When discussing migration in class, a motivation for many migrants to leave their home country was the aspect of empowerment. Women have begun to leave their families in order to work, acting as the head of the family. Using the skills that they already know, often with many having high education levels, they leave to go to a host country to find jobs.
Women are more likely than men to send money home, and more of it, which helps their family and their home countries economy. They often will take their children with them, which ultimately will give them a better life too. When looking at these different host countries, women are often perceived to be less threatening than migrant men when looking at the fear of possible violence and taking jobs from citizens in the host country. Women are typically welcomed and helped in communities within their host countries.
The short video shows an interactive exhibition at Palais des Nations in Geneva about gender and migration, which asked those who viewed it to experience how gender influences different paths of migration. Those in the video can be seen discussing how the audience is able to put themselves into the shoes of those who have risked their lives and family in order to migrate.
Migration today is truly about going back and forth from your host country to back home. With women migrating, taking the role of head of the house and then coming home allows the empowerment she has received to be returned to her home country and spread to other women. Women who are then empowered may also decide to migrate to a host country for work causing a cycle of empowerment
Another aspect from the class that was covered in this video was the concept of a single story and how no two migrants are the same, coming from different genders, backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses, religions, disabilities, ages and sexual identities.
This tweet from the Official account of the United Nations Migration Agency really ties together the connection between female migration and empowerment.
Empowering women, empowers humanity.— IOM - UN Migration (@UNmigration) March 4, 2018
To achieve the Global Goals & leave no one behind, #TimeIsNow to speak up for gender equality & women’s rights! #IWD2018 pic.twitter.com/VUuBvSQQQg
With the large amounts of female migration, the need and want for equality and ensured rights have risen. Empowering women through migration will indeed empower humanity. We all need to work together to reach that.
-Hannah Moskowitz
-Hannah Moskowitz
Thank you for expanding on such an important and critical topic. Migration, especially undocumented migration, in this current cultural moment is a hot-button topic, but it really should not be. Empowering women through migration is important in creating equality and equity. However, migration is often controlled by the dominant culture. This means that those with power often dictate every aspect of migration for individuals. This can allow for a degradation and loss of culture of these individuals through forced assimilation into the dominant culture.
ReplyDeleteTo combat forced assimilation in host countries, immigrants often form diasporas to maintain their cultural ties. Even with these diasporas, migrants, especially female migrants, still face much adversity in host countries. Women migrants not only face stigmatization outside of their diasporas, but they may face adversity within their diasporas as well through gendered social norms. I think your point about equality is spot on, and that we need to empower individuals in their host countries if they do migrate, but also in their home countries if they do not, both without forcing the dominant culture onto them. How we accomplish this, though, is another question.
I really enjoyed the video you shared and would have loved to see the exhibit in person to really get a sense of all the artist covered through their installation. I completely agree with your perspective on migration – I believe that a woman who leaves everything she is familiar with to go to a faraway foreign place is braver than anyone I’ve ever met. The narrative on migration in today’s world is disheartening, especially in the United States. Hearing Donald Trump call all migrants rapists and drug dealers isn’t the narrative that deserves attention, although it is the only one that’s publicly broadcast.
ReplyDeleteI believe that by sharing and elaborating on the individual stories of migrant women, especially those who maintain a back-and-forth with their families (by sending money to not only help them but their country), that the narrative could be changed. In today’s society, only the negative aspect of migration is focused on, and in Trump’s narrative, there are no benefits. However, when one is able to learn that an immigrant mother is only in the United States because of her love for her family and home country, perhaps citizens would react more positively to migrants who only want to help understand that migrants don’t mean any harm.
I really liked the video that you shared. I think the exhibition broke down a lot of assumption about migration. I feel that we sometimes forget that migration is not always about being a refugee and attempting to obtain asylum, but rather it can be about moving to another country where women's skill will be more widely accepted and used.
ReplyDeleteI found interest in a comment about how migration is a process of going back and forth. Not only do these women feel empowered in their new country, but they will also bring back new ideologies about gender equality to their home country. I think that this is crucial point about migration. It is not just a "going" action , but also it is a "returning" one. Many individuals especially here in the U.S. do not consider that migrant workers could at some point return back to their home country. Migration does not mean permanence.
I think this is especially true for the migrant caravan that we have seen recently on the news. Many of these migrants are fleeing political and gang violence in their home country, but this does not mean this violence will continue forever. This also means that their stay here in the U.S. wont last for forever.