‘I followed the flood’: a gender analysis of the moral and financial economies of forced migration

Abstract

What would a gender analysis of refugee crises reveal if one expanded the focus beyond female refugees, and acts of physical violence? This paper draws on qualitative research conducted in Denmark, Greece, Jordan, and Turkey in July and August 2016 to spotlight the gendered kinship, hierarchies, networks, and transactions that affect refugees. The coping strategies of groups often overlooked in the gender conversation are examined throughout this study, including those of male refugees and those making crossings outside of the context of a family unit. The analysis is theoretically situated at the intersection of critical humanitarianism and the politics of vulnerability, and rooted in debates about the feminisation of refugees and corresponding protection agendas. A key contribution of this work is the ethnographic tracing of how refugees embody these politics along their journeys. In closing, the paper sketches out some implications of the findings for humanitarian practice and identifies avenues for further research.

Imperfect Victims? Civilian Men, Vulnerability, and Policy Preferences

“…In doing so, we integrate, synthesize, and extend prior experimental research on attitudes toward immigration (Bansak, Hainmueller, and Hangartner 2016;Hainmueller and Hopkins 2015;Ward 2019) and on public support for military intervention in war (Agerberg and Kreft 2022;Kreps and Maxey 2018;Tomz, Weeks, and Yarhi-Milo 2020). Our main expectations are, based on the rich qualitative literature on gender essentialisms and neglect of men in humanitarian responses, that 3 Other studies confirm that gendered framings often intersect with a racialized representation of refugees to further marginalize men as victims and as vulnerable (Krystalli, Hawkins, and Wilson 2017;Olivius 2016). While an important and normatively problematic finding, it is beyond the scope of the present study.…”

Gendering the border effect: the double impact of Colombian insecurity and the Venezuelan refugee crisis

“…21 Such a response does not offer insight into the multiple and gendered coping strategies that migrants and refugees (including men) adopt during forced migration. 22 We do not wish to perpetuate this pattern. Indeed, other scholars point to women's mobilisational agency and empowerment that develops as a function of their experiences with violence 23 , or after an experience of intense conflict or atrocity.…”

Protecting Refugees Inside, Protecting Borders Abroad? Gender in the EU’s Responses to the ‘Refugee Crisis’

“…Earlier work was largely concerned with the situation of refugee women and their supposed vulnerabilities (Freedman, 2008(Freedman, , 2010. Yet, recent studies now highlight how gender in interaction with other social categories like age, sexual orientation, social class, religion and the body shape inequalities within refugee populations (Krystalli et al, 2018;Vervliet et al, 2014).…”

“…Academic and non-governmental organization (NGO) advocacy research stresses the need for gender-sensitive asylum and refugee policies to take the different vulnerabilities between and among refugee populations sufficiently into account (Buckley-Zistel and Krause, 2017; Cheikh Ali et al, 2012; Freedman et al, 2017). Despite this increasing academic interest in gendered dimensions of forced migration, 2 a focus on gender in EU responses to the crisis remains to be explored (Krystalli et al, 2018: 18).…”