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 *

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