Policing gender mobilities: interrogating the ‘feminisation of migration’ to Europe

ABSTRACT

This article proposes a gendered critique of the European Neighbourhood Policy, a framework that, amongst other things, aims to facilitate the mobility of migrants to the EU from the bordering countries. We highlight the ambivalences of European gender and migration regimes, and we take issue with the celebration of the ‘feminisation of migration’. The former fails to offer opportunities to women to safely embark on autonomous migratory projects, the latter contributes to reproduce traditional gender biases in the countries of origin as well as of destination. We conclude by suggesting that the EU critique to emigration countries for failing to tackle women’s discrimination is less than persuasive when assessed vis-á-vis with the curtailment on women’s independent mobility across European borders.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• policy
• migration
• Eastern Europe
• North Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Sabrina Marchetti is Associate Professor at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari. She is mainly specialised on issues of gender, racism, labour and migration, with a specific focus on the question of migrant domestic work. For more info and contact details: www.sabrinamarchetti.net

Ruba Salih is a social anthropologist and a Reader in Gender Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research interests include migration, gender, refugees and the Palestine question.

ORCID

Sabrina Marchetti http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5765-9522

Notes

1. For updates on the status of the negotiations between these countries and the EU, see http://eeas.europa.eu/enp/index_en.htm [Accessed 31 March 2017].

2. See reports published at http://eeas.europa.eu/enp/documents/progress-reports/index_en.htm [Accessed 31 March 2017].

3. See Debusscher 2012 for a critique of the gender mainstreaming approach in these interventions.