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The COVID-19 pandemic has signified an historical change in human mobility. By transforming the patterns of people on the move, it has highlighted gender-based inequalities and women’s vulnerabilities. The link between COVID-19 and return migration shapes returnees’ readaptation process in their home countries, as returnees are embedded in a limbo between the pandemic’s pressure on the policy and socio-economic setting, on one hand, and their efforts for reintegration, on the other. Due to the pandemic, the gender-based imbalance has increased existing gender gaps both in migration and return, exacerbating women’s vulnerability. Thus, personal aspirations and professional expectations of highly educated women are caught in a system of socio-economic and geographical (im)mobility, which represents the principal outcome in their relocation and readaptation process. Based on a qualitative methodology through the analysis of ten life histories of highly educated returnee migrant women, this paper sheds light on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on their migratory trajectories, providing a typology of them. Findings stress the necessity for more sustainable measures and resources for life–work balance and gender-sensitive policies, to promote a better integration process into the local labour market; to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on returnee women, and to prevent the proliferation of mental health problems among returnee women.

The main aim of this paper is to discuss the socio-political meaning of the transnational literary production made by female migrant writers. Thus, it analyses their role in the framework of the ‘hybrid’ literary production of the 21st century in Europe, such as Spain and Italy. Moving away from the idea of national literatures, this paper investigates literature as a geographical and emotional inquiry point and friction between languages, ideas, practices, literary institutions, female authors, and female voices in today’s markets. Hybrid literature written by first and second-generation migrants and displaced people is part of a huger concept of transnational literature, which breaks down with the idea of national identity and transiting towards a new conceptualization of hybridity in the literary production, also based on the translation of writings to other languages. Based on the concept of ‘the location of culture’ and the conceptualization of the Bhabha’s ‘third space’, I will analyse the relation between the positioning of female migrant writers of 21st century and the role of hybridity and the reconceptualization of the ‘third space’ in their literary production. The preliminary findings show, firstly, the idea of reconceptualising it appears in light of the complexity of migrant people's realities and sex-gender differences. By adopting an intersectional lens, focused on the dialectic between gender and race/ethnicity and class, this paper analyses the tensions embedded in the re-positioning of four female migrant writers and their transnational experience (self)reflected in their writings. The present research contributes to the scientific knowledge in the field of cross-cultural literary studies, crossed with the migration study, through questioning the changing gender role and relations in transnational migrant literature. In addition, the findings show that today's reflection on ‘third space’ theory in the diasporic literature seems like an idea to be refined when migrant women are involved.

This chapter aims to explore the debate on “development theory” especially embodied in the dichotomy between “civilization” and “barbarism” in the literary production of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, by reading the ideological and political messages hidden in the most relevant works by classical authors in Latin American and postcolonial Anglophone literature. The chapter is structured into three main sections. Firstly, the author will draw an itinerary across the historical debate on “development”, showing approaches and conceptualizations. Secondly, the author will explore the relationship between the political messages and ideological positions of significant authors and their works in the literary production of the selected period. To conclude, the author will set out the most relevant elements that reveal the link between the ideological debate on “development” and the literary production, suggesting new ways of interpretation for future researches.