Gender in transnational migration: re-thinking the human rights framework

A spate of gender research in transnational migration at interdisciplinary interfaces has revealed powerful insights on how migration systems have co-evolved with geo-political dynamics of globalisation, revealing emerging forms of intersecting inequality and the need to clarifying the different epistemological positions in the debates about gender inequality. The international classification system used in the definition of rights and entitlements is now in conflict with the rapidly changing realities of migration in which local/global dynamics that have de-stabilised its established categories. Interpreting ‘gender’ in transnational migration today in defence of the human rights of migrants must go beyond ‘gender’ as a pre-given heuristic device handed down from previous theories. Aspirations for a gender equal world cannot avoid employing epistemic vigilance to discern where and which thinking about ‘gender’ is valid, and how unjustifiable biases may be corrected to ensure satisfactory treatments of the relationship between gender, belonging, rights and entitlements.

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