The Gender of Borders: Embodied Narratives of Migration, Violence and Agency

This book brings an intersectional perspective to border studies, drawing on case studies from across the world to consider the ways in which notably gender and race dynamics change the ways in which people cross international borders, and how diffuse and virtual borders impact on migrants' experiences.

By bringing together 11 ethnographies, the book demonstrates the necessity for in-depth empirical research to understand the class, gender and race inequalities that shape contemporary borders. In doing so the volume sheds light on how migration control produces gendered violence at physical borders but also through the politics of vulnerability across borders and social boundaries. It places embodied narratives at the heart of the analysis which sheds light on the agency and the many patterns of resistance of migrants themselves.

As such, it will appeal to scholars of migration and diaspora studies with interests in gender.

Jane Freedman is Professor of Sociology at the Université Paris 8 and Director of the CRESPPA-GTM Research Centre in Paris. She has researched and published widely on issues of gender, violence and forced migration and is currently leading an international research project on Violence against Migrant and Refugee Women (GBV-MIG) funded by the EU under its GenderNet Plus research programme.

Alice Latouche is a PhD student in sociology affiliated to Migrinter researcher center (University of Poitiers, France) and to the CRESPPA-GTM Research Centre in Paris. She is also a fellow at the Institut Convergences MIGRATIONS, France. Her work focuses on the impact of accommodation programmes aimed at ‘vulnerable’ people on the experiences of migrant women. She follows the journey of migrant women she met in the camp of Chios and in the camp of Samos, who are now living on the mainland in order to understand how the asylum system is maintaining women in a situation of precarity and extimity.

Adelina Miranda is an anthropologist, a professor at the University of Poitiers and a member of the MIGRINTER research centre. Her approach to migrations is based on a localised, historicised and relational perspective. This academic posture is part of a movement of renewal in the field of migration, which is based on multidisciplinary and intersectional interpretative approaches.

Nina Sahraoui is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Paris Centre for Sociological and Political Research (CRESPPA, CNRS) conducting the project CYBERGEN (2021–22). Her research revolves around interdisciplinary studies of migration, gender and healthcare, with particular attention to questions of care, gender-based violence, borders, humanitarianism and racialization.

Glenda Santana de Andrade is a Post-doctoral researcher in sociology, attached to the Centre for Sociological and Political Research in Paris (CRESPPA-GTM), fellow at the Institut Convergences MIGRATIONS, France. Her research focuses on refugees, migration, citizenship, collective action and survival strategies. She is currently working on a multi-country multidisciplinary study entitled ‘Transactional sex and the health repercussions in forced migration’, coordinated by Prof. Jane Freedman (Université Paris 8) and Dr Shirin Heidari (IHEID).

Elsa Tyszler is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Sociological and Political Research in Paris (CRESPPA). She is currently working on the intersections between gender-based violence and migration policies at French borders, in the frame of the GBV-MIG international research project coordinated by Prof. Jane Freedman and funded by the Gender-Net Plus consortium. She has published in various journals and books in English, French and Spanish.