Gender and Diaspora

Gender and Diaspora

1. Feminization of migration

   • The migration of women is not a new phenomenon but for a very long time women were absent from migration scholarship, passive actors (Morokvasic, 2008).
     • Beginning of the 1980s: discourses on the feminization of migration as a ‘new’ global pattern (Castles and Miller, 2009)
       • There has been globalization trends in migration, but also diversification in terms of who migrates, and their status for migration. This has given attention to women
       • Why are women invisibilized as migrants? Men’ s migration and women’s immobility as ‘natural’ based on the idea of ancient hunter-gatherer societies (Gunvor, 2006)
         • Gender bias predicated on the gendered division of labour, that is, a male breadwinner versus a female housewife
         • An absence of female researchers in academia (Lutz, 2008)
         • But there have been some changes in female migration
           • A gradual increase in the percentage of female migrants (Castles and Miller)
           • An increase in absolute levels of female mobility (UNFPA, 2006)
           • An increase in women’s economic mobility in particular (Piper, 2005
           • International Handbook on Gender, Migration and Transnationalism, Verschuur (2013) considers that “‘feminization of migration’ refers to a specific process, namely, that of women increasingly migrating as independent workers, not necessarily with their families”
           • From the 1970s to the early 1980s: effort to document women’s experiences, correcting male bias, writing about women: also called the ‘add-women-and-stir’ approach (Hondagneu-Sotelo 2003
           • Mahler (2001) brought gender back into the field of transnational studies with the aim to examine how and why gender relations are renegotiated in transnational contexts
     • Donato and Gabaccia, 2016) also say that women's migration isnt new, looking at the slave trade

2. Case study

   • Congolese youth diasporic activism in the UK:
     • In the UK, the politicisation of the Congolese diaspora : not new: les Combattants (‘the fighters’): mostly first generation men
       • 1997-2003 (onwards): Mobilisation of 1st generation of women in the diaspora to tackle SGBV
         • The 2011 presidential election in the DRC were the trigger for the Youth to raising their own voices.
           • Unification of the different groups: “this day marks something that we can link Congo as one “[Parfaite, born in 1987, in the UK since 1992, London 2015] : intersectional approach
             • Creating new territories where the local, the national, the transnational, the diasporic and the virtual intersect and overlap

3. Gendering the field of diaspora studies

   • Difference between transnationalism and diaspora/ Three main distinctions (Faist, 2010): 1) Transnationalism is a broader term than ‘diaspora’ 2) Diaspora: collective identity formation rather than transnationalism concerned with issues related to mobility
   • Clifford (1994), ‘diasporic experiences are always gendered but there is a tendency for theoretical accounts of diasporas and diaspora cultures to hide this fact, to talk in unmarked ways
     • Defining diaspora has been tricky. Jewish diaspora >>> overuse >>> Cohen (1997) outlines core elements and features
       • Limitations in gendering the field:
         • Main focus on the private sphere and the household for women: rise of interest in transnational families. Women as political actors are being overlooked.
           • Invisibilisation of the gendered experiences of men
             • Could lead to an ‘essentialist association of “gender” with “women”’ (Sarti and Scrinzi 2010)
               • While still scarce, more studies are looking specifically at the role of masculinity as well as femininity prior to migration, during and after migration (Pasura, 2008)
                 • Pasura looks at Zimbabweans in the UK. How migration shapes gender roles and how women respond to their new gendered identities.
                   • Public spaces where both men and women resist changes that are happening within diaspora households ; a form of resistance by men to regain male authority in households.
                     • Diasporas as a site of cultural conflict: Exploring the diverse ways notions of masculinity and gender identities are being challenged, reaffirmed, and reconfigured

4. Intersectionalizing

   • Classes are always gendered and racialised and gender is always classed and racialized” (Anthias, 2012)
     • Diasporas should be framed within a contextual, dynamic and processual analysis that recognizes the interconnectedness of different identities and hierarchical structures (Anthias, 2012)
       • Contradictory locations where dominant and subordinate locations intersect. For example, Ghanaian worker in the UK may be positioned differently than when he visits Ghana or in relation to co-ethnics in the diaspora
         • Being in the diaspora can be a space for sexual independence, a space where sexual identities shaped by patriarchal socio-cultural and religious structures and nationalist discourses can be challenged (Batisai 2016)