In an interview with the “world”, sociologist Elsa Tyszler analyzes the consequences of the invisibility of migrant women in the debates around immigration as well as the gendered violence of which they are victims.
Interview by Fatoumata Sillah
They represent 52 % of people who have left their place of birth or residence to join France, according to The latest figures from the National Institute for Demographic Studies , which rely on the issue of the number of stay titles in 2019. However, women are very often absent from political speeches on immigration. Absent or even invisible, estimates Elsa Tyszler, researcher at the center of sociological and political research in Paris, for which this sketches a strategy favoring “amalgamation between delinquent men and immigration, thus legitimizing a repressive policy”.
It is this amalgam that the associations supporting the exiles wanted to denounce during a demonstration before the National Assembly on Tuesday, December 6, when the asylum and immigration bill was debated without vote in the palace- Bourbon. By this future text, the government intends in particular to grant residence permits to people occupying positions in “the trades in tension”, the list of which remains to be established, but also hardening the request for asylum and facilitating expulsions.
If the government claims to seek a balance between firmness and humanism in this bill, not a word has been pronounced for women while their migratory journey can be marked by specific violence, itself invisible.
In an interview with the world, Elsa Tyszler, who studies migration issues since the prism of gender relationships, analyzes the consequences of the security policies implemented at the borders, the invisibilization of migrant women and the depoliticization of violence that They live.
You have notably studied gender social relationships that are played in immigration to Franco-Italian and Moroccan-Spanish borders. What is the share of women among all migrants?
They can be digitally less important depending on the place, but they are still present among people who arrive at European borders in search of exile. However, we have a biased vision of the number of women since they are often invisible and that they also sometimes invisit themselves to protect themselves. At the borders, migrant women from Africa and the Middle East are made doubly vulnerable because they are subject to racism of migratory control practices and at the same time to sexism, at different levels.
according to you , how is their invisibilization manifest?
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