Title: Gendered spatialities of power in 'borderland' Europe: an approach through mobile and immobilised bodies
Authors: Camille Schmoll
Addresses: Ecole Française de Rome, Université Paris Diderot, Géographie-cités, 5 Rue Thomas Mann, 75013 Paris, France
Abstract: Influenced by critical border studies and feminist accounts of the body, this paper draws on the biographic experiences of Somali, Ethiopian and Eritrean women I met on the island of Malta, after they crossed North Africa and the Mediterranean. It describes the evolving embodied trajectories of migrant women and the various ways they are affected by EU border policies, from the path leading to Europe to what happens after having reached EU shores in Malta. It shows that the body is a crucial scale of analysis for the definition and perception of European border-making, through disciplinary mechanisms of immobilisation/displacement and the construction of gendered and racial boundaries.
Keywords: Mediterranean; Somali women; Ethiopian women; Eritrean women; North Africa; embodied trajectories; migrant women; EU border policies; Malta; immobilisation; displacement; gendered boundaries; racial boundaries; asylum; migration; body; gender; critical border studies; feminism; Somalia; Ethiopia; Eritrea.
DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2014.066313
International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 2014 Vol.1 No.2, pp.173 - 189
Received: 07 Nov 2013
Accepted: 17 Apr 2014
Published online: 23 Dec 2014 *