Women account for slightly less than half of international migrants; however, they are disproportionately affected by gender-based discrimination, abuse and violence, whilst being invisible in their experiences.
The aim of this project is to bring together an interdisciplinary global platform to advance research and approaches to women’s migration flows, patterns, experiences, agency and vulnerabilities. It is been highlighted by several actors including the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants (2019) that the experiences of women and girls, and in particular the human rights abuses they face in migration are underrepresented and researched. This project will bring forth recent research findings regarding experiences of women and girls in their migration, and how women and girls exercise agency and respond to these human rights abuses, thereby moving beyond a victimization approach.
The network includes scholars from multiple disciplines (migration, psychology, sociology) that seek to work collaboratively with UN organizations and NGOs to improve data collection on women’s migration and the representation of vulnerable women in migration research. This team will build on existing research in Taiwan with female marriage migrants, in Ethiopia with internal migrant adolescent girls, in South Africa with women labour migrants, in Australia with resettled refugees, in Mexico/Central America with migrants en route to the United States, and in Europe with female asylum seekers and irregular migrants. All of these flows address underrepresented and researched female migration experiences and patterns.
Key objectives of this project include:
1) A methodological guidance note on conducting research with vulnerable female migrants
2) A set of comparable case studies on the different experiences, challenges, and research gaps in female migration in Australia, Europe, South Africa and Taiwan
3) A data brief on data gaps relating to women migrants and their vulnerabilities
Visit the project website Women & Migration to learn more. Women in Migration is a collaborative storytelling project about the journeys migrant women take, and what happens once they reach their destination. We have collected testimonies from more than 100 women worldwide to shed light on how gender affects migration, and to highlight the resilience of those who seek a new life far from home.
