a reference to integrate the capability approach, to challenge the vulnerability theory as a women’s only matter and to adopt a human rights approach.
As one member nicely put, we need to “layer and appreciate the complexity of issues that are not constituted in binaries of men and women but have more layered and complex dynamics”. Similarly, the involvement of men in the field of female migration does not have to focus on the binary of men and women being involved in a 50/50 ratio. As this discussion proved, all genders need to be represented in the study of female migration because all genders are affected by it and in turn affect it.
Rather than strive for a 50/50 ratio of males and females involved with this Action, it is more important that all genders are represented at all levels in the Action: stakeholders, members in leading positions, members involved in single WGs, smaller groups working on special initiatives for the Action, and more. We are working towards challenging gender barriers and biases in research. Our final aim is to show that women’s migration is not – and should not be – a gendered field. For this reason, we are planning other activities such as an edited volume and a virtual exhibition on unknown stories of people (individuals and groups) involved in women migration across the ages.