Migration, Institutions and Intimate Lives: Towards a New Agenda

Migration has become an increasingly prominent focus in the social sciences since at least the 1970s, with discussion turning early to questions of gender.1 Historians have played a crucial role in the field, as well as geographers, sociologists and anthropologists. Forty years later, it is clear that the ‘gender turn’ in migration history has lifted women to the centre stage of short- and long-distance migrations, and elicited new approaches. Gender as a category of analysis in migration has not merely meant the recovery of women who migrated; it has led to a deeper analysis of the gendered relations constructed by space and the movement between spaces, as well as of the power relations inherent in migration control. New theoretical and methodological considerations of gendered paths in migration have challenged the classical view of migration as emancipation, insisting on the importance of care and domestic roles. The link between place of origin and place of arrival has been revisited through the study of gendered relations among those who leave and those who stay. A gender approach has also led to the acknowledgement of the need to improve analyses of servitude and slavery through the lens of gendered patterns, intersecting with other constructs such as race, class, religion and sexuality.