Women and Borders: Refugees, Migrants and Communities 9781784539573, 9781838609863, 9781838609870

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Seema Shekhawat is a political scientist with a PhD on the intersection of gender, conflict and displacement. She has researched and taught at the Universities of Jammu and Mumbai, India and is the author of Gender, Conflict and Peace in Kashmir (2014) and editor of Female Combatants in Conflict and Peace (2015). Emanuela C. Del Re is a tenured Professor of Political Sociology at the University Niccolò Cusano of Rome. She is the chair and founder of EPOS International Mediating and Negotiating Operational Agency and creator of the My Future project for Syrian Refugees funded by the Italian Foreign Affairs Ministry and by the European Commission.

“Borders affect all sections of the population, with multiple consequences for vulnerable sections, particularly women. State-centered bordering practices are highly restrictive and even discriminatory, targeting women in specific ways. The engagement of women with borders, contested or even settled, hence can be exploitative leading to victimization and alienation. Border regions are prone to violence towards women residing nearby, while crossing or even after crossing. This book, focusing on the intersection of gender and border, uses case studies featuring refugees and migrants and brings to the forefront a highly relevant issue of concern for academics, practitioners as well as policy makers. Through examining an array of related issues and developing further the innovative concept of ‘gendered borders’, this volume is certainly a great addition to the existing literature on the issue.” Padraig O’Malley, John Joseph Moakley Distinguished Professor of Peace and Reconciliation, John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Women and Borders Refugees, Migrants and Communities EDITED BY SEEMA SHEKHAWAT AND EMANUELA C. DEL RE

Published in 2018 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright Editorial Selection © 2018 Emanuela C. Del Re and Seema Shekhawat. Copyright Individual Chapters © 2018 Suhail Abualsameed, Andreanne Bissonnette, Vanessa Grotti, Leila Hudson, Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra, Cynthia Malakasis, Duncan McDuie-Ra, Olga Davydova-Minguet, Carolina Montenegro, Pirjo Pöllänen, Suse Prosser, Chiara Quagliariello, Emanuela C. Del Re, Nina Sahraoui, Seema Shekhawat, Elisabeth Vallet, Daniela Arias Vargas, Melinda Wells. The right of Emanuela C. Del Re and Seema Shekhawat to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. International Library of Migration Studies 9 ISBN: 978 1 78453 957 3 eISBN: 978 1 83860 986 3 ePDF: 978 1 83860 987 0 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works Pvt Ltd

Contents

1

2

3

Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors

ix xi

Introduction: Borders, Violence and Gender Seema Shekhawat, Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra and Emanuela C. Del Re

1

Theory and Practice of Bordering Juxtaposing Border and Gender Gendered Violence is Omnipresent

1 7 9

Gendering the European Borders: The Role of Female Migrants and Refugees Emanuela C. Del Re

21

Male and Female Borders Vulnerable Groups Crossing Concrete Border European Union, Gendered Borders

22 26 28 31

The Refugee’s Passage: Liminality, Gendered Habits and the Emergence of Difference in Flight Leila Hudson

39

Separation: Internal Checkpoints and Neoliberal Lebanon Borderlands of Chronic Liminality Acute Liminality: Trial by Water Crossing Incorporation, Camps and Biopolitical Striations Old Gendered Habits and New Habits of Differentiation

44 47 49 53 56

Pregnant Crossings: A Political Economy of Care on Europe’s External Borders Vanessa Grotti, Cynthia Malakasis, Chiara Quagliariello, Nina Sahraoui and Daniela Arias Vargas Introduction: Gendered (In)Visibilities

v

63

63

Contents Fragments and Networks of Care at the Border Undocumented Motherhood at the Border Conclusion: Childbirth and Political Economies of Care at the Border

4

Acknowledging and Addressing the Risks of Gender-Based Violence that Follow Refugees Across Borders: Escalation of Domestic Violence in Refugee Populations Melinda Wells, Suhail Abualsameed and Suse Prosser Gender Equality and Non-discrimination Engaging Men and Boys in Preventing Gender-based Violence Normative Framework for Humanitarian Intervention in GBV Prevention and Response Collateral Repair Project: Community-based Model for Violence Prevention Collateral Repair Project: Human Rights and Violence Prevention Next Steps Conclusion

5

6

65 74 79

87

90 94 96 98 100 106 107

Trapped in a Cycle of Abuse and Violence: A Case Study of Nigerian Women in Italy Carolina Montenegro

113

Introduction Trafficking in Persons: Definition and Worldwide Status Nigerian Women: A Special Case Key Elements Limitations of the Protection Programs Conclusion and Recommendations

113 115 116 120 122 125

Unhindered Flow of Gendered Suffering through the India-Nepal Open Border: Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation Seema Shekhawat India-Nepal Border: The Openness The Problematique Human Trafficking The Narratives Conclusion

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131 133 133 135 142 147

Contents 7 Migration, Border Crossing and Women: Female Migrant Sexualities Between Objectification and Empowerment Andreanne Bissonnette and Elisabeth Vallet Sexual Objectification as a Liability Sexuality as an Asset

8 Gendered Everyday Bordering: An Ethnographic Case Study on the Border Between Finland and Russia Olga Davydova-Minguet and Pirjo Pöllänen What, Where and Why? Everyday Bordering in Transnational and Precarious Conditions Everyday Transnational Care and Gender National Celebrations as Everyday Bordering Discussion

9 Gendered Geographical Edges: Border, Contestation and Women in Kashmir Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra Border in Kashmir Life Along the Border Conclusion

151 152 160

175 175 177 182 185 191

197 200 202 212

10 Kakching Gardens: Experiments in Normalcy in Manipur Duncan McDuie-Ra

217

Introduction Manipur; Sensitive Space Kakching Gardens: Beautifying the Militarized Landscape Women, Men, Selfies Conclusion

217 221

Select Bibliography Index

237 245

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225 229 233

Acknowledgements In the post-Cold War globalized world, in which border violence, intrastate conflicts and consequent migration and refugee crises have become significant features, the discourse on the border and its intersection with gender is not confined to a particular geographical region. Rather, it has encompassed the whole world. Whether it is the conflict in the Middle East and the migration from the south to the north, or the violence in South Asia, including the India-Pakistan conflict in Kashmir, or the recent electoral debates on migration in the USA and Europe, the myriad nuances of the border practices and their intersection with gender have become increasingly perceptible. Though borders and gender have become increasingly prominent in policy debates, we feel their intersection have not been significantly analyzed. The current volume aims to fill this critical gap. Keeping in view the scarcity of literature on the intersection of borders and gender we decided to bring out this volume through carefully drawing case studies from different parts of the world. It may not be possible to include all case studies in a single volume, but we firmly hope that the select cases amply demonstrate the myriad nuances of the intersection of gender and borders, and argue that a fresh look at these nuances can help develop new frameworks to address the issues of border violence, migration and refugee crises, through crafting effective humane policies. We are thankful to the International Mediating and Negotiating Operational Agency (EPOS) Rome, Italy, as this anthology could not have been possible without the financial support from this organization. We would like to thank the contributors for agreeing to be part of this compilation. They enthusiastically participated in the project and abided by our schedule in delivering the chapters. We hope that their rich experience and insights from the field, as reflected in the chapters, will recast the traditional analyses on gender and borders. We are also thankful to the respondents, many of whom either lived in the borderlands or crossed ix

Acknowledgements the borders and negotiated violence, for providing valuable insights. We dedicate this book to these respondents and other women who negotiate with borders as border residents or transient communities. Their rich narratives, which have been featured in this volume, bring into focus many hitherto underemphasized and underresearched aspects of borders, conflict and violence, and provide an alternative humane lens to look at their intersection. We are thankful to our lovely families. Without their support and encouragement, this volume could not have seen the light of day. Finally, we are thankful to Lester Crook, our commissioning editor from I.B.Tauris, and his team for making the publication process smooth. Seema Shekhawat (Florida, USA) Emanuela C. Del Re (Rome, Italy)

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Notes on Contributors Suhail Abualsameed has 15 years of experience in gender, sexual and gender-based violence, project coordination, cross-cultural education and community-based research. He has a thorough knowledge on issues faced by diverse populations and minority groups with respect to gender and equity and extensive experience on refugees and migration, sexuality, and cultural competency. Abualsameed has worked in the Middle East and southern Europe designing and delivering capacity building and training initiatives linked to the current refugee crisis, as well as situation analysis and support on policy, program and service delivery levels. Andreanne Bissonnette is a graduate student in political science majoring in women’s studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal. She is a research fellow at the Raoul Dandurand Chair in strategic and diplomatic studies. Her research interests are the impact of the securitization of borders and changes in migration policies on migrant women – mainly on the Mexican-American border. She has published papers on immigration in the US in Relations (May 2016) and Diplomatie (October 2016) and is a co-author of L’Effet 11 septembre, 15 ans après (April 2016). Vanessa Grotti is a part-time professor at the European University Institute, where she leads the EU Border Care project, funded by an ERC Starting Grant. She is an anthropologist interested in the study of health and healthcare systems, migration and borderlands, gender and minority rights, especially in contexts of social change and crisis. Over the last 13 years, she has worked in South America, Europe and West Africa. She was trained at Cambridge University and has held research and teaching positions at the Collège de France, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Oxford University.

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Notes on Contributors Leila Hudson is Associate Professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona. An anthropologist and historian, she is the author of Transforming Damascus: Space and Modernity in an Islamic City (I.B.Tauris, 2008), Middle Eastern Humanities: An Introduction to Cultures of the Middle East (2010), and Media Evolution on the Eve of the Arab Spring (2014). Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra is a social scientist with a PhD in Conflict Resolution. He received the Scholar of Peace Award (New Delhi) in 2007 and the Kodikara Award for Young South Asian Researcher (Colombo) in 2010. Mahapatra has published extensively on issues related to conflict and peace. His recent publications include Conflict and Peace in Eurasia (editor, 2013), Making Kashmir Borderless (2013), “The Mandate and the (In)Effectiveness of the United Nations Security Council and International Peace and Security” (Geopolitics, 2016) and “Examining the Evolution of the Borderland in Kashmir” (Journal of Borderland Studies, 2016). His forthcoming book is Conflict Management in Kashmir (2017). Cynthia Malakasis is a post-doctoral research associate at the ERCfunded EU Border Care research project. She received her PhD in Global and Sociocultural Studies (Anthropology track) at Florida International University. She is a cultural anthropologist interested in nationalism, ethnicity, race, post-colonial dynamics with an emphasis on intra-European hierarchies, immigration, citizenship rights, and Greece. Her doctoral project examined whether and how post-1989 mass immigration to Greece had challenged the country’s nationalist norms of collective belonging. Duncan McDuie-Ra is Professor of Development Studies at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. His most recent books include Northeast Migrants in Delhi (2012), Debating Race in Contemporary India (2015) and Borderland City in New India (2016). His work has appeared in journals such as South Asia; Contemporary South Asia; Geoforum; Urban Studies; Energy Policy; Men and Masculinities and Violence Against Women. He is Associate Editor for the journal South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies and for the book series Asian Borderlands, and Editor in Chief of the ASAA South Asia monograph series. xii

Notes on Contributors Olga Davydova-Minguet, PhD, holds a tenure-track position at the Karelian Institute of the University of Eastern Finland. DavydovaMinguet’s main research interests fall, to a large degree, within the intersection of migration, cultural and transnational studies. She is conducting three research projects which concentrate upon the transnational politics of memory in the border areas of Finland and Russia, media use of Russian-speakers in Finland and the images of Russia in Finland. Carolina Montenegro is Field Communication Manager for the Aleppo Response at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). She has worked for the World Food Programme (WFP), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Folha de São Paulo newspaper in Brazil. For the last five years, she has extensively covered humanitarian crisis and human rights issues in the Middle East and Africa, particularly Haiti and South Sudan. In 2016 she also wrote articles for IRIN, the BBC and Oxford’s Forced Migration Review about the migration crisis in the Mediterranean. She is the author of a book on the Arab Spring, Sobre jasmins, bombas e faraós (2014). Pirjo Pöllänen, PhD, is a researcher of migration and social policy at the Karelian Institute of the University of Eastern Finland. Her doctoral thesis was about Russian “wife-migrants’” transnational care in Finland. During recent years Pöllänen has been researching the processes of the hollowingout of the welfare state policies from several angles, namely precarization, rural areas, migration and gender. Currently she is working on a project which investigates the images of Russia in Finland. Suse Prosser was a refugee and human rights lawyer in Canada until 2003 and has worked internationally for UNHCR in Kenya, Syria and Jordan, focusing on protection in large refugee flows. At UNHCR and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) she contributed to growing and shaping gender-based violence prevention and response policy, programing and practice. Her current passion is the nexus between gender, trauma and domestic violence in conflict and post-conflict settings and she works closely with the Collateral Repair Project in Jordan on related projects.

xiii

Notes on Contributors Chiara Quagliariello is Research Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute within the EU Border Care project. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Siena and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Paris VIII. Between 2012 and 2014, she was a lecturer in Cultural Anthropology and Social Anthropology at the University of Reims. In 2015, she was a lecturer in Medical Anthropology and Medical Sociology at the Universities of Paris Descartes (Paris V) and Paris Vincennes (Paris VIII). Emanuela C. Del Re is a tenured Professor of Political Sociology at the University Niccolò Cusano of Rome. She is the chair and founder of EPOS International Mediating and Negotiating Operational Agency and creator of the My Future project for Syrian Refugees funded by the Italian Foreign Affairs Ministry and by the European Commission. Nina Sahraoui is a post-doctoral research associate at the ERC-funded EU Border Care project, at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute. Sahraoui received her PhD at London Metropolitan University supported by the Marie Curie Innovative Training Network ‘Changing Employment’. Her doctoral research focused on a gendered political economy analysis of the articulation of migration, care and employment regimes through the study of migrant and minority ethnic workers’ experiences in older-age care in London, Paris and Madrid. Seema Shekhawat is a political scientist with a PhD on the intersection of gender, conflict and displacement. She has researched and taught at the Universities of Jammu and Mumbai, India and is the author of Gender, Conflict and Peace in Kashmir (2014) and editor of Female Combatants in Conflict and Peace (2015). Elisabeth Vallet is the scientific director of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair and Adjunct Professor of Geography at the University of Quebec at Montreal, as well as Quebec Lead of the Borders in Globalization Project at the University of Victoria, Canada. She is the lead researcher for the SSHRC-funded Border Walls project and frequently works with media such as The Economist, GEO, and Courrier international on border fences infographics. xiv

Notes on Contributors Daniela Arias Vargas holds a master’s degree in Development and Gender Studies from the University of Melbourne. From May to September 2016, she worked on the ERC-funded EU Border Care research project at the European University Institute, and conducted field research in Andalusia. Her main interests are transnational practices and identities, politics of place, and embodied experiences of change in migrant settings. She has engaged in mapping the ongoing changing values, aspirations, and knowledge stemming from transnational place-making(s)/re-emplacements as well as migrants’ self-assertion strategies through artistic expressions and alternative methodological approaches. Melinda Wells has over 15 years of humanitarian, gender and migration experience. She began her career with the Centre for Victims of Torture, and consulted several years for organizations including the World Bank and UNICEF in Latin America and the Caribbean. She has also held several management positions with the International Operations team of the Canadian Red Cross. She spent 2012–15 in Jordan working in multiple capacities on the Syrian refugee response. She is the Board Chair of the American NGO Collateral Repair Project.

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Introduction: Borders, Violence and Gender Seema Shekhawat, Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra and Emanuela C. Del Re

While engaged in a discourse on bordering practices and vulnerable demographies, we identified gaps in the existing literature. This collection on the intersection of border and gender is an attempt to address some of these gaps. We aim to provide a comprehensive picture of gendered engagement with carefully selected borders from across the globe to tease out the nuances of the intersection. And, we are doing so through focusing on the experiences of women engaging with borders in multiple capacities. We locate gender along geographical edges of states, and critically examine the gendered experiences of women as border residents and border crossers. Broadly, we explore two questions. First, what are the experiences of women’s engagement with borders? Second, where are women positioned in theory and practice of border marking, remarking and demarking?

Theory and Practice of Bordering Amidst various conceptions of border, physical demarcation drawn between states has drawn significant attention. Borders traditionally separated states and regulated, marginalized and constricted cross-border movement.1 The regulation of borders is considered an essential duty of 1

Women and Borders a state. Borders particularly “are viewed as constituting a given territorial fact, a static, unchanging feature, rather than one which has its own internal dynamics and which influences, and is influenced by, the patterns of social, economic and political development which take place in the surrounding landscapes – the frontier regions and/or borderlands.”2 Traditionally, these “symbols of power” were perceived as non-negotiable and non-flexible markers of the state limits and “domains of contested power, in which local, national, and international groups negotiate relations of subordination and control.”3 Van Schendel notes, “The state’s pursuit of territoriality – its strategy to exert complete authority and control over social life in its territory – produces borders and makes them into crucial markers of the success and limitations of that strategy.”4 Johnson and Graybill argue, “national borders represent the territorial embodiment of a bundle of ideas that modern states have propagated and enforced. They tell us that all of humanity is divided up among discrete nation states; that these nations have sovereign powers over particular territory to the exclusion of other nations; and that, collectively, nations exercise this sovereignty over all the earth.”5 The linkage of state, territory and sovereignty has entwined many modern states into a “territorial trap.”6 The characterization of borders as fixed and non-negotiable can be attributed to the Realist school of International Relations.7 For the Realist school of thought, states are at the center of international politics. And international politics is competitive and conflictual where the Darwinian theory of “survival of the fittest” governs state to state relation. The actions of states are governed by the narrow definition of security, in relation to gaining power, survival and the pursuit of national interests in an international system that continues to remain anarchic and hierarchical.8 Here, borders are thrust upon people, with scant consideration for the concerns of those living along these dividing lines and little attention paid to their identity, group relationships and shared culture. This was done frequently during colonial times across the globe, with perceptible repercussions persisting even now. Border discourse as a whole revolved around the issue of power contestation and territorial aspirations. The post-Cold War border discourse witnessed change as scholars moved away from the traditional conception of borders as static divisions. 2

Introduction Besides geographers, scholars from other disciplines such as political science, international relations, anthropology, history and sociology engaged in exploring intricacies of the borders. A debate for re-placing of the border in border studies through more critical attention on theory and practice of bordering was initiated.9 The widening of the debate is crucial to bring in questions related to human life. There is no dearth of questions which can be posed in the context of physical boundaries dividing humanity across the globe. However, the larger issues of human concern, their impact on adjoining life, on mobility, on aliens, need critical attention. As points of passage for illegal migrants and refugees, borders pose life-long challenges in new countries, with new socio-cultural setups, new languages and new identities. As places of residence for a substantial global population, borders pose life-long challenges for adjoining life. A growing community of scholars is engaged in analyzing the nuanced practices of bordering.10 In the past two decades, border discourse has been widened to include habitations around the markers of territorial state integrity.11 Factoring the concerns of people, including the border residents, is essential for making the concept of security inclusive and relevant to existing realities. And, state security and human security cannot be mutually exclusive, as they are interlinked. Edward Newman argues, the notion of human security does not “exclude the importance of traditional ideas of security, but it does suggest that it may be more effective to reorient the provision of security around people – wherever the threat comes from. Traditional conceptions of state security – based on the military defence of territory – are an important but not a sufficient condition of human welfare.”12 The security and welfare of people needs to be given as much importance as is accorded to territorial security. Border and human security cannot remain mutually exclusive; borders need to be problematized, interrogated and humanized, for which it is quite crucial that the people’s perspectives are factored in the analysis. Many post-Cold War globalized borders are no longer considered static, rigid and inflexible lines of separation. The changes in border discourse have taken into account changes in borders across the globe. Since the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, end of the Cold War and the advent of the twin forces of globalization and liberalization, 3

Women and Borders many borders, especially in the Western world, became increasingly flexible. These borders witnessed progressive evolution and allowed capital, people, and products to move across, argues Martinez.13 Such borders offered rich material for the scholars to flirt with the post-modern conception of borders, as porous spaces rather than sacrosanct and rigid boundaries. The idea of a “borderless world” gained increasing currency. Borders are evolving as several closed borders are opening to facilitate free flow of people and goods. Ironically, it is also true that the recent decades have witnessed intensive bordering with the idea of distinct state territories and populations being further inscribed onto maps, imaginations, and the Earth.14 Though it is commonly held that boundaries are created and nature made the world borderless, such a notion in practical terms appears utopian as borders continue to profoundly shape inter-state relations and adjoining lives. “Political limits in geographic space have been and remain a major source of tension and conflict,” contends Gottmann.15 Agnew argues, “the map image of the borders of the state still exercises a major influence on the territorial imagination of whose security is at stake –and who most threatens it.”16 And, Newman contends, “If there is anything that belies notions of a deterritorialized and borderless world more, it is the fact that boundaries…continue to demarcate the territories within which we are compartmentalized, determine with whom we interact and affiliate, and the extent to which we are free to move from one space to another.”17 Many borders are in flux, which can be attributed to forces such as globalization, terrorism, religious extremism and illegal activities across them. The transformation of borders from rigidity to flexibility, from ignored wastelands and highly securitized frontiers to dynamic centers of trade has impacted the nearby habitations along the borders by paving the way for functionalities earlier restricted. At the same time, their flexibility has produced new challenges. The export of prohibited activities through an open border including, but not limited to, drug trafficking, money laundering, smuggling of goods, human trafficking and unlawful migration are considered threats to state security.18 Demand to close many open borders and make the closed borders further sacrosanct is directly related to the perceptible threat to state security due to the influx of unwanted people 4

Introduction (refugees and illegal migrants and in recent times terrorists) and unwanted goods (arms and drugs). The recent developments in the Western world, particularly in Europe, makes it safe to make an argument that from a state perspective the problems, both real and perceived, seems to outweigh the problems of an open border. Some recent developments like the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union and the debates and discussions over the US-Mexico border during the United States presidential elections in 2016 reflected some of these concerns. Continued discourse on the prospects of a borderless world notwithstanding, the recent developments suggest that borders remain a major site of contestation and conflicts. Borders continue to be an inseparable part of modern states as their critical geographical edges. The much-debated debordering process, which aim at making borders as bridges to connect states and peoples, has recently been diluted by the rebordering discourse and strategy within Europe and beyond. Apparently, the increased security practices and the resecuritization processes at borders are growing globally.19 The rebordering strategies are in the process of being reinvented to counter the outcome of the debordering process. The developments have generated conflicts, overt or covert, physical or non-physical, real or perceived. Many borders, hence, have regained the status of being vulnerable zones with militarization and fortification reappearing even in erstwhile borderless regions. Borders in many places remain or are re-emerging as a concrete place through which states gain their physical and symbolic shape, reinforcing varieties of violence along these geographical margins. Borders are not simply materialized at the designated site – at zero-point – but manifest across the landscape in the form of barracks, barriers, and a raft of spatial controls. In many ways, both the actual border crossing point and nearby lands represent a point of condensation of power, supremacy and domination. Borders, settled or contested, violent or silent, closed or open, have specific implications for several demographies – those living nearby, those attempting to cross and even for those succeeding in crossing, particularly refugees and illegal migrants. For Martinez, “as frontline zones of contact, borderlands encountered opportunities previously unavailable to them. Their functions underwent substantial redefinition, from frequently 5

Women and Borders ignored wastelands to dynamic centers of trade, commerce, and even industrialization. Many closed borders became open, allowing capital, people, and products to move from country to country in search of new opportunities. Borderlands that were enmeshed in this process developed economic activity sufficient to spur the growth of existing population centers and the emergence of new ones. Borderlanders affected by such trends, especially from developed nations, found a new place in the world, playing roles long denied to them by an international system driven by the ideology of national sovereignty.”20 Some open and flexible borders positively impact the life of transient demographies. At the same time, there are specific vulnerabilities related to engagement with borders. International borders may represent dangerous iron curtains, where exploitation and abuse for people crossing them or living in proximity to them, is humdrum. The militarization and crises along the borders subjugate the place and the very positioning of people in these marginalized areas specifically affects them. The vulnerable communities, whether transient or resident, may employ strategies to resist and defy the bordering practices, but the significant level of rights violations along the geographical edges of states remains a persistent reality. The structural violence appears endemic in these regions. The borders may become omnipresent in everyday practices of the residents as well as the transient communities. While the resident as well as the transient demographies are vulnerable, the women engaging with the borders become further vulnerable as they engage with the borders in several gendered forms: as a border resident and as a transient demography, attempting to cross a border to reunite with family members, to seek economic opportunities, or to escape domestic violence or political strife and instability in their homelands. Women may confront several kinds of violence, uncertainty and abnormality as a consequence of their engagement with borders. Gender may interlock with border regions to reinforce and shape violence. Gendered violence embodies gender oppression in the border regions where women’s status as residents in transition as well as refugees and illegal migrants translate into exploitable demography. Threats and violent episodes in border regions may further be facilitated by hyper-patriarchal, misogynistic, and repressive socio-cultural practices. 6

Introduction The concept of gendered borders aptly fits into the ways women engage with these geographical edges of states. Women may challenge and destabilize gendered borders and at the same time, and more often, the gendered borders may challenge and destabilize their lives in multiple ways. Along the borders, women suffer in specific ways because the state’s geographical edges in a way reinforce an environment that condones the violation of human security, human rights, and more importantly from the perspective of this volume, women’s rights, under the garb of national security. In these marginalized zones, violence, perpetrated by the state as well as non-state actors may be overlooked and dismissed. Women’s rights get severely jeopardized when borders reinforce an environment that condones violence. Violence in the border areas is too often regarded as normal and thereby incidents of violence against female migrants, refugees, trafficked and border residents often remain underreported and unattended. The vulnerable communities, and more specifically women, get exposed to state-centered rigid bordering practices, paving the way for their alienation as well as exploitation. The gendered constraints confronted may not only be political but also cultural. Market-driven cross-border economies can also violently impact the life and survivability for demographies engaging with the border.

Juxtaposing Border and Gender The unique positioning of the border regions, both as transit zones as well as abodes of people, creates the necessary condition for the materialization of a gendered subjectivity that incite investigation. Since the ideology of bordering is embedded with the issues of hyper-masculinity and patriarchy, the gendered effects of engagement with borders need specific attention. At the risk of omitting much that merits attention and overlooking conspicuous overlaps, this volume places women at the center of the analysis largely as victims and in part as negotiators. There is increasing literature on borders as well as gender, but these are usually treated as separate subjects of analysis. Gender is often a neglected category in border discourse. Most of the existing literature on borders refers only fleetingly, if at all, to issues related to gender. Women experience the engagement with borders in 7

Women and Borders specific ways but largely remain neglected in border theory and practice. A growing community of scholars cutting across disciplines is engaged in dissecting the nuanced practices of bordering to comprehend the dynamics of and explore the life along the state edges but with perceptibly less attention to the gendered aspect of the border. Seldom has the linkage between border, violence and gender been emphasized. Scholars have mostly been content in focusing on the individual concepts and have not factored how their intersection may offer rich insights, new theories and enabling policies. The US-Mexico border is a key site for ethnographic research on gender-based issues from a multidisciplinary perspective but the research on the crossroads of gender and border in other regions is in its infancy. This volume integrates these areas of study, through arranging a cocktail of some well-known and some lesser-known case studies, to address the complicated realities that this intersection entails. It compiles carefully selected research pieces on the intersection of border and gender to bring out the gendered intricacies of bordering practices wherein, we argue, border becomes gendered and gender becomes bordered; hence the intersection of border and gender is a two-way process with gender impacting border and border impacting gender. Going beyond the overly simplistic portrayals, this book suggests that the research on borders and violence needs to diversify. The ethnography explores how women engage with highly gendered terrains during flight and while residing nearby to make an argument that it is essential that the marking, remarking and demarking of the borders be questioned and integrated into the larger discourse of women’s rights since border stagnation, evolution as well as involution impact women in gendered ways. This book encourages methodological pluralism and engages with an array of issues shaping the gendered engagement with a variety of borders. The issues include forced migration, transgression, trafficking, cross-border linkages and lives within borderlands. The volume argues that the intersection of border and gender is highly complex and deserves specific scholarly attention. It draws on the experiences of vulnerable populations in the border regions and documents the engagement of a section of vulnerable people with these subjugated regions. We contend that it is essential that the construction and perpetuation of the militarized border system be questioned and integrated into 8

Introduction the larger discourse of women’s rights and the interventions to address violence along the borders. It argues that it is essential to position women in discourses on border related violence towards ensuring their due place in bordering practices, policy making and the literature. It will be a crucial addition to the emerging discourse on gender and border with policy implications. The volume is an attempt to mainstream gendered intersection with border through unearthing theoretical and practical aspects of this intersection so as to make a valuable addition to the multidisciplinary fields. It suggests that the research on borders and conflict needs to diversify the use of gender as an analytic tool to delve deeper into the ways border and violence shape everyday expressions of gendered identities and norms – and ways in which these are challenged. We aim not only to enrich the ongoing debates on gender, violence and border but also to open up avenues for further research on such under-explored issues.

Gendered Violence is Omnipresent We argue that gendered violence is omnipresent; it does not matter whether the vulnerable demographies have moved away from the border or continue to be in close proximity to it. The chapters in the anthology on diverse areas related to border, gender and violence, from diverse regions, corroborate our argument. We might have compromised on the width of topics selected, but the depth of analysis in the carefully selected case studies suitably compensate the limitation. The selected studies amply establish permeability of gendered violence along the borders into the lives of those women who come in contact with these geographical edges daily, once in a while or even once. Also, it is not possible to scrutinize all the borders in a single volume keeping in view the fact that borders are a harsh reality of human life in modern times. Borders are everywhere and they impact everyone who comes into their contact, including women, as borderlanders, refugees and migrants. Emanuela C. Del Re in her chapter “Gendering the European Borders: The Role of Female Migrants and Refugees” delves deep into the issue of women’s engagement with European borders which are considered porous. While providing recent data that shows a higher percentage of female 9

Women and Borders and child refugees over male refugees, Del Re argues that though female migration is not a new phenomenon, the last few years present new elements. These include mixed migration flows, involving refugees and economic migrants, as well as migrants running away from droughts and other disasters; migrant and refugee women travel alone with children, travel when they are pregnant, when they are adolescents, or elderly. Their vulnerability is present in all these different stages in various forms. She quotes an Amnesty International report, which suggests that refugee women from Syria and Iraq face sexual harassment, violence, assault, discrimination “at every stage of their journey, including on European soil.” Her documentation of the narratives through extensive field research amongst Syrian refugees in Iraq, Jordan and Syria, amongst women belonging to minorities in Syria and Iraq – in particular Yazidi and Christian women – and amongst migrants from Afghanistan crossing the Mediterranean, suggest that the movement of people appears gendered. The most traumatic experience is derived from being abused by those who were expected to be saviors. She reveals how the centers of identification, in which transient women are put in Turkey and Greece once captured at the border, are “prisons.” This critical situation, in which movement of people across the borders have become a political instrument, has obliged the European Union to introspect on its core values and functions. She notes that the presence of vulnerable groups amongst the refugees and migrants has forced the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to recommend to the member states to take into account the gender-based violence and genderrelated persecution in their asylum systems, beginning with the collection, analysis and publication of statistics and information on these issues. Carrying Del Re’s argument further, Leila Hudson’s chapter “The Refugee’s Passage: Liminality, Gendered Habits and the Emergence of Difference in Flight” draws from the displacement and refugee crisis due to the Syrian war. She argues that the crossing of state borders punctuates the process of flight by introducing new physical, cultural, linguistic, legal and administrative environments. For Hudson, borders act as membranes separating social worlds as well as geographic spaces and shaping the evolving subjectivities that accompany the flight. She argues that the process of border crossing in the Syrian context has become increasingly fraught and 10

Introduction loaded with administrative and political and human formalities, besides discomfort, disease and life threatening danger. And, international borders are the places where ordinary women and their families encounter the full force of states in varied forms and particularities as paperwork, fences and corruption. Through extensive interviews with a number of Syrian women, Hudson documents the gendered nuances of the border crossing, which include but are not limited to, the trauma and bureaucratic minutiae of family separation and reunification, physical discomfort and the threat of sexual harassment, the experience of communal living and processing in transit and camp spaces. From pre-2013 travel to Morsi’s Egypt (“as easily as going from one Syrian province to another”), to the impenetrable barriers to refuge in the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, to the tightening and closure of the once permeable Jordanian and Lebanese borders, to the politicization and corruption of the Turkish borders, to the militarization of the Eastern European borders, to the life-threatening crossing of water borders, the experience for Syrian women (and their families) at the borders encountered along the migration is a heightened one of both subjectivity and space formation. Women comprise a vulnerable demographic as the existing sociocultural and political set up is highly masculinized and patriarchal. The vulnerability of women is universal, cutting across socially constructed identities and human-made borders. It is important to note that women are not part of a homogeneous vulnerable group. There are sub-groups within this vulnerable group, for whom an engagement with borders is even more problematic. The vulnerability of expecting mothers at border crossing pose a crucial challenge not only for law enforcement agencies at the borders, but also for the expecting mothers who bear difficulty in crossing the borders, besides taking care of unborn babies. Vanessa Grotti et al., in “Pregnant Crossings: A Political Economy of Care on Europe’s External Borders,” argue that the steady increase in the numbers of migrant women entering the European Union in the past two decades is documented, particularly in the case of domestic work, healthcare, family reunification, and human trafficking. A rapidly emerging phenomenon is the growing presence of pregnant women among newcomers to some of the European Union’s most densely crossed borderlands; in 11

Women and Borders particular, along the southern (Spain and Italy) and south-eastern (Greece) European borders, as well as along European peripheries. Situating their analysis amidst the tension between care and control in the day-to-day governance of migration in the broad context of maternity care processes in EU borderlands, the authors offer a comparative perspective on pregnant crossings in these European borderlands to make an argument that migrant maternity represents a significant challenge to frontline services. They provide an insight into these women’s encounters with diverse actors involved in maternity care – encounters mediated across social, cultural, gender, and other hierarchies. They argue that because they are pregnant or have recently given birth, these women are classified as vulnerable, and are therefore eligible for various degrees of “free” care and emergency services, but undocumented pregnant migrants embody the ambivalence of being at once subject to legal prosecution and beneficiaries of humanitarian protection under exceptional legal clauses. The ordeals related to crossing alien borders do not end once the vulnerable demographies negotiate their survival. As illegal migrants and as refugees, the women border-crossers continue to confront several kinds of violence in their new places. For these women, violence or fear of violence, in multiple forms ranging from physical to sexual, does not stop at the border. The succeeding chapters details two different kinds of violence suffered by women border crossers as refugees and illegal migrants- domestic violence and sexual violence. Melinda Wells, Suhail Abualsameed, and Suse Prosser, in their chapter “Acknowledging and Addressing the Risks of Gender-Based Violence that Follow Refugees Across Borders: Escalation of Domestic Violence in Refugee Populations,” argue that the refugee problem in Jordan is acute and the position of women is deplorable. Jordan is home to well over 600,000 refugees and much attention has been devoted to Za’atari Refugee Camp and to the other smaller refugee camps though 80 percent of the refugees in Jordan live in urban areas, not camps but continue to struggle with trauma-related health issues, family separation, poverty, shifting gender roles, and other stressors related to their status as refugees. The authors focus on Hashemi Shamali, a low-income community in Amman that has long been identified as a “poverty pocket” by the Jordanian authorities, and is currently hosting a disproportionate number of refugees from Syria and 12

Introduction Iraq, and argue that in this community, refugee women have experienced domestic violence. There is an increase in violence within homes with both men and women describing increasing pressure in the form of financial pressure, conflict-related trauma, frequent bad news from home, and the ongoing stress of life as a refugee. The authors document the narratives of women claiming that men in the community are not getting the necessary support to deal with prior trauma and stress, and attribute this to a pattern of increased violence in the home. The severity of domestic violence often increases in the aftermath of humanitarian crises and this observation has been borne out by assessments conducted in Jordan. While arguing that there is a need to engage men in finding healthy strategies for coping with stress, and shifting norms in the community around gender-based violence, they examine the current scenario and the steps being taken to address the predictable and preventable risks of interpersonal, gender-based and selfdirected violence. The attempts to contain domestic violence in the demography under scrutiny in this chapter may be instructive for other cases but the fact remains that violence continues to haunt women in one or an other way when they engage with border. While escaping war, poverty and hunger by crossing borders, the transient women may end up trapped in an endless cycle of violence, which is not private, as is domestic violence, but also public, such as selling sex. Carolina Montenegro’s chapter, “Trapped in a Cycle of Abuse and Violence: A Case Study of Nigerian Women in Italy,” offers a closer look at the dangers of flight, arrival, as well as the residence of women from a conflict-ridden African country in a European country. She examines the case of Favour, a 9-month-old girl from Nigeria rescued in the Mediterranean Sea by the Italian coast guard when the boat she had boarded capsized and killed dozens of people including her pregnant mother, and argues that though the tragedy of the unaccompanied child moved the authorities and they quickly initiated procedures to find her a legal guardian, Favour is not the first one to cross the sea borders. What is rare is the fortunate outcome despite the Mediterranean Sea becoming an increasingly dangerous and gendered “border.” The transient women represent one of the biggest groups subject to smuggling, human trafficking, prostitution, abuse and violence, even while also confronting challenges such as lack of medical care, housing 13

Women and Borders and employment. The threats of abuse and exploitation increase manifold as more and more unaccompanied girls cross the Mediterranean from North Africa with most of them relying on human smugglers, getting a “free ride” on the boat in exchange for work or sexual exploitation. Citing the recent UNICEF report titled “Danger Every Step of the Way,” published in June 2016, she argues that this complex situation makes one think about the fate of the 9-month baby from Nigeria: what would have happened to Favour if she was a teenager arriving alone in Italy or if she was a pregnant woman or a woman with children? What kinds of risks would she have faced after crossing the Mediterranean in search of a new life? Nigerian women are not alone in being trapped in an unending saga of sexual violence in Italy. Thousands of women are trafficked each year through all kinds of borders, which may not necessarily be contested or violent, and, the majority of these women are forced to join the much-loathed but still flourishing industry of commercial sex. Seema Shekhawat, in her chapter “Unhindered Flow of Gendered Suffering through the India-Nepal Open Border: Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation,” details the trafficking, mostly realized through deceit and coercion, along the open India-Nepal border. Most of these trafficked women engage in commercial sex. She tracks the trafficking of women and elaborates how India has emerged as both a destination as well as a transit for the trafficked women for commercial sexual exploitation. The recent case of a foreign diplomat in India sexually abusing his domestic help of Nepalese origin, brought into focus a crucial but often less-focused issue of women trafficking through international borders. She argues this open border can be characterized as a conduit for dehumanizing women, keeping in view the unrestrained flow of the trafficking and the consequent suffering and stigma the women undergo. Trafficking through the open border for forcing vulnerable women to engage in commercial sex is flourishing as a low-risk and high-profit business. The vulnerable women are mostly sold to brokers in exchange for a meager sum, who in turn sell them to Indian brothels at exorbitant rates. Shekhawat argues that the consequences for these trafficked women are life-long and notably, many of these women blame the open border for their suffering. Through documenting narratives of the Nepalese women crossing an open border to become sex workers, Shekhawat aims to broaden the 14

Introduction prevailing discourse on border and violence contending that amidst the hype of a borderless world, it is crucial to understand that an open border can be an equal tormentor and the intersection of gender with border and violence in the case of India-Nepal is instructive for understanding the complex nature of borders in this part of the world. Unlike the India-Nepal border, crossing is not easy globally. In the search of greener pastures men and women continue to dare to cross over to the regions of their dream. This daring endeavor entails all kinds of violence, and particularly for women, sexual encounters. The reality of migrant (illegal) women is often overlooked in studies on the impact of migration on demographies. For many studies, sexual violence is often the only impact; creating the image of migrant women as victims of sexual violence, objectified by other migrants or by criminal organizations. Elisabeth Vallet and Andreanne Bissonnette in their chapter, “Migration, Border Crossing and Women: Female Migrant Sexualities Between Objectification and Empowerment,” drawing on interviews with migrant women along the Mexican-American border, present a different picture of sexuality and migration. While it is true that women are particularly affected by violent encounters that lead to sexual abuses of varied nature, there are instances when women present the articulation of their sexuality in the context of migration as positive. Some of the interviewed women prefer to reclaim their sexuality in order to articulate it within a framework that would benefit them in achieving their goal of migration and crossing the border. The authors focus on the relationship of migrant women to their own sexuality as well as its instrumentalization at the border. They document the way women are regaining control of their sexuality, instrumental along the migration route but also at the border to facilitate their migration and/or to manage the risk of both border crossing and illegality so as to redefine instrumentalization of their sexuality/gender to their benefit. For these women, sexuality becomes an instrument to gain protection from risks inherent to migration. Citing the instances of how some women chose to be intimate with one male migrant for the journey, which secured them and diminished the possibility of rape, the authors contend that through such “simple” acts, women regain power over their sexuality; using it as an asset to avoid risk. The question, however, would remain: are these actually “simple” acts? 15

Women and Borders Precarity not only defines the lives of women who engage with borders as transient communities, but also of those who live along the geographical edges of states, as life along the borders too present myriad challenges. The last three chapters in this compilation focus on this argument. Olga Davydova-Minguet and Pirjo Pöllänen in their chapter, “Gendered Everyday Bordering: An Ethnographic Case Study on the Border Between Finland and Russia,” critique the argument that the world is getting smaller and borders are becoming more transparent and unrecognizable. They argue that this notion of a borderless world is not applicable to the case of the Niirala– Värtsilä border area located on the border between Finland and Russia. Through concentrating on the analysis of bordering processes in the area of North Karelia (in Finland) and the Republic of Karelia (in Russia) in the era of the shift from debordering to rebordering, the authors examine how gender is present and constructed in these processes. They argue that during the Soviet era, the border under scrutiny acted as the dividing line between states and their blocs. Now it is considered to be “the border between continents,” i.e., the European Union and the non-European Union. During the debordering era and relative openness of the border, the areas on the both sides of the border have become transnational: the interpenetration of people, transnational families, ideas, material goods, cultural activities, and administrative contacts have been vivid. The majority of Russian migrants and administrative in the region of North Karelia on the Finnish side are women who migrated to Finland through marriage with Finnish men from the nearby Russian areas. The recent developments between the European Union and Russia, namely sanctions and counter-sanctions that followed the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, and decrease in the tourism from Russia to Finland, the tightening of the border-crossing regime are tangible in this border area. Moreover so, it can be said, that after the period of opening up the Iron Curtain in the local area of Niirala-Värtsilä, the border has become more controlled. The case study comprises several data-sets, ethnographic interviews, ethnographical observations of the border crossings in NiiralaVärtsliä checkpoint and ethnographical observations of national celebrations in Joensuu (Finland) and Sortavala and Petrozavodsk (Russia) to make an argument that the period of debordering of 1990–2000s has changed into the new rebordering in the mid-2010s with specific implications for women. 16

Introduction Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra in his chapter “Gendered Geographical Edges: Border, Contestation and Women in Kashmir” details how the borderland in Kashmir is often characterized by a hostile situation due to wars, intermittent cross-border firing and shelling, mining, militarization and rigid controls, bringing in its trail suffering for the border residents. The partial opening of the border in 2005 opened vistas for cross-border cooperation with implications for nearby residents including temporary unification of divided families scattered along the contested border. Both the closed and now partially opened borders have impacted women, one of the most marginalized and vulnerable groups residing along the tense border, in specific ways, argues Mahapatra. He documents the gendered narratives of life along a contested border, to make the argument that there are gendered nuances which need to be documented. By making use of qualitative research methods, including interviews and personal observation, he interrogates the dominant state-centric notion on the conflict, border and gender in Kashmir by factoring the gendered nuances scattered across this contested landscape in South Asia to answer the question: what are the gendered dynamics of life along the India-Pakistan border in Kashmir? He argues that women should acquire a central place in this discourse on border and borderland as they are not only the victims of their proximity to the geographical edges but suffer more acutely due to their very location in a society in which everything, including their existence, is viewed through the prism of patriarchy. The highly militarized landscape in border areas shapes mobility for border women and men in different ways and presents challenges for everyday life as checkpoints are numerous and pedestrians, cyclists, and vehicles are subject to constant inspection by armed forces personnel. Duncan McDuie-Ra in his chapter, “Kakching Gardens: Experiments in Normalcy in Manipur,” presents a vivid picture of such a militarized landscape in another Indian borderland. Kakching is close to India’s border with Myanmar and, hence, is vulnerable and valuable to state, non-state, and quasi-state actors operating in this region. In this landscape, even the ATMs are inside barracks forcing customers to enter the masculine and militarized spaces (within which women often experience gendered 17

Women and Borders violence) just to access cash. And on the hilltops surrounding this narrow stretch are more barracks and bases for various paramilitary forces monitoring all movement in and out of the settlements with one exception, Uyok Ching, where Kakching Gardens is situated, a relatively recent development funded by a local public-private partnership. It is a rare space in the militarized landscape providing women an opportunity to dress up, wear make-up, and occupy public space without being under the constant gaze of the military, paramilitary and state police. Through using spatial ethnography, the author explores alternative ways of thinking about gender, conflict and borderlands to make an argument that everyday acts that challenge the militarization of life in the borderland come in many forms – in the case of Kakching Gardens these come in the seemingly mundane act of occupying public space away from the gaze of the armed forces to express femininity, masculinity, and hetero-normative procreation. Despite the seductive imaginary of connectivity, the borderland still remains a militarized frontier and spaces like Kakching Gardens are rare – and important – exceptions. Certainly, the episodes of women negotiating feminity amidst a militarized landscape or negotiating safety of border crossing through offering sex are rare and exceptions. What is common and all pervasive is, as the compilation suggests, exploitation, suffering and apathy.

Notes 1. A. I. Asiwaju, Artificial Boundaries, Lagos: Lagos University Press, 1984. 2. Nurit Kilot and David Newman, eds, Geopolitics at the End of the Twentieth Century: The Changing World Political Map, London: Frank Cass, 2000, p. 9. 3. T. Wilson and H. Donnan, eds, Border Identities: Nation and State at International Frontiers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 10. 4. Willem Van Schendel, The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia, London: Anthem Press, 2005, p. 3. 5. B. H. Johnson and A. R. Graybill, eds, Bridging National Borders in North America: Transnational and Comparative Histories, Durham:  Duke University Press, 2010, p. 2. 6. J. Agnew, “The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory,” Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1994, pp. 53–80.

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Introduction 7. D. Boucher, Political Theories of International Relations:  From Thucydides to the Present, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics, Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 1979. 8. Kenneth Waltz, “Structural Realism after the Cold War,” International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2000, pp. 5–41. 9. See, for instance, P. Jukarainan, “Review Essay: Border Research in Practice and Theory,” Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 41, No. 4, 2006, pp. 470–3; J. Sidaway, “The Return and Eclipse of Border Studies? Charting Agendas,” Geopolitics, Vol. 16, No. 4, 2011, pp. 969–76; C. Johnson, et al., “Rethinking ‘the border’ in Border Studies,” Political Geography, No. 30, 2011, pp. 61–9; N. Parker, et al., “Line in the Sand? Towards an Agenda for Critical Border Studies,” Geopolitics, 14, 2009, pp. 582–7. 10. See, for instance, K. Ohmae, The Borderless World. New York: Harper Collins, 1990; T. Wilson and H. Donnan, eds, Border Identities: Nation and State at International Frontiers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998; T. Wilson and H. Donnan, eds, A Companion to Border Studies, Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012; D. Newman, “Borders and Bordering: Towards an Interdisciplinary Dialogue,” European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 9, No. 2, 2006, pp. 171–86; H. Eskelinen, I. Liikanene and J. Oksa, eds, Curtains of Iron and Gold: Reconstructing Borders and Scales of Interaction. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999; D. Newman and A. Paasi, “Fences and Neighbours in the Postmodern World: Boundary Narratives in Political Geography,” Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 22, No. 2, 1998, pp. 186–206; A. Buchanan and M. Moore, States, Nations and Borders: The Ethics of Making Boundaries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; M. Albert, “On Boundaries, Territory and Postmodernity: An International Relations Perspective,” Geopolitics, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1998, pp. 53–68; J. R. V. Prescott, Political Frontiers and Boundaries, London: Unwin Hyman, 1987; J. Anderson and L. O’Dowd, “Borders, Border Regions and Territoriality: Contradictory Meanings, Changing Significance,” Regional Studies, Vol. 33, No. 7, 1999, pp. 593–604; A. Paasi, “Bounded Spaces in ‘borderless worlds’: Border Studies, Power and the Anatomy of Territory,” Journal of Power, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2009, pp. 213–34. 11. See, for instance, H.  Donnan and T.  Wilson, eds, Borderlands:  Ethnographic Approaches to Security, Power, and Identity, Lanham:  University Press of America, 2010; W. Zartman, ed., Understanding Life in Borderlands: Boundaries in Depth and Motion, Athens:  University of Georgia Press, 2010; J.  Migdal, ed., Boundaries and Belonging, Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2004; V.  Paviakovich-Kochi, B.  Morehouse and D.  Wasti-Walter, eds, Challenged Borderlands:  Transcending Political and Cultural Boundaries, Aldershot:  Ashgate, 2004; Alexander C.  Diener and Joshua Hagen, Borderlines and Borderlands: Political Oddities at the Edge of the Nation-State,

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12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

Lanham:  Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2010; P.  Kumar-Rajaram and C.  Grundy-Warr, eds, Borderscapes:  Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory’s Edge, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Edward Newman and Joanne van Selm, eds, Refugee and Forced Displacement: International Security, Human Vulnerability and the State, Tokyo:  United Nations University Press, 2003, p. 8. Oscar J. Martinez, Border People: Life and Society in the US–Mexico Borderlands. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994. R. Jones, Border Walls:  Security and the War on Terror in the United States, India and Israel, New York: Zed Books, 2012. J. Gottmann, “Spatial Partitioning and the Politician’s Wisdom,” International Political Science Review, Vol. 1, No. 4, 1980, p. 433. J. Agnew, Borders on the Mind: Re-framing Border Thinking, Ethics and Global Politics, Vol. 1, No. 4, 2008, p. 185. D. Newman, “Boundary Geopolitics: Towards a Theory of Territorial Lines?,” in E.  Berg and H.  van Houtum, eds, Routing Borders Between Territories, Discourses and Practices, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003, p. 277. W. Van Schendel and I. Abraham, eds, Illicit Flows and Criminal Things: States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization, Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2005; E. Tagliacozzo, Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865–1915, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005; E. Bort, “Illegal Migration and Cross-Border Crime: Challenges at the Eastern Frontier of the European Union,” in J. Zielonka, ed., Europe Unbound: Enlarging and Reshaping the Boundaries of the European Union, London: Routledge, 2002; L. Holmes, “Crime, Corruption and Politics: International and Transnational Factors,” in J. Zielonka and A. Pravda, eds, Democratic Consolidation in Eastern Europe: International and Transnational Factors, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001; P. Andreas, U.S.–Mexico: Open Markets, Closed Border, Foreign Affairs, No. 103, 1996, pp. 51–69; J. Nevins, Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the Illegal alien and the Remaking of the US– Mexico Boundary, New York and London: Routledge, 2001; D. Bigo, “Frontiers and Security in the European Union: The Illusion of Migration Control,” in M. Anderson and E. Bort, eds, The Frontiers of Europe, London: Cassell, 1998. See, for instance, M.B. Sparke, “A Neoliberal Nexus: Economy, Security and the Biopolitics of Citizenship on the Border,” Political Geography, No. 25, 2006, pp. 151–80. Martinez, 1994, p. 3.

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1 Gendering the European Borders: The Role of Female Migrants and Refugees Emanuela C. Del Re

When you are a refugee, you wonder why God the Almighty decided that I should come to life as a woman. Am I strong enough to please Him, to carry this burden on my shoulders? I do not deserve His trust in me… I am just a human being, I am worth nothing, I am only a mother, a wife…only! I knew I was losing everything when I left my tent in the refugee camp. Then I knew I was losing more at every border I was crossing…. I was anxious to know what was there for me at the end of this torture, my trip…at one point you only want to know what is there behind that border. You cross it and you find the same as before: a road, a tree, the same clouds in the sky…new fears, new challenges, also when you arrive in a rich town like this [Frankfurt-am-Mein] and you think you are safe. But you are still nobody… The border is inside me, I cross it all the time, I go forward and backward… forward and backward…Can you tell me where I am now? [laughs] Maybe I am in my town in Syria now…[covers her face with both hands].1

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Male and Female Borders In 2016, women and children outnumbered men, constituting around 60 percent of the refugees and migrants crossing the borders to reach the European Union (EU).2 According to the latest UNHCR statistics, there were 2.856 persons dead or missing in the Mediterranean in the first half of 2016,3 of which a third were women and children.4 Gender must be considered a fundamental element in the analysis of the fluxes because of the role it plays in the migration cycle.5 Nevertheless, sex-disaggregated data has begun to be gathered systematically only since the 1980s. It has become a common practice in most countries, although remaining short of covering all the related sub-areas (age, economic conditions and other). Macioti and Coppola6 point out that the social interpretation of migration is fundamental because gender norms define roles and behaviors. Gender norms empower or reduce risks and opportunities. The gender perspective in migration analysis allows the understanding of gender relations in decision making, access to resources, power relations, equality in economic, social and legal structures. Knowledge of these elements facilitate the making of adequate policies to address all the issues related to gender and migration in all the phases of the process, and particularly border-crossing. Here I focus on female migrants crossing borders, pointing out elements of vulnerability. However, I want to make clear that the concept of “gendered borders” must necessarily be intended as inclusive and comprehensive. “Gender” must contemplate both women and men, who are equally vulnerable although in different ways. “Young single man,” for instance, constitutes a category of its own that deserves attention by scholars and decision makers, for the abuses these men are subject to during migration and for the risk of their radicalization or criminalization, as a consequence of being marginalized after reaching the country of destination. Especially in Muslim societies, the community, due to what I call the “testosterone factor,” controls young single men. At the same time, they are offered a “compensation” in the form of privileged social status and having access to a number of aggregative social activities to lessen the tensions that this exclusion creates at individual and community level.

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Gendering the European Borders In migration processes this social construct collapses, with dangerous consequences. The perception of “young single men” in EU societies can acquire similar features to that of Muslim communities. In the EU, especially after several sexual assaults in Cologne and other towns in Germany during 2015 New Year’s Eve, warnings have been raised against single men. The tone of the reactions can be summarized by a headline in the British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail: “Why Britain should be worried by this flood of young male migrants.”7 The motivations at the basis of this attitude are mainly related to the idea that the influx of young, male migrants can create an imbalance in Europe with security risks; the fact that the majority of immigrants are unmarried young men and the fact that imbalanced societies are prone to aggression. Hudson, who has studied similar cases in Asia,8 affirms this contention. When life is abruptly interrupted by migration – with young men finding it difficult to emancipate themselves and create their own family in a hosting society, individuals may become susceptible to mental diseases, with many likely to enter a dangerous tunnel of extremist behaviors. There are no significant efforts to deconstruct these elements and ensure a better understanding of the phenomenon of young men migration. Even worse, this critical approach is reflected in the policies within the EU, by which single men are isolated – for example, in specific “single men” camps – rather than integrated through programs that can help them restart their life and avoid radicalization and criminalization. The case of Azad, a young Syrian refugee who I met in Domiz Camp in IraqiKurdistan is emblematic.9 His father had managed to migrate to Austria just before the beginning of the great fluxes in early 2014. He succeeded in making his wife and young children apply for family reunification process. Azad was left out of this process because he was 18. He then decided to travel to Austria in a clandestine manner and had to face innumerable distressing experiences – hiding in a truck to reach Greece, walking through the Balkans and then living in an identification camp in Hungary. From the camp, he escaped and reached Austria. He then applied for refugee status. While his younger brothers have been enrolled in Austrian schools and have received identity documents, Azad’s case is pending. He spends his 23

Women and Borders days taking selfies and hanging around with friends, who are all depressed, being in a similar uncertain situation. Azad was a talented high school student in Syria, aspiring to become a journalist. There are several others like him. His cousin Muhammad, 25, who arrived in Austria alone, has been residing in a camp for single men in the forests near Salzburg. He is also severely depressed. Schrover, Lenz, Morokvasic and others10 have suggested a comparative approach to the issue of gender and migration, comparing men and women regarding the legislation related to asylum and protection. Nowadays this comparison is frequent, although the habit persists of segregating the issue of gender from the issue of migration. I suggest that the approach to migration should include gender specificities since a gender-neglecting approach results in inappropriate and problematic policies. As Taiwo, 23, a Nigerian migrant said, “gender issues of illegal migrant women cannot be solved by merely creating separate toilets in the identification camps.”11 The phenomenon is not new, as Sassen has demonstrated.12 But, the recent fluxes of migration to the EU are characterized by two new elements: (i) migration flows are mixed, involving refugees, economic migrants, and climate migrants (forced by droughts and other natural calamities); (ii)  migrant and refugee women travel alone with children, travel when they are pregnant, when they are adolescents, or elderly. This impacts the typology of vulnerability of women, which emerges in different stages of their journey and in different forms. Women suffer violence in the country of origin. They suffer violence during the migration journey. They suffer from a different kind of vulnerability in the country of destination (for instance, unable to understand social practices and regulations, prevented from learning the local language by their men and abused). The analysis of gendered borders must start from the assumption that migration is a life-long process. The status of migrant/refugee is not only an administrative condition but is also a psychological/mental status. This is a reality even when the migration has been successful in terms of settlement, not necessarily – or rarely – corresponding to an inclusive concept of citizenship. In this sense, border crossing is a comprehensive experience that implies a repetitive scheme of ‘out-through-in’ always connoted by different variables that are not constant and often unexpected. These 24

Gendering the European Borders include many challenges. The “out” phase implies risks related to the payment of passeurs and investment of all the savings, the dangerous journey, the separation, the unknown and many others. The “through” phase includes difficulties related to the new language, the knowhow, living conditions, security, the responsibilities towards the family and the need to protect and be protected, and many others. The “in” phase is also problematic because it implies a high degree of vulnerability in being in an unknown place, not knowing the language, the norms, risk of being arrested and many others. This renders the experience of migration a traumatic exercise; a constant rebalancing of the constitutive elements of the identity of the individual and his/her group. This is also the reason why privileged migrations are through the so-called “humanitarian corridors,” which provide a safe and tranquil transfer to a hosting country. In my opinion, if these corridors are “humanitarian,” they should be open to all. The vast masses of refugees/migrants are considered a “group of people” that can be moved from one place to the other according to decisions taken at EU government-level, for instance the plan suggested by the well-known ESI to Merkel and Turkey.13 An example of the decision making process of families who choose to migrate is the story of Bahar, 29, a Yazidi woman living in Khanke IDP camp (Iraqi-Kurdistan), whom I interviewed in June 2016: We had decided to divide the family into two groups. My brother, 28, and my eldest son, 11, traveled together. My husband and I, with our other three children, 9, 7 and 3, traveled together. I did not want to cry to help my children remain calm, but when I saw my eldest son go away, I felt my heart was torn off. We lost contact with my brother and my son immediately. We managed to leave Rojava [a region of Syria] and were taken to Turkey by bus. Then one night we were put on a boat. The Turkish police intercepted the boat. Thank God, the police caught us; the boat was going to sink for sure…. We were put in a camp in Turkey for days. We had no information about our relatives and especially my son because we had lost everything, also the mobiles. One day I met an acquaintance and called my brother from his phone. He told us that he and my son were safe. After days of walking and sleeping in the woods, they had managed to arrive in Germany. We managed to return here, amongst our Yazidi people, but we are restless.14

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Women and Borders It is difficult for a female migrant to capitalize on the acquired knowhow when traveling to the EU, for impediments deriving from their gender. Women refugees, for instance, lament the difficulty in finding privacy when they face the different phases of migration, which, in some cases, imply long permanence in transit countries. Most women I interviewed in Austria, in July 2016, informed that they felt humiliated and depressed.15 These women were prepared to face difficult conditions during the journeys as illegal migrants. For them, however, the most challenging aspect was the lack of privacy and personal hygiene. African women crossing the Mediterranean sea, often hold their urine and do not drink water for hours. Joyce, a young girl from Ghana, reported that she would rather die than use a plastic bottle to urinate while traveling on a crowded boat.16

Vulnerable Groups Crossing Every time women face a new stage in their migration process, they must redefine the reference points and struggle to find the best conditions. This implies a high level of distress, waste of energy and precarious solutions to structural individual problems. In many cases, female migrants are perceived within the EU as passive; their passivity often attributed to the constraints imposed by their culture or religion. Their alleged passivity is often, in fact, a strategy. Once these women obtain an acceptable condition in one of the phases of migration, they find it scary to change, fearing the unknown. The restriction on the freedom to choose and dependency on others’ decisions – in the whole process: when they depart, when they cross and when they settle – have a devastating effect on female migrants/ refugees. In this sense, diasporas are fundamental because they can contribute to the adjustment of female migrants to the new condition. This is why it is crucial that the dialogue between local administrations in the EU and the diaspora communities should be improved and their potential facilitated, favored, and recognized at higher political level.17 As Collier and Hoeffler18 point out, diasporas can support migrants economically, act as cultural mediators for the newcomers and the hosting society, provide information and assistance on practical issues such as education and health. 26

Gendering the European Borders All the phases of migration remain a matter of constant re-balancing for women. Crossing the borders does not imply that women are safe. When women cross the borders, their vulnerability emerges more, because they lose their points of orientation, they lack knowhow, they can become the object of blackmailing to have access to resources (even when they are entitled), they are sexually harassed and abused. Amnesty International reports that refugee women from Syria and Iraq face sexual harassment, violence, assault, discrimination “at every stage of their journey, including on European soil.”19 My research in Syrian refugee camps in Iraq and Jordan, in transit areas in Turkey and in destination countries substantiate this contention. In refugee camps in Iraq and Jordan, female refugees report20 that local administrators and personnel frequently harass them for various reasons: the Syrians are more liberal (wearing western clothes and mingling with men), appearing as accessible; in some camps the supply of food and goods depends upon external providers and women may be blackmailed to fulfil their needs; the management responsibility may be used by some members of the camp administration personnel as a position of power to exploit women. Crossing the borders, the most traumatic experience derives from being abused by those who were expected to be the saviors. The reasons for the abuse are multiple: lack of training and awareness of humanitarian organization personnel or local administrations of EU border countries on gender-based issues in migrations; lack of facilities to protect vulnerable groups; lack of research and attention to these issues; scarce control on guards in refugee reception/transit centers; lack of access to justice for victims of gendered crimes and lack of counselling. Many female respondents describe the centers of identification, in which they have been kept in Turkey and Greece once captured at the border, as “prisons.”21 The issue of “dignity” emerges as the most fundamental in the experience of crossing the border. The need to be recognized as “women” and the denial of such a need is strongly felt as humiliating. Pietro Bartolo, a doctor who has been examining migrants arriving to the island of Lampedusa (Italy) for the last 25 years, contend that women departing from Libya, before boarding boats to cross the Mediterranean, are often injected with anti-ovulation medicine to avoid pregnancy during 27

Women and Borders the journey.22 This practice is not to protect women as human beings, but to protect them as consumption goods. My field studies related to Syrian refugees in Iraq, Jordan and Syria, women belonging to minorities in Syria and Iraq, in particular, Yazidi and Christian women,23 and migrants from Afghanistan crossing the Mediterranean, suggests that the gender dimension of the movement of people is crucial. The experiences of men and women present differences related to gender, typology, and degree of vulnerability. Vulnerability itself acts as a criminogenic factor, in a precipitation sense, the vulnerable/victim, him/herself, creates the conditions to be criminally abused, or that the vulnerability pushes the migrant/refugee to violate norms to reduce it; or that the vulnerability creates the mental conditions – especially given the impact of the traumas experienced in the phases of migration – for the migrant/refugee to try anything to emerge from his/her economic, social, emotional stalemate. The major consequence is that vulnerability suffocates the entrepreneurial skills of migrants, their imaginations, their talent and their innovations. This is a serious loss for the countries of destination, where they are treated mostly as a group and not as individuals. The concept of “innovators” theorized by Merton24 is notable. For him, innovators in society create their own ways to obtain what they desire. Those who relocate to another country are innovators, because they take the risks. Some families of refugees do not wish to leave and remain in the camps in Iraq or Jordan. The reason being they do not want to raise their children according to the values and norms they do not share. Notably, most of the time it is men who do not wish to be confronted with new lifestyles. Generally, women are ready to take risks for the sake of a better future for their family and children.

Concrete Border Female migration is motivated by active and passive/coerced motivations. Actively, women migrate under family reunion schemes, to study, work, and follow their aspirations. Passively/coercively, women are object of trafficking for the sex industry, within arranged marriages, to be exploited as bonded workers or even slaves (African or Asian girls in rich Arab 28

Gendering the European Borders countries, an increasing phenomenon).25 The typology is articulated and the intervening variables are complex. The experience of crossing a geographical border is a traumatic as well as a ‘totalizing’ event that affects all aspects of the life of a woman, affecting her identity and all her roles as an individual and as a group member (family, ethnic-religious-geographical community). The metaphor of “crossing the border” is appropriate when defining the individual journey of women who have to change their everyday life and face unpredictably difficult living conditions, in which the abilities and responsibilities related to their social role are diminished or humiliated. Femininity, motherhood, sisterhood, being members of a community, everyday family chores, lifestyle undergo a huge process of redefinition during the process of relocation. Despite their vulnerability, women become entrepreneurs when they decide to cross the borders alone or with their children. They have to organize their journey, make agreements with the passeurs, develop skills and know how regarding departure points and arrivals, retain contact with relatives in Europe, etc. These elements – risk and opportunity – are parallel in the migratory experience. The border-crossing challenges women. Women manifest a clear sense of what the border determines at a symbolic – yet dramatically concrete – level. “Once I crossed the border and was traveling in a van to reach Turkey, and onwards, I knew I could not look back. I even started using a different name. Helen, yes, my name is Helen now,” told Deema, a Kurdish young woman living near Aleppo with family.26 She sold all her belongings in Syria to facilitate migration to Europe. Women’s imagination is fundamental in the decision making process, a “dreaming” exercise, as defined in an interesting paper by Teo27 that challenges the typical economist view that the decision to migrate is based on the will to improve human capital. In fact, as I have mentioned in a study in Euro-Mediterranean migrations,28 perceptions fed and often distorted by mass and social media are a strong incentive in migration. Borders with the EU are gendered because women want to experience the European lifestyle, especially regarding freedom of expression:29 “can you really decide what to do all by yourself? How did European women succeed in this?” is a frequent question women ask me. Men often comment that it is nice to live in Europe and enjoy freedom, but freedom must be limited: “I was living 29

Women and Borders in Amsterdam for three years. I decided to return to Lebanon because there is too much freedom there, it makes me dizzy,” told Awad, a 29-yearold Palestinian man.30 The values of universal and individual rights are related to migration. People who do not fit the prevalent gender model, such as homosexuals, and also men and women who do not feel comfortable with the interpretation of masculinity and femininity in their country of origin, or with the roles imposed according to age, social status, education, may decide to migrate. Europe, in the imagination of these people, becomes a “home” rather than just a place. The EU is trying to approach migrations at a qualitative level. An example of this is the 2010 project “EU-magine: Imagining Europe from the outside.”31 Here the migrants/refugees were asked about their perceptions of democracy and human rights within Europe and their origin countries. The subjects were also questioned about the relationship between their perceptions and aspirations and their decision to emigrate. Two types of perceptions of Europe were studied in the project: “migratory imaginations” and “geographical imaginations.” The first concept refers to what Mai called a ‘migratory project,’ a perception of migration as a life-project.32 The decision process for a migrant is related to a multitude of available information sources. These viewpoints are formed in the socalled ‘emigration environment’ and include, for example, ideas about the lives of people in Europe. “Geographical imaginations,” according to Said33 and Gregory,34 refers to the subjective conception of spaces and people living within. EU-magine is an interesting project that shows how strong is the responsibility of the EU in being imagined as the ‘promised land’, and the EU should design appropriate imaginative responses to these dreams, especially that of women. Despite awareness regarding the risks and the horrifying stories of the deaths in the Mediterranean, many women believe their story is unique, and that unless they experience the journey themselves, they will not know what their destiny entails. Yet the border is not a definite concept. The border remains in the life of refugees and migrants as an oppressive instrument. For them, it is a “living creature:” It may be open or closed, it may be controlled by friendly or enemy forces, it may be easy to cross or very difficult, it may require a lot of money to bribe the guards and it is certainly 30

Gendering the European Borders a risk for women who can be abused. A most effective representation of this kind of imagination is the film by Fiamma Montezemolo entitled Traces35 that shows the border life between the United States and Mexico. Montezemolo talks to the “wall” imagining that it has a virile nature, a gender. And, this is not localized. “What do you want? Do you want to eat me?” said Leila, a Palestinian woman from Bethlehem, looking at the wall that surrounds the town, interrupting her conversation with me, in 2015.36 The border is omnipresent in everyday conversations. A border’s functionality lies in the construction of the new social space and the shaping of categories and roles – gender, patriarchy, modernity, tradition and globalization. Refugee women redefine the border in a “bi-directional process of gendering.” They take possession of the border as a concrete life boundary. At the same time, they undergo a process of emancipation through experiencing abnormalities that make them strong and eligible for a stronger position in life.

European Union, Gendered Borders The European Union is facing a strong re-definition of the concept of borders. In this context, refugee and migrant women play an important role, especially because their presence contest the politically driven image of migrants as single, male, unskilled and dangerous. The public opinion only occasionally encompass a sense of compassion for the women and children, shown by the media, in unbearable conditions. However, the presence of vulnerable groups amongst refugees and migrants has forced the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to recommend to the member states to take into account the gender-based violence and genderrelated persecution in their asylum systems, beginning with the collection, analysis and publication of statistics and information on the issue. The Istanbul Convention of the Council of Europe that came into force in 2014,37 “Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence,” provides for the protection of refugee women against violence. It also requires that the parties to the Convention elaborate the legislative framework to recognize gender-based violence as a form of persecution in line with the UN Refugee Convention. The interesting 31

Women and Borders element of the Convention is that it focuses in particular on the reception procedures and support for asylum seekers. While many countries have signed, ratified and enforced the Convention, some others, including countries that are currently on the frontline of the recent flows of migrants and refugees, such as Hungary, have signed but not ratified the convention. This Convention is relevant for the analysis I propose on the process of gendering the European Union borders by female refugees and migrants. There is a need to raise critical issues such as the concept of borders and boundaries, as constructed lines of differences. In this critical moment in which movement of people across borders for different motivations have become a political instrument and have obliged the European Union to undertake an introspection on its core values and functions, female refugees and migrants can be a catalyst between contrasting views and reactions. Their first and most important contribution is that the current and common use of generic words such as “migrant” and “refugee” are inadequate. Gender has an impact on borders as much as borders have an impact on gender. The recent consistent flow of refugees and migrants towards Europe has underlined the need to redefine the concept of ‘migrant’ and ‘refugee’ beyond the juridical-political definitions conventionally adopted by the European Union. There is a need to encompass a more humanized and inclusive perspective. The need is also to redefine the concept of border, given that this concept has undergone a number of adjustments following the Schengen Agreement38 and the enlargement of the EU, becoming an ideological symbol of the different approaches to the crisis by States in Europe (members and candidates). The EU is currently the destination of migrants and refugees from many areas. According to Frontex (European Border and Coast Guard Agency), currently there are many routes towards the EU: (i)

the route that traverses West Africa and eventually reaches the Canary Islands; (ii) Western Mediterranean route originating in West Africa and reaching Morocco and Spain; (iii) Central Mediterranean route that traverses the Sahel and then reaches Libya and Tunisia and eventually Italy and Malta; 32

Gendering the European Borders (iv)

Central Mediterranean route that skips Lampedusa and arrives at Apulia and Calabria in Italy; (v) the circular route between Albania to Greece; (vi) Western Balkan route; (vii) Eastern Border routes; (viii) Arctic route.39 The proliferation of maps and media discussions on the dimensions of the phenomenon have created in the EU as well as in the transit countries surrounding the EU a sense of siege, which is not at all justified by the numbers – still manageable – but is magnified by the terrorist and criminal attacks perpetrated by foreigners within the region. The dual nature of the EU Borders, external and internal, is problematic. The internal borders are open between the member States except for Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Ireland, Romania and the UK. There are other borders to be considered within the EU, that is the borders with non-members, candidate states (Turkey, FYR Macedonia, Serbia, Albania) and potential candidates (Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo). This political scenario explains how complex it is for migrants and refugees to cross several borders to reach the country they desire within the EU. They, in fact, confront different situation in different countries, although there is overarching EU legislation. Not all EU member states are bound by all the pieces of EU legislation in the field of asylum, border management and immigration.40 The geographical borders that had completely lost their restraint sense, given the ease with which European citizens travel the Union, become an ideal cultural boundary represented only by street-signs that mark the departure from one country to the other, have re-acquired their physical representation with a strong impact on the imagination of the European demography. Austria has planned to build a fence along the border with Italy, the first country of arrival for many migrants from Africa, to prevent non-EU people from entering the country. The plan has been suspended following strong protests by Italy that has sustained that this would breach EU law and is against the values the EU has been built upon.41 The images of fences built in other countries such as Hungary, which has created a special corps called “Border Hunters” to prevent illegal 33

Women and Borders migration,42 have an effect on potential migrants and refugees wishing to leave their present condition (for instance in camps in Syria). This development makes them feel like animals, not human beings. Nevertheless, the motivation to take a chance are stronger than the risk. Such measures are hence a deterrent to an extent. What is certain is such developments are leading to a debate within the EU affecting the perception of these people. Gendering the border in the EU is difficult, although in the last few years and especially in the current state, gender has emerged as a fundamental factor in legal matters related to asylum and granting of refugee status. Gender is taken into account when the applicant’s position is assessed. Acts of violence of a physical, mental and sexual nature are considered acts of persecution and gender is recognized as grounds for membership of a particular social group (Qualification Directive Art.4 (3), Art. 9 (2), 10 (1)). This normative provides that Member States ensure that genderbased violence, FGM, and domestic violence are taken into account. When the grounds for refugee status is not recognized, women may be granted subsidiarity protection status (Art.15 Qualification Directive). This is possible upon demonstration by the applicant of being at risk of serious harm (death penalty or execution, torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in the country of origin, serious and individual threat to a person’s life because of violence in situations of international or internal armed conflict). Differences in treatment within the EU Member States due to gender emerge in cases such as the granting of dependent residence permit, which are granted more easily to women than to men. It seems that in some cases even the European legislation reflects old, traditional-customary views and finds it difficult to keep the pace with new social developments and dynamics, especially as regards migration. In Schrover’s view,43 the multiculturalistic policy applied by many Western European countries since the 1970s has had a negative effect on migrant women because it has confirmed a model of women in a dependent position and has enhanced their victimhood. He contends that this makes migrant women more vulnerable than men, making them undergo more social monitoring, which can become a double-edged sword as it can result in restricting women’s free expression, movement and initiatives. What can be said is that these are 34

Gendering the European Borders not necessarily signs that EU Member States have interiorized the concept of gendered borders. However, an important step that has been taken in recent years in EU legislation is the fact that interviews of Asylum applicants must be carried out by competent people who must take into account elements such as cultural origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or vulnerability (art.17 of the Asylum Procedures Directive).44 This recognizes that the process is not simply an administrative/bureaucratic one. It is a qualitative exercise with a number of implications. The decision making process of the applicants is eviscerated, and allows the understanding of motivations and intervening variables, amongst which gender is clearly a priority. The increased influx in the EU of migrants and refugees in recent times has raised many preoccupations, which cannot be ignored. However, this development has also drawn the attention of European Politics to fundamental issues, that the policies could be more individual-centered, taking into account the gender element. What is still lacking is the real awareness of the potential of a gendered approach to borders and migrations, and the will to use this approach to define policies and strategies; this could be an important innovation in a situation of fear and the benevolent attitude, which stigmatizes the migrants as needy people. Montezemolo considers the wall between Mexico and the USA as masculine. I think that the borders of the EU are female: Europe was a nymph whose name means “broad look.” I argue that gendering the EU borders will help to broaden our outlook towards migrants and refugees.

Notes 1. Personal interview, January 16, 2016, with Nerghiz, 29, Syrian Refugee, mother of four children aged 9, 7, 5 years old and 6 months old, who traveled to Germany through Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, overcoming all sorts of adversities. 2. Council of Europe, “Human rights of refugee and migrant women and girls need to be better protected,” March 7, 2016. https://www.coe.int/sq/web/commissioner/-/human-rights-of-refugee-and-migrant-women-and-girls-need-tobe-better-protected. (accessed on December 1, 2016) 3. UNHCR, “Refugees/Migrants Emergency Response  – Mediterranean,” http:// data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/regional.php. (accessed on May 23, 2016)

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Women and Borders 4. S. Pickering and B.  Cochrane, “Irregular Border-Crossing Deaths and Gender:  Where, How and Why Women Die Crossing Borders,” Theoretical Criminology, Vol. 17, No. 1, 2012, pp. 27–48. 5. A. Petrozziello, Gender on the Move: Working on the Migration‐Development Nexus from a Gender Perspective, UN Women Publications, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 2013. 6. M. I. Macioti and N. Coppola, “Migration and Gender,” in E. C. Del Re and R. R. Laremont, Pursuing Stability and a Shared Development: EuroMediterranean Migrations, Aracne: Rome, 2017, pp. 152–68. 7. N. Afzar, “Why Britain should be worried by this flood of young male migrants:  Leading lawyer who’s the son of immigrants gives a stark warning,” January 8, 2016. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3389734/Why-Britainworried-flood-young-male-migrants-Leader-lawyer-s-son-immigrants-givesstark-warning.html#ixzz4TdIVM13e. (accessed on December 12, 2016) 8. V. Hudson, “Europe’s Man Problem. Migrants to Europe skew heavily male— and that’s dangerous,” Politico Magazine, 2016. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/europe-refugees-migrant-crisis-men-213500 (accessed on December 4, 2016); V. Hudson and A. M. Den Boer, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004. 9. Personal Interview, Vienna (Austria), July 18, 2016. 10. M. Schrover and D. Moloney, Gender, Migration and Categorisation, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014, M. Morokvasic, U. Erel, K. Shinozaki, eds, Crossing borders and shifting boundaries, Gender on the move, Opladen: Leske-Budrich, 2003. 11. Personal interview, October 22, 2016. 12. S. Sassen, “Europe’s Migrations. The Numbers and the Passions are Not New,” in Fortress Europe: Migration, Culture and Representation, Vol. 20, No. 6, 2006, pp. 635–45. See also S. Sassen, Guests and Aliens: Europe and Its Migrations, New York: New Press, 2000. 13. ESI, “The Merkel Plan – A proposal for the Syrian refugee crisis,” 2015. http:// www.esiweb.org/index.php?lang=en&id=67&newsletter_ID=97 (accessed on November 29, 2016). 14. Quoted in Del Re and Laremont, 2017. 15. Personal interviews, Austria, July 2016. 16. Personal interview, Crotone, Italy, October 16, 2016. 17. See M.  Beine, F.  Docquier and Ç. Özden, Diaspora Effects in International Migration. Key Questions and Methodological Issues, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 5721, 2011. 18. P. Collier and A.  Hoeffler, “Migration, Diasporas and Culture:  an Empirical Investigation,” Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford, 2014.

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Gendering the European Borders 19. Amnesty International, “Female refugees face physical assault, exploitation and sexual harassment on their journey through Europe,” January 16, 2016. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/01/female-refugees-face-physical-assault-exploitation-and-sexual-harassment-on-their-journey-througheurope/. (accessed on May 23, 2016) 20. Personal interviews, from 2013 and 2016, in several refugee camps in IraqiKurdistan (Dara Shakran, Domiz 1, Domiz 2, Arbat, Kawergosk). 21. Ibid. 22. Private conversation with Petro Bartolo. His declarations on this matter are public: A. Ditta, “Il medico di Lampedusa che salva i migranti e racconta le loro storie,” The Post Internazionale, 2016. http://www.tpi.it/mondo/ italia/pietro-bartolo-medico-lampedusa-migranti. (accessed on December 3, 2016) 23. E. C. Del Re, “The Yazidi and the Islamic State, or the effects of a Middle East without minorities on Europe,” Politics and Religion Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2, Autumn 2015, pp. 269–96; E. C. Del Re, “We, the last Christians of Iraq,” Filmdocumentary (50’), 2015, https://vimeo.com/139202991. (accessed on December 3, 2016) 24. Robert K. Merton, “Social Structure and Anomie,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 3, No. 5, 1932, pp. 672–82. 25. T. Khan, “Slave trade brought 800,000 Africans to the Gulf,” May 23, 2016. http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/slave-trade-brought-800000africans-to-the-gulf (accessed on December 3, 2016); see also E. Kofman et al., Gender and International Migration in Europe: Employment, Welfare and Politics, London and New York: Routledge, 2000; see also “The Slaves of Dubai” the known documentary by BBC journalist Ben Anderson, focused on Asian slave workers, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMh-vlQwrmU (accessed on December 4, 2016). 26. Personal interview, Zagreb (Croatia), November 26, 2016. 27. S. Y. Teo, “Dreaming Inside a Walled City: Imagination, Gender and the Roots of Immigration,” Asian & Pacific Migration Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4, 2003. 28. E. C. Del Re, “Introduction Pursuing Stability and a Shared Development: EuroMediterranean Migrations,” in E.  C. Del Re and R.  R. Laremont, Pursuing Stability and a Shared Development:  Euro-Mediterranean Migrations, Rome: Aracne, 2017. 29. J. Carling, “Migration in the age of involuntary immobility: theoretical reflections and Cape Verdian experiences,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2002, pp. 5–42. 30. Personal interview, Tripoli, Lebanon, September 28, 2016. 31. See EU-magine, “Imagining Europe from the outside,” 2010, http://www.eumagine.org/ (accessed on November 29, 2016).

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Women and Borders 32. N. Mai, “Looking for a More Modern Life:  The role of Italian Television in the Albanian Migration to Italy,” Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, Vol. 1, 2004, pp. 2–22. 33. E. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978. 34. D. Gregory, Geographical Imaginations, Blackwell Publisher, Oxford and Basil, 1994. 35. F. Montezemolo, “Rastros/Traces,” video-essay (20’), 2012, http://www.fiammamontezemolo.com/traces/ (accessed on December 4, 2016). 36. Personal interview, Palestine, May 23 2015. 37. Council of Europe, “Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence,” April 12, 2011, http://www.coe.int/en/ web/istanbul-convention/home (accessed on May 3, 2016). 38. The text of the Schengen Agreement, 1985, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/ LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:42000A0922(02):en:HTML (accessed on December 2, 2016) 39. Elaboration from:  FRONTEX, “Trends and Routes,” 2016, http://Frontex. europa.eu/trends-and-routes/migratory-routes-map/ (accessed on November 29, 2016). 40. E. Fribergh and M. Kjaerum, eds, Handbook on European law relating to asylum, borders and immigration, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2014, http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/handbook-law-asylum-migrationborders-2nded_en.pdf (accessed on December 2, 2016). 41. “Migration crisis: Italians protest over Austria border fence plan,” May 7, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/07/migration-crisis-italiansaustria-border-fence-germany-merkel (accessed on December 3, 2016). 42. A. Faiola, “How do you stop migrants? In Hungary, with ‘border hunters,’” Washington Post, October 1, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ world/ europe/ how- do- you- stop- migrants- in- hungary- with- border- hunters/2016/09/30/cd9736aa-818c-11e6-9578-558cc125c7ba_story.html?utm_ term=.55c21c205a29 (accessed on December 3, 2016). 43. M. Schrover, “Why make a difference? Migration policy and making differences between migrant men and women (The Netherlands 1945–2005),” in M. Schrover and E. J. Yeo, eds, Gender, Migration and the Public Sphere 1850– 2005, New York: Routledge, 2010. 44. “Directive 2013/32/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 on common procedures for granting and withdrawing international protection,” See http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/ ?uri=celex%3A32013L0032 (accessed on December 3, 2016).

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2 The Refugee’s Passage: Liminality, Gendered Habits and the Emergence of Difference in Flight Leila Hudson

We got to the border and it was a disaster. It was full of people from Raqqa which had just fallen (to ISIS). So many people were standing around waiting to get into Lebanon, and the border guards were beating the young men. The Lebanese border guards were part of Hezbollah and they hate us, even though these crowds were running away from ISIS. So they were beating people and tearing up their papers, the entry visa which cost 1200SP so they’d have to go back and buy another. It got very ugly at the border that day. More than one time they were going to tear up my husband’s passport. He was waiting in line, and when he saw that they were tearing up papers, he’d leave the line. He said “as long as this guard is here I won’t be able to get in.” I was standing in the separate women’s line and they let us in, no problem. When I got in, I was so relieved because I had left my children and my baby back in Lebanon. It would have been a disaster if they didn’t let me in. So my husband waited until that officer took a bathroom break and in those two

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Women and Borders minutes he got to the front of the line, had his papers stamped and got through to where I was waiting by the bus. Two times it didn’t work, then finally it worked. This all took 4 or 5 hours standing under the glaring sun. Some people had children, some people were sick, and so on.1

New narratives and ethnographies of mobility – of flight, refuge, and asylum seeking – can lend themselves all too easily to a simplistic metanarrative of progress from a state of deprivation in the war-torn Middle East to a state of fulfillment in a Europe of rights. The refugee’s teleological imagined progress to redemption via trials leads from death to life, from subjecthood to proto-citizenship, from tradition to modernity, and it is especially tempting to apply the trope to women. The female refugee’s flight in particular is easy for some to see as a gauntlet of challenges which painfully extricate the individual from the bonds of patriarchy and prepare her for the responsibilities of gender neutral citizenship.2 Seen theoretically, transnational flows of populations have contributed to “mutations in citizenship” as the rights, entitlements and responsibilities of national belonging are disaggregated and remixed in assemblages and zones.3 But listening to the voices of Syrian refugees shows that crossing borders and traversing borderlands is akin to transitional processes that, without being formally ritualized, nevertheless reiterate the same three stages of transformation – separation, liminality, and ultimately incorporation – described by Van Gennep as rites of passage.4 Indeed for the men, women and children I interviewed who made the flight from war in Syria to asylum in Europe between 2012 and 2016, the crossing of borders produced an acute awareness of their changing legal status as well as disorientation as one world of experience receded and other unfamiliar vista loomed ahead. Having reached asylum in Europe, hindsight allowed them to see a cumulative and personal transformation in their flight. The Syrian refugees’ ordeal is flight, not ritual. But the crossing of thresholds and frontiers in historical time (not symbolically as timeless ritual) impacts what Bourdieu called the habitus.5 A “mediating construct” that bridges the cultural, social and environmental by “the internalization 40

The Refugee’s Passage of externality and the externalization of internality,” habitus captures the way in which the socio-symbolic structures of society become deposited inside persons in the form of lasting dispositions…which in turn guide them in their creative responses to the constraints and solicitations of their extant milieu.”6 Although the concept was designed to explain reproduction of the status quo, the habitus molded by and molding the environment can be useful7 for the analysis of rupture and crisis.8 The Syrian refugees’ movement over the landscape and the crossing of juridical borders and cultural borderlands spatializes the kind of transformative processes that take people from states and subjectivities of one kind to another.9 Unlike structuralist studies of life-cycle transitions that or cycle, which focused on the malleability of the individual in the liminal interstices within specific cultures,10 the refugees’ flight is not ritually institutionalized as part of a closed and localized culture. Rather as a transcontinental odyssey, it benefits from Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of a nomadology traversing and challenging striated and smooth spaces.11 In typically opaque fashion, Deleuze and Guattari decline to define and fix the opposition in types of space, but use striation and smoothing of space to describe the work of the state and the attempts of “the nomad” avatar to elude the State’s channels and rather to order and territorialize independently. One of the fundamental tasks of the State is to striate the space over which it reigns, or to utilize smooth spaces as a means of communication in the service of striated space. It is a vital concern of every State not only to vanquish nomadism but to control migrations and, more generally, to establish a zone of rights over an entire “exterior,” over all of the flows traversing the ecumenon. If it can help it, the State does not dissociate itself from a process of capture of flows of all kinds, populations, commodities or commerce, money or capital, etc. There is still a need for fixed paths in well-defined directions, which restrict speed, regulate circulation, relativize movement, and measure in detail the relative movements of subjects and objects.12

By the countervailing actions of states on the one hand and mobile people on the other “smooth space is constantly being translated, transversed 41

Women and Borders into a striated space; striated space is constantly being reversed, returned to a smooth space.”13 Thus we return from the structuralist interlude in which Victor Turner focused rites of passage on the deepest interstices of symbolic and often gendered transition of the life-cycle stages,14 back to Van Gennep’s point of departure which derived temporal and symbolic transitions from actual territorial passage and the crossing over invisible thresholds and passage through doors (from the virtual to the monumental). Van Gennep, writing in 1908, provides what could almost be a more vivid and human-centered description of the smooth/striated border zone than Deleuze and Guattari: The neutral zones are ordinarily deserts, marshes, and most frequently virgin forests where everyone has full rights to travel and hunt. Because of the pivoting of sacredness, the territories on either side of the neutral zone are sacred in relation to whoever is in the zone, but the zone in turn is sacred for the inhabitants of the adjacent territories. Whoever passes from one to the other finds himself physically and magico-religiously in a special situation for a certain length of time; he wavers between two worlds.15

The negotiation that becomes symbolized and institutionalized as ritual in the ethnographic literature after Van Gennep stands in for the identity-producing contest to inscribe order in a marginal space. Yiftachel, describing marginal urban settlements, calls these margins ‘gray spaces’ which are “positioned between the ‘lightness’ of legality/approval/safety and the ‘darkness’ of eviction/destruction/death.” In his words, this kind of space which is the site of a “ceaseless process of ‘producing’ social relations, bypasses the false modernist dichotomy between ‘legal’ and ‘criminal,’ ‘oppressed’ and ‘subordinated,’ ‘fixed’ and ‘temporary.’”16 Between the harshly striated spaces of the point of origin – the authoritarian (necropolitical) Syrian state – and the ultimate destination – the very differently (biopolitically) striated spaces of the European Union – narratives of flight highlight a variety of gray spaces, especially the smooth spaces of open countryside, wilderness and sea and their life-threatening challenges to travelers. And the narratives are also punctuated by a series of transit state striation crossings that the travelers try to make as quickly and 42

The Refugee’s Passage perpendicularly as possible to avoid being trapped in yet another state’s straightjacket. Some of the negotiations of gray space effect separation from the habitus of home, as when Syrians brave the internal checkpoints that become a feature of the home state at war,17 or when they cross into neighboring Lebanon whose institutionalized striations are those of a weak state in the throes of chronic high neoliberalism – a bewildering departure from strong state norms.18 Sometimes the borders constitute or initiate a painful liminality reminiscent of the structuralist moment “betwixt and between,” as when the Turkish economy is penetrated but without the benefits of linguistic competency or legal rights,19 or when refugees face violence and the possibility of death in the Aegean Sea crossing. Finally, the border procedures leading to camps and asylum status effectively reincorporate subjects into the patronage of an idealized Europe as people settle their new legal status or when charity is given and accepted, when people are organized and allocated into temporary housing.20 Much has been written about gender at the borders.21 So it is tempting to look for a transformation in gender habitus as the culmination of the rites de passage. This is how traditional rites appear to work, after all, effecting the transitions from boy to man, from girl to woman. For women refugees this structuralist paradigm would result (in the liberal imagination) in the felicitous shedding of oppressed Muslim woman status at the separation stage, an uncomfortable wrestling with the individual self in the liminal stage and the emergence of modern universal/European woman at the point of incorporation/assimilation. But this spatial liminality of the narratives is not, for most, one of gender reorientation, and the transformation is not one of a sexual nature as it often is in the traditional rites de passage. On the contrary, the narratives suggest that, for many, received gender identity and its habits are an anchor of consistency (certified in paper and in lived-in gendered practices adapted to the road) in an otherwise disorienting transition. At every formal border crossing, one is forced to show or prove who one is. One’s assigned sex is the first and most naturalized category of identity, one of the few elements not in negotiation. It is an element on which the state and the subject can agree, both recognized in the state’s striations and a comforting (if not comfortable) embodiment of self in the smooth spaces. 43

Women and Borders

Separation: Internal Checkpoints and Neoliberal Lebanon The checkpoint in Syria, as in wartime Lebanon, occupied Palestine, and post-invasion Iraq, is the new hallmark structure of the failing or failed state.22 The checkpoints that separate regime-controlled territory from rebel-controlled territory in the Syrian cities and the perimeters they enforce are like scar striations, or a too-tightly striated exoskeleton that inhabitants must escape to the beckoning freedom and safety of refuge. The wartime geography of the cities overlays the striating structures of the authoritarian state, itself laid down over decades of Ba’thist dictatorship. Crossing the internal borders of government and militia checkpoints between urban neighborhoods echoes Van Gennep’s stage of separation in which old habits are symbolically left behind. One mother recounted braving the checkpoints that the government used to control the population of rebellious neighborhoods in Damascus’s East Ghouta suburbs. Learning to fear ordinary looking people and familiar streets, to manage facial expressions, conversational tone, and vehicular conduct to avoid summary punishment was key to the escape and expulsion from the comfort zones. The man who assured us the road was safe seemed trustworthy and stable, but how did he have water and electricity for this clean, white abaya (robe). We should have asked ourselves this, as he turned out to be an informant with the government. A dog who spies on the people and who informs on the rebels. But it was too late. We went towards the highway. As soon as we left the street and got there we saw that we had been tricked. If we went back it would be suicide since the checkpoint would know we were scared. Ahead was a huge checkpoint with shabiha (thugs) on the ground and in the buildings nearby. The had rifles and machine guns. Our hearts stopped with fear. We got closer and closer and stopped and they clicked their guns. The sound of the guns was like a knife on our throats and I felt like I could see death with my eyes. But we pretended that we were fine and there was no problem. I  don’t know if we were convincing or not. And here began our unique performance. My brother greeted them casually and the shabih punched him on

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The Refugee’s Passage the shoulder and asked where he was coming from. My brother smiled a little and said we were here at my sister’s house. And this devil said, “What were you doing there?” Poison and sparks were coming from his face and eyes. “We were getting some clothes for the kids,” we said, laughing to lighten the mood. “You know, brother, the kids need a lot of clothes.” “And who allowed you to come and get things? “ My brother said, “Our situation is bad and we needed it. It looks like you are a good guy and son of the country.” The guy ordered us to open the trunk of the car. “What is this computer and what’s on it?” My brother said, “it’s my niece’s and there’s nothing on it; she is an accountant and there are accounting files on it.” “For sure nothing on it?” “If you want, check it out, nothing but accounting.” The computer was full of revolutionary pamphlets and MP3s of anti-government songs. The rest of us were praying as he asked who the accountant was, and sweat was pouring down and our feet turned icy cold. The guns were primed and pointed at us. We were good prey for them since we had a girl and a young boy, and this was a great opportunity for rape. The street was completely empty but for us and another taxi whose driver they had forced out to the side of the road. They walked him away at gunpoint. He took our IDs and started to read them. He looked searchingly at us and we kept our faces straight. And he looked most at my son’s ID and then gave it back. He told my brother to go. We were sure they would shoot us from behind. We went slowly, slowly. Then faster, but still slow and our faces showed no emotion. “Please” we begged, “go fast.” “No, they’ll shoot us if we speed up.” And this was very wise. Once we got past the lumber yards where the road goes downhill and out of their sight, our hearts returned to our bodies and we raced to my brother’s house. And we felt as if we were born anew.23

Fear of being raped by a stranger, as much as rape itself and the possibility of imminent death, is one of the forces that pushes people out of their homes 45

Women and Borders into the status of nazih (internally displaced person) or laji’ (refugee). At hard borders, male bodies are the more vulnerable ones, with the threat of arrest, incarceration and torture. But the border and the borderland, where quick movement and mobility is slowed and uncertainty entered is marked by physical and symbolic violence, and especially by a fear of sexual violence and shame.24 At the borders inside and close to the Syrian war, the residual normality of everyday life habits pose a fragile buffer between the female body and violence. Once the normality is breached and a woman or girl is marked for violence, the violence is more than likely to be sexualized – rape or the threat or rumor of rape. Testimony collected by activists reveals that women stopped at checkpoints suffered a range of abuses from sanitary deprivation to rape and torture at the hands of regime officials.25 In anecdotes, women were as likely to be coerced into confessing false sexual encounters like volunteering sexual service to jihadis and thus exposed to and condemned by the subsequent stigma of their own community, a particularly cruel emotional proxy for rape. The first international border crossing for many refugees from the Damascus region took them to a place that looked similar to Syria but was just different enough to unsettle. The effects of the stage of separation can also be seen in the dramatic movement from the conservative authoritarian and war state of Syria (undergoing its own partial neoliberalization to be sure since the 1990s) to high and mature neoliberal “freedom” of the most enthralling and bonded type endemic in Lebanon. One woman recounts her first entry into Lebanon, a mere hour’s drive from her home in Damascus. As we drove into Lebanon I realized I had nothing in common with a tourist who delights in everything that is new and strange to him. For a tourist everything is intriguing, but for a refugee it is hardship and pain and constraints and bitterness. No, I must be strong. Because if I’m weak that will only make things worse for my family. I can’t show these feelings. I have to borrow the tourists’ feelings. Because I  love my family. I  need to do this for my family, to save their feelings, just like I saved their lives when I  decided on leaving. The driver told us he would take us to a place in the town where we could change money. And

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The Refugee’s Passage that was the first thing that surprised me. They spoke freely of such things here that were illegal in Syria? There were shops for money changing? All my life I’d known with my limited experience that you didn’t talk about such things openly. Ok then.26

Home was gone, the familiar lines of what was legal and what was illegal in Assad’s Syria were no longer relevant, but her duty as a mother to be strong for her family was never in question. Her strongly gendered identity was bolstered, not diminished. As the new environment manifested itself, acting like a mother, on behalf of her children, was a source of strength.

Borderlands of Chronic Liminality The liminality phase which follows the separation phase in the structuralist paradigm of ritual involves the disorientation of the subject after the stripping away of the familiar. In the absence of the authoritarian infrastructure and red lines of Syria, life in privatized Lebanon often seemed like an existential struggle. The acts of moving about, making a living, leaving the country, and even dying seemed to Syrians not just to cost money but to automatically produce crippling, compounding debt. One mother described a purgatory of the neoliberal landscape she faced in Tripoli, Lebanon, in which she could not take care of her children. And during this time in which my body and soul broke and my world became black and I became filled with bitterness, I and my children were all looking for work. Also for much of this time I was looking for a school or free courses for my son so that he could complete his secondary education. And in pursuit of this I walked for unbelievable distances on my feet. This was the only way, because transport was incredibly expensive for us. Anytime you wanted to go from point A to point B within the city on the so-called public transportation you’d have to pay the equivalent of a dollar. And if you needed to go outside the city it would cost you two dollars. In Lebanon, without exception, there is no such thing as government public transportation, or even public transport companies. All there is private investments for profit.27

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Women and Borders She felt that she could not even afford to die in Lebanon or return to Syria to die. The bureaucracy of taking names and registering for aid which began in Lebanon was a new and much resented striation. We can’t even afford to die here. Ask yourself what that means – we’d need death certificates and coffins and permission for burial and our corpses would decompose before we could get any of those things. So for that reason I decided to go back to die in my own country, but I was surprised to learn that I can’t even leave Lebanon to go back to my own country. Why? Because I’ve overstayed my visa and owe fines of $1600 and the longer I stay the more I owe, and eventually I’ll be considered someone not paying the state and my children and I will go to jail. So let me be very clear. I haven’t received any assistance of any kind. Everyone takes our names so that they can steal charity meant for us.28

She was desperate to return to the familiar Syrian landscape of death rather than submit to the mode of striation which produced compounding debt and social stigma. The stress of the neoliberal environment of Lebanon, free of a strong and genocidal state, but in which all was perceived to be for sale, competitive and negotiable, intensified a longing for compassion, empathy, neighborliness which was gendered. In the act of separation from the home environment these deeply gendered elements were nostalgically remembered. The liminal period for many refugees was extended by the flight from Lebanon to Turkey. Turkey attracted them with more economic opportunity than in neighboring Arab states and the hope that a more sympathetic and prosperous Sunni society with an apparently supportive government could provide relief. But in Turkey, the cost was a key embodied habitus – Arabic language and communicative fluency was drastically reduced. In the Turkish cities where many middle class Syrians from the Lebanese migration had moved by 2013 and 2014, the new arrivals were challenged to learn a new and very different language on the fly or ally themselves with others who had achieved language proficiency. At the same time, most found that while work was more readily available in the Turkish economy and empathy easier to come by than in virulently 48

The Refugee’s Passage anti-Syrian Lebanon, only very hard work would allow survival. For many women, life in Turkey’s cities was less of an existential life or death struggle than in the Lebanese context, but 12-hour shifts of wage labor without rights or the ability to communicate effectively reduced one quickly to an exhausted body. My son and I went into a store with a sign in Turkish but we made out a single word and through signs the manager asked me if I could sew. Through pantomime I told her that I made both my wedding dresses myself. They didn’t have anything for my son, so I went the next day. The work was on wedding dresses, especially the corsets, full of beads and glitter. I had to take out the pins and sew on the beads and sequins. Thousands and thousands of them. Since the corset is so stiff with whale bone and wires, each time I would prick my finger. All day from 8 to 8 with pricking my fingers. The first day I got back my hands were numb and tingling. And then I feared I would get blood on the white wedding dresses. The second and third day, my eyes were all on the white, I would look up and feel like I couldn’t see at all. After five days or a week, I heard from my sister that she was coming. And I cooked some stuff so when she arrived we’d have some food. The kids brought her to the apartment, but I couldn’t get out of work. I didn’t want to do anything to make them angry even though I could barely work. To this day, when I see a wedding dress I feel like I will vomit.29

Most Syrians who made it to Turkey felt their dreams of education and prosperity fade along with their resources, and this impelled them to mobilize their last financial resources to risk the illegal water journey to Europe.

Acute Liminality: Trial by Water Crossing The climax of liminality in many of the refugee narratives involves the fear and real threat of death. The families were stripped of cultural capital – from their knowledge of and habits of Syria down to linguistic capacity – and desperate to escape to asylum in Europe. The prospect of unending physical labor for paltry wages without recourse to rights challenged 49

Women and Borders all who could to contemplate the illegal water-crossing to Greece. This involved the mobilization of significant amounts of money through working and saving, borrowing or liquidation of any remaining assets. For many this was the first extralegal crossing, since they had entered the countries bordering Syria with valid papers and visas, and the first encounter with the ungoverned space of the sea. Not since leaving Syria had they faced such a risk of death. Research from many parts of the world has emphasized the danger and violence of border zones for refugees and economic migrants alike. Those foregoing their legal status in the country of origin and crossing borders illegally for reasons of survival are subject to the violence of the state, the violence of smugglers, to the violence of the smooth space wilderness itself. At the US–Mexican border, for example, uncounted hundreds, even thousands, have died in the Sonoran Desert attempting to bypass the militarized border.30 Like men, women suffer from the threat of deportation, incarceration and death, and also in the passage into the United States, gendered murder or femicide.31 Some borderlands like the US–Canadian one are characterized by a chronic danger of rape and murder to the indigenous and working women who frequent it and perhaps are seen by predators as beyond the reach of rights.32 The smooth space margins of the nation state, whether urban, rural, desert, plains or sea, seem to be places where uncounted, the undocumented can disappear or be made to disappear. With estimated migrant deaths in 2014–16 in the thousands, the Aegean and Mediterranean routes from the Middle East to Europe join the ranks of the border killing zones where women and men can be driven away from increasingly militarized perimeters, preyed upon by smugglers, and caught up (as if by their own “bad choices”) in the harsh environments that states use to define their edges. For Deleuze and Guattari, the sea is the ultimate smooth space, but subject to powerful striation attempts through navigation and naval domination.33 The climactic moment of the Aegean water-crossing starts with submitting oneself and one’s family to smugglers who materialize from disembodied, unremarkable voices on cell phones to subject the travelers to startling violence as they shout, herd them and force them to throw away their last possessions.34 50

The Refugee’s Passage After we got to the dark place, they made us throw our suitcases and bags on the beach. My son was crying because they even threw away his toy bear, the one he had had with him since Syria. “Shut off your phones,” they yelled, and everyone was too scared to speak or protest. We stumbled into the inflated boat meant for ten or twelve people and the other thirty people sat on top of us. We figured they’d move and we’d wiggle around, and we thought it was just temporary but this was the way it would be, layers of people sitting on top of each other.35

The people in the boat tried to navigate the Aegean with technology and prayer. The mass of people in which they found themselves trapped was another smooth space that would require ordering, along with the sea. Under the tarp, I was sending out our location and GPS and keeping the line open on the mobile phone to my sons. They could hear the people in the boat praying to god to save us. When the rain stopped and I turned on the phone again, the other passengers would scream like crazy people “turn off your mobile! The Turkish coast guard will come!” I saw this situation and I didn’t care, the water was coming down and I was soaked and my son was sitting soaked in my lap holding his floatie ring. And there was a big boy, as big as a donkey, holding onto the ring as well and sitting on my leg for the whole four or five hours, who also wouldn’t let go of my son’s ring. I should have felt sorry for him, he was so scared, but all I could think about was that he should have brought his own ring. The boat would tilt, and we would see only blackness and just getting farther and farther away from the shore.36

The very real threat of death and the complicity of the state made it a moment of necropolitics where the exposure to death marked one’s status, even on the fringes of Europe, belying any notion of a humane movement to safety. On land the threat of death would quickly be replaced with a biopolitical set of filters, but for many, the threat of drowning was compounded by elements of state authority in the form of the coast guard. The Greek coast guard came and they stopped in front of the boat. They said “we’re here to help you,” and they told us to turn

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Women and Borders off the engine. As soon as we turned off the engine, they took out a large hook and tried to punch a hole in the rubber boat. Then one guy took out his mobile and started to film them and then they stopped. They tied a rope to our boat and told us to remove the engine, that it was dangerous from the gasoline. Of course we had women and children with us. They took the motor and said they’d go back to shore and get a bigger boat. We waited for an hour and then realized that they weren’t coming back and that they had tricked us. We called the Greek Coast guard main station and told them that we were stuck. They said they were coming and didn’t come. After an hour or two, at four in the morning, the waves started getting strong. They started moving the boat off course. Then we called an activist named Nawwal. She helps Syrians even on the Italian route from Libya. We called her and gave her the GPS coordinates and she also spoke to the Greek coast guard, and the Turkish. The Turkish coast guard came and helped us within a half hour or three quarters of an hour. They took us back to Turkey and to prison. But they treated us well. We spent a night in prison and then started all over again.37

For many refugees, once they were registered with the UN in Greece as the beginning of the asylum process, the overland trek into Eastern Europe was a further navigation of smooth space, or rather a specific subset, the holey hiding space of the forest.38 We rested about four hours then headed for the border and no bus or taxi would take us because it was illegal. At first we tried to walk by ourselves to the border with sleeping bags, food, and stuff and we walked for six or seven days… we would walk from 5 in the morning to 2 in the afternoon. Then we’d rest and then from 6 to 1 in the morning walk again and then sleep. We’d send one or two people to get food for the whole group. We had walked about 90 kilometers through Serbia. We were very tired and people had infections. We decided to get on the train and go about three stops and then walk. Then when we were about 10km from the border, we were chased by the police and they pulled guns, and put us all in a bus (80 of us from Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan) and said we were going to Serbia. Then

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The Refugee’s Passage they closed it and we figured out from the GPS that they were taking us back to Greece. And then we went back to the hotel in Polykastro and agreed with a smuggler to take us in a car. Even so we’d need to walk six hours to get to the car. We waited there for a week, 10 days in the forest. Finally we knew we’d been had. Turns out that cars were being stopped and drivers were being put in prison for months if they were found driving refugees through Macedonia. If you were found in a car you’d be put in prison for months, but if they caught you walking you’d just be dumped back in Greece. So we had sat for a while in the forest and sent a couple of people to a nearby gas station. Police would come but not always. We’d go buy food and water when no police were around. We would send those who could run fast to get the food. One time, me and my friend went to get food and the police came and caught us. So we ran. I was running and one came and put a gun to my back. He was talking to me in Macedonian, but I just ran. I don’t know what he said, but I just ran for it because I was not about to spend any more time in Macedonia. I headed for the woods; once you get to the woods they would stop and not follow you. Here we waited for another smuggler and we had problems and sick people and went back to Greece for two days. After two days we made our third try. We went out again to the place where we were going to meet the smuggler. We decided to try without a smuggler. Couldn’t find a car. We walked five days on the same track but we were more careful. Four police caught us, but twenty of us together gave them 500 Euros and we went on our way. Finally 20 kilometers before the Serbian border we agreed with him and reached Serbia. We walked to a third village, gave ourselves up, and they gave us papers…We spent 25 days in Macedonia.39

Incorporation, Camps and Biopolitical Striations In March 2016, nearly a year after the account above of crossing Macedonia, the once permeable northern border of Greece became impenetrable to new arrivals as Macedonia sealed and armed its border, following the example of Hungary a few months earlier. A miserable refugee camp sprang up near the gas station at Polykastro that had been a relay point for earlier

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Women and Borders waves of travelers. The smooth space around the border from Polykastro into Macedonia was dramatically striating as the border was hardened and armed.40 The camp that formed on the Greek side at Idomeni with its humanitarian NGOs, registrations, queues and services reflected the EU efforts to order its Greek fringes. This was similar to other transit camps, most notably Mora in Lesvos, the first point of entry to the European Union for those who crossed the Aegean, and continuing through a succession of Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Austrian and German camps. Macedonia, backed by an alliance of Eastern European, non-EU states, was enacting the kind of state it wanted to be – a sovereign, Christian fortress inhospitable to outsiders. Greece, crippled by its debt crisis was also performing, with great difficulty, the kind of state it wanted to be, a European guarantor of human rights. At its peak in April 2016, the Idomeni camp warehoused 14,000. Even as it formed the last grueling test of endurance for many refugees trapped there between February and May of 2016, the de facto encampment at Idomeni began the biopolitical processing of refugees into a series of convoys and encampments that led them towards life of refuge in Germany. The refugees, trapped and angry, dirty and sick, and at the end of a long series of punishing transitions were languishing there desperate to move on. In registering for asylum hearings, accepting free food and inadequate shelter, and standing in endless lines, they were introduced to the striations of a new life in Europe. Camps are treated in the theoretical literature after Agamben as the site par excellence of exception.41 But subsequent scholarship has pointed out that Agamben’s initial formulation, while provocative, does not exhaust the practical and theoretical operation of the camp as a site.42 On the passage to European asylum, the holding camp is where Van Gennep’s third phase of transition, namely, incorporation, begins. It starts with charity, a material necessity, but also a painful blow. As one man recounted of his journey to a Greek camp on Lesvos, As we were walking by the side of the road, a car pulled up. At first we were nervous, but then we understood that they were giving us coats and blankets. Instead of being relieved, I  was shocked. I had never taken charity from anyone, ever, and now I had no choice. I couldn’t refuse.43

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The Refugee’s Passage Along with the acceptance of new goods – clothing, coats, blankets, tents and toys – rites of reincorporation into the striations of Europe consisted of a new diet of sandwiches and chips, homogeneous junk food as tasteless and spiritless biopolitical fodder that kept the body alive but distressed the soul and emphasized the absence of domesticity, privacy and cooked food (“if I ever see another cheese sandwich”).44 To get the same cold and bland food served for breakfast, lunch and dinner, one waited in endless long queues, a most literal form of striation. “You would start queueing up for breakfast hours ahead of time, and then as soon as you had eaten, you’d need to start standing in the lunch line.”45 But then the tent became a shelter and hiding place for the women and children now exposed to a crowd of fellow refugees who were strangers to them  – not just Syrians from other places, but Iraqis, Afghans, Africans and Pakistanis, Lebanese and Iranians and Eastern Europeans joining in the great migration who had come to form at least half of the mass of migrants. Old gender habits of fear of violation, modesty, and a longing for domesticity reemerged. The refugees themselves were reterritorializing the space of the camp. The rain, cold, mud, the lines for the horrible cold sandwiches, the misery of the filthy stinking latrines and the open air areas we preferred to use, the fevers and coughing, the cheating and forging. The girls and I  spent our days shivering in a tent we had been given. We tried not to eat or drink too much so we wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom. We were in a sea of strangers. We had no idea who the people around us were. We took a tent that we had been given and pitched it at the outskirts of the camp. Even though we were in a pool of mud, it was better than being surrounded by god knows who. Every one of us was sick, coughing, shivering, feverish. And the cold. Day after day. Is it possible that we would be sent back to Turkey after all this?46

In the camps the biopolitical specializations of medical care was provided by NGOs (which emphasized that that was all that they could offer – no food, no legal advice), but several of my women informants reported being pressed into duty as midwives (although they were not medical professionals) of a peculiar sort offering the comfort of Arabic and female support to 55

Women and Borders laboring new mothers and using their rudimentary English and French to interpret for the camp medics. What Van Gennep or Turner would have seen as the third and final phase of a rite of passage happens often when a stranger is engaged in exchange and reciprocity with the host culture. A common meal or a sympathetic mime of birth or sociability was common in the older literature. In this case, the refugees stripped of so much in the phase of leaving behind and reduced to survival mentality in the crisis of the smuggled illegal crossing, are replenished with aid from Europe and its NGOs. The empty space of separation and stripping away was filled with applications for asylum and donated clothes and toys (especially stuffed animals for the children). Having been reduced, stripped, bare and naked of rights, the refugees were sometimes grudgingly, sometimes graciously granted an infantilized access to the world of European equalities. As people approach Europe they are increasingly subjected to Foucauldian liberal biopower47 but also with rituals of hospitality approach implying not only reciprocity but also domination in the form of protection and paternalism, not to mention xenophobia.48 At every border there is a kind of echoing rhythm of different regimes of reception as the state, superstate and NGOs registered and volunteers provided hospitality.

Old Gendered Habits and New Habits of Differentiation Syrian refugees trapped in Idomeni for weeks and months between February and June 2016 themselves began striating the campground of Idomeni as well as they could, creating their own geographies and shortcuts within it. In the end the European striations of refugee identification were competing with the refugees own striating to create domestic and safe spaces in the “sea of people.” Naturalized sex categories and gender constructions were reinforced in the paperwork, the registrations, the applications for family reunifications at Idomeni and other transit camps along the migration route. And traditional gendered habitus and practice were a source of strength and continuity as women cared for others, and attempted to protect themselves from exposure to strangers. 56

The Refugee’s Passage In the narratives, a woman’s status as a female, a wife, or a mother is confirmed and validated in the acts of accepting, registering, submitting to camp protocols that embody Van Gennep’s final transitional phase of incorporation into two new statuses. The first new status is, predictably, as a subject of a graduated European program of rights, starting with the right to apply for asylum. But the second new status and subjectivity is as a member of a self-helping network of shared experience, shared language and fictive kinship. By the time the convoy of travelers reached Austria or Germany, they had organized themselves into linguistic and protective networks – their own striations of the migrant wave – to pool information, provisioning, and a gendered protection. After the intense ordeals of the beach, the sea, and the forest, the road and its vehicles or the transit camp, are places where gendered kinship relations are reconstructed as people help each other out. Language, an equally deeply ingrained element of identity was similarly pressed into service to bind together the new networks of kin. As one woman reported about the last days of her trip starting in Lesvos, The ferry had comparatively few Arabs, maybe twenty-five percent and the other 75 percent were Afghans. They went barefoot into the bathrooms, and there were pickpockets among them. Some Syrians trying to get a group together so we could all travel together and have safety in numbers. There were some young men and women and children and we joined them. And dozens of Syrians started chanting: “Suriyahurrahurra, basharyitla’ li barra” (Free free Syria, Bashar should leave!) When we got to Athens the Syrian group wanted to all get into a bus together. So we gave up the 150 Euros that we had already paid so that we could be with a group of Syrians that we trusted. Later when we got closer to Austria, they put us Syrians on one side and loaded us in the train, then the Afghans who were sitting on the floor, and everyone hated the Syrians because they started to be jealous of our treatment and the assumption that we would get asylum and better service…Later in one of the most crowded camps, our Syrian guys made like a boat by joining their hands together around the women and

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Women and Borders children of our group and we were able to plough through the crowds like that to the place where the buses were.49

For many refugees, more exposure to strangers of other nationalities, religions and ethnicities produced fear of a sexualized nature and traveling in the company of the fictive kin of one’s home country, or better yet hometown as indicated by dialect and accent, became highly desirable. One young man learned the new affectionate term balood or countryman, while on the road. The word combines a diminutive suffix of endearment with the word for country, balad. When he asked what it meant, he learned that it was a form of address for someone from one’s home town that may have originated in earlier generations among men drafted into the Syrian military. The border and borderland crossings are all about the production of difference. But it is not simply the inscription of modern European citizenship on the minds and bodies of the refugees. As the travelers compete with each other to gain the status that will entitle them to stay and live, they produce striations of the migrant mass landscape that are perhaps more effective than those that the states they are traversing can manage at their edges. Two types of striation occur in the gray zones; one of imposed regimes of preexisting hierarchies, gradations and orthogonal formations (rights) is up against rhizhomic formations organized on the move by the travelers themselves in which new networks of communication and structures of insider and outsider are laid down galvanized by the threats and struggles experienced in a lifetime’s worth of frontier crossings. Gender and its provocation and stimulation with fear of violation is a fairly uncontroversial point of agreement between the newcomers and the states they incorporate into. But in addition to being a marker of registered refugee status it also organizes the formation of the communicative, protective and fairly traditional networks that mark Syrians as not just different from German or European, but even more importantly as different from Afghans and Africans. Thus the crossing of the refugees also leaves marks on the border and the states they enclose. And gender is, in the struggle to inscribe meaning and territorialize space, less of a tool of the state than a tool of the people. Gendering space through practice is as much available, if not more so, to women and men “nomads” as it is to the 58

The Refugee’s Passage state through necro- or biopolitics. And most of the refugees, even those who are juveniles, are not children being initiated to a preexisting order of adulthood. They are laying down their own trajectories, and for many, traditional gender is one of their most useful categories. Gender, by and large, is not that which is being changed. Gender habits, provoked and resilient, are contributing to the levering of change and the production of new differences i.e. meanings – refugee status and group belonging. As they move into the unknown, the travelers face repeated moments of transgression of boundaries from one state to another and from one status to another. In place of the elders running the ritual, the states manage the refugee’s progress with a simultaneously mystifying and rationalizing cascade of papers, stamps, inspections, confinements, and certifications. The odds in these negotiations are heavily in favor of the state dominating the newcomers handily, but people can also make use of the ambiguity. The state is much more likely to striate and inscribe the body of the refugee (through registration, categorization, deportation and incarceration) but the refugees are themselves territorializing their new transitory environment through organization, place-making and through cultural assertion as they fight back by low and high tech information-sharing, navigating, gaming the system, and even fading back into smooth space (like the husband who moved in and out of the queue in at the Lebanese border crossing after observing the behavior of the guard.) But focusing on the rites and liminality of the border experience and its inherently violent sorting, filtering, stripping and categorization suggests that the journey to refuge is merely not a net gain of freedom in a natural order of universal rights, but an opening to transformations mediated by states but open to creative human action. The state’s task is to organize space and regulate mobility50 but the people moving through the space leave their marks and meanings on it as well.

Notes 1. Personal interview, June 19, 2016. 2. Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving?, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2013.

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Women and Borders 3. Aihwa Ong, “Mutations in Citizenship,” Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 23, No.2–3, 2006, pp. 499–505. 4. Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. 5. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, New York; Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977. 6. Loic Wacquant, “A concise genealogy and anatomy of habitus,” The Sociological Review, Vol. 64, No. 1, 2016, pp. 64–72. 7. John Friedmann, “Place-making as Project? Habitus and Migration in Transnational Cities,” in J. Hillier and E. Rooksby (eds), Habitus: A Sense of Place, Sage Publications, 2005, pp. 148–9. See also Leila Hudson, Transforming Damascus: Space and Modernity in an Islamic City. London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2005. 8. Wacquant, “A concise genealogy and anatomy of habitus” 2016. 9. Julia Schulze Wessel, “‘On border subjects: Rethinking the figure of the refugee and the Undocumented migrant,” Constellations, Vol. 23 No.1, 2015, pp. 46–57. 10. Victor W.  Turner, “Betwixt and Between:  The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage,” The Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society, Symposium on New Approaches to the Study of Religion, 1964, pp. 4–20. 11. Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus:  Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Translated by B. Massumi) London: Continuum, 1987. 12. Ibid., p. 386. 13. Ibid., p. 474 14. Turner, “Betwixt and Between” 1964. 15. Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage 1960. 16. Oren Yiftachel, “Critical theory and ‘gray space’: Mobilization of the colonized,” City, Vol. 13, No. 2–3, 2009, pp. 246–63. 17. Shannon Doocy, Emily Lyles, Tefera D. Delbiso, and Courtland W. Robinson, “Internal displacement and the Syrian crisis: An analysis of trends from 2011– 2014,” Conflict and Health, Vol. 9, No.1, 2015. 18. Lorraine Charles and Kate Denman, “Syrian and Palestinian Syrian Refugees in Lebanon:  the Plight of Women and Children,” Journal of International Women’s Studies, Vol. 14, No. 5, 2013, pp. 96–111; Lewis Turner, “Explaining the (non-)encampment of Syrian refugees:  Security, class and the labour market in Lebanon and Jordan,” Mediterranean Politics, Vol. 20, No. 3, 2015, pp. 386–404. 19. Timur Kaymaz and Omar Kadkoy, “Syrians in Turkey  – the Economics of Integration,” 2016. http://www.tepav.org.tr/upload/files/1473326257-7.Syrians_ in_Turkey_The_Economics_of_Integration.pdf.AndZeynepKivilcim (accessed on October 27, 2016); “Legal Violence Against Syrian Female Refugees in Turkey,” Feminist Legal Studies, Vol. 24, No.2, 2016, pp. 193–214.

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The Refugee’s Passage 20. Henrik Lebuhn, “Local Border Practices and Urban Citizenship in Europe,” City, Vol.17, No.1, 2013, pp. 37–51. 21. For example, Denise A. Segura and Patricia Zavella, Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: A Reader, Durham: Duke University Press, 2007; Kathleen A. Staudt, Violence and Activism at the Border: Gender, Fear, and Everyday Life in Ciudad Juárez, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008; Maria Christina Morales and Cynthia Bejarano, “Transnational sexual and gendered violence: An application of border sexual conquest at a Mexico-US border,” Global Networks, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2008, pp. 420–39; Paula Banerjee, Borders, Histories, Existences: Gender and Beyond, Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2010; Sharon Pickering, Women, Borders, and Violence: Current Issues in Asylum, Forced Migration and Trafficking, New York: Springer, 2011; Lynn Stephen, “Gendered transborder violence in the expanded United StatesMexico borderlands,” Human Organization, Vol. 75, No. 2, 2016, pp. 159–67. 22. Nasser Abourahme, “Spatial Collisions and Discordant Temporalities: Everyday life between camp and Checkpoint,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2011. 23. Personal interview, February 8, 2016. 24. Stephanie Parker, “Hidden Crisis: Violence Against Syrian Female Refugees,” The Lancet, Vol. 385, No. 9958, 2015, pp. 49–50. 25. Sema Nassar, Sarah Gjerding, Mathieu Routier, Muna Samawi, and Marc Schade-Poulsen, Detention of Women in Syria:  A  Weapon of War and Terror, 2015. http://euromedrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/EMHRN_Women indetention_EN.pdf. (accessed on August 12, 2016). 26. Personal interview, February 10, 2016. 27. Personal interview, February 9, 2016. 28. Ibid. 29. Personal interview, June 22, 2016. 30. J. G. Correa, “‘After 9/11 everything changed’: Re-Formations of State Violence in Everyday Life on the US-Mexico Border,” Cultural Dynamics, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2013, pp. 99–119. 31. Heather Robin Agnew, “Reframing ‘Femicide’: Making room for the balloon effect of drug war violence in studying female homicides in Mexico and central America,” Territory, Politics, Governance, 2015, pp. 1–18; Mariana Berlanga Gayón, “The Spectacle of Violence in Contemporary Mexico: From Femicide to Juvenicidio (young killing),” Athenea Digital. Revista de pensamiento e investigación social, Vol.15, No.4, 2015, p. 105. 32. E. D. Cauchi, “Canada’s missing: Thousands of lost or murdered indigenous women”. http://america.aljazeera.com/multimedia/2016/1/canada-missingindigenous-women.html (accessed on September 20, 2016). 33. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 1987 p. 387.

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Women and Borders 34. Dušan Drbohlav, Přemek Štych, and Dagmar Dzúrová, “Smuggled Versus Not Smuggled Across the Czech Border,” International Migration Review, Vol. 47, no. 1, 2013, pp. 207–38. 35. Personal interview, August 29, 2016. 36. Ibid. 37. Personal interview, October 5, 2015. 38. Hélène Frichot, “Holey Space and the Smooth” 1970. http://swepub.kb.se/bib/ swepub:oai:DiVA.org:kth-63484?tab2=abs&language=en.63484?tab2=abs&la nguage=en (accessed on September 21, 2016). 39. Personal interview, October 5, 2015. 40. O. Bures, “Private Security Companies in the Czech Republic: Rearticulating the Security Field and Transforming Politics,” Security Dialogue, Vol. 45, No. 1, 2014, pp. 81–98. 41. Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer, Sovereign Power and Bare Life, (Translated by D. Heller Roazen) Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press; 1998. 42. See to start with, Richard Ek, “Giorgio Agamben and the Spatialities of the Camp: An Introduction,” Geografiska Annaler, Series B: Human Geography Vol. 88, No. 4 2006, pp. 363–86; S. Hanafi and T. Long, “Governance, Governmentalities, and the state of exception in the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon,” Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2010, pp. 134–59; Diana Martin, “From Spaces of Exception to ‘campscapes’: Palestinian Refugee Camps and Informal Settlements in Beirut,” Political Geography, Vol. 44, 2015, pp. 9–18. 43. Personal interview, February 9, 2016. 44. Personal interview, August 5, 2016. 45. Ibid. 46. Personal interview, June 25, 2016. 47. Sophia Hoffmann, “International Humanitarian Agencies and Iraqi Migration in Preconflict Syria,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 48, No. 02, 2016, pp. 339–55. 48. Jacques Derrida, “HOSTIPITALITY,” Angelaki Vol. 5, No. 3, 2000, pp. 3–18. 49. Personal interview, June 19, 2016. 50. Deleuze and Guattari, p. 385.

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3 Pregnant Crossings: A Political Economy of Care on Europe’s External Borders Vanessa Grotti, Cynthia Malakasis, Chiara Quagliariello, Nina Sahraoui and Daniela Arias Vargas

Introduction: Gendered (In)Visibilities1 A recurring feature of the dominant representation of the migration crisis along Europe’s southern border in the Mediterranean and in the Balkans is that of the harrowing portrayal of women and small children captured on their migration journey. These images are meant to epitomize human suffering and victimhood, and to invoke in their viewers strong feelings of empathy, which, however, somehow have a distancing and silencing effect. These images do not matter as such for the persons and their individual stories that they document, but rather for the abstract emotional narratives they capture. Over-represented, yet silenced, women entering the European Union (EU) today through its external borders represent, we argue, the powerful gendering of migration which operates in densely crossed borderlands. Women remain invisible, to researchers and journalists in the field, as much as to studies on migration and border crossings. This is particularly true of Europe, where the “Migrant Other”2 is often assumed to be young and male. Yet what may have been a statistical reality in previous 63

Women and Borders years is no longer true. The steady increase in the numbers of migrant women entering the EU in the past two decades is well documented in the social and political sciences, particularly in the case of domestic work and health care, family reunification, and human trafficking.3 A rapidly emerging phenomenon, however, is the growing presence of pregnant women among newcomers to some of the EU’s most densely crossed borderlands; in particular, along the southern (Spain and Italy) and southeastern (Greece) European borders. Migrant women’s reproductive health has been widely studied in recent years especially in the context of human trafficking and sexual and domestic exploitation, and through a particularly interesting medical lens in the case of victims of female genital mutilation and domestic violence in France.4 However, migrant maternity has only recently become the object of social science investigation, with particular reference to the sociological analysis of the politics of migration border control, citizenship, and national identity in North America and northern Europe.5 In gender studies, migrant motherhood has been discussed as an embodied tool for political protest and activism.6 These sociological studies address migrant maternity, bodyliness, and belonging through a critical discussion of current American and northern European identity politics, immigration policy, and the welfare state, often based on autobiographical narratives, which raise questions on the representation of the female body.7 Maternity care is an interpersonal process which brings very different people into close physical contact, and is subject to practical, administrative, legal, and ethical difficulties.8 It encapsulates social and political tensions of European migration governance as a whole: victimhood and deservingness, sexuality and reproduction, identity and belonging, ethics and morality, and politics and anti-politics of institutional care towards a vulnerable population in a context of austerity and welfare cuts. Pregnant crossings reveal additional layers of the gendered dimensions of social rights – rather than refugee – crisis in the European Union. The growing numbers of undocumented women giving birth in these borderlands raise the following questions: Under what conditions are pregnant women crossing European borders? Why are pregnant crossings on the rise, and does gender-based violence factor into this increase? To what 64

Pregnant Crossings maternity care are these women entitled, and what care do they access in practice? What is the role and diverse subjectivities, narratives, and strategies of the state, of healthcare providers, and of different civil society actors and organizations? We provide here initial insights into these women’s encounters with diverse actors involved in the provision of maternity care – encounters mediated across social, cultural, gender, and other hierarchies. Due to their pregnancy, expecting migrants are classified as vulnerable, and qualify for various degrees of “free” care, emergency or more extensive, in the four European member states in question. Undocumented pregnant migrants thus embody the paradox of being at once subject to legal prosecution and beneficiaries of humanitarian protection under exceptional legal clauses. Yet pregnant women who cross EU borders often do so at the end of a long journey ridden with violence and abuse, and their stories remain largely undocumented and misinterpreted.

Fragments and Networks of Care at the Border The primary object of our study, our lens for entering EU borderlands, is a specific system: maternity care. Maternity care does not only refer to hospital structures, but rather to a network, which includes non-clinical, state, and non-governmental agencies, such as rescue teams, NGOs, and detention centers. Using ethnographic data collected so far, we demonstrate how welfare and public health policy exacerbate inequalities and tensions, or stand to reduce them; e.g., between locals and migrants, or between civil servants and local staff. We aim, therefore, to identify the specific structural and cultural frameworks which pervade the way maternity care is delivered, and which strikingly reflect how relations of care are tightly intertwined with issues of power and control.9 Hospitals are usually hierarchical institutions, where top-down decision making is the norm, and where doctors are assumed to know best. Maternal health, more than any other medical field, is also laden with morality: a good part of antenatal care is based on risk prevention in what is otherwise a healthy physiological process – it rests on ensuring “good” behavior on the part of the expecting mother, and how one defines “good” behavior fluctuates across time and space, and 65

Women and Borders can be distorted by prejudice on the part of health workers.10 In today’s European migration hubs, located in geographical peripheries which often concentrate the sharpest social and economic inequalities of the European Union, moral expectations of care relationships and the structural features of doctor-patient relations are deeply ingrained. EU borderlands, because of their unique social and historical national legacies, also represent geographies of legal and cultural exceptionality. From Lampedusa to Melilla, pregnant crossings unfold in settings which function according to their own exceptional jurisdiction, where intense media scrutiny co-habits with structural long-term neglect and strong local identities, activism, and sense of belonging. We now turn to ethnographic data we have collected so far, and which represent the point of view of pregnant patients, and their experiences, motivations, and aspirations – as well as the different types of legal ambiguities that affect their access to care. We also turn to the perspectives of healthcare personnel in close contact with these women – people who have a strong hand in determining their conditions of care on various levels, ranging from practical access to care to socio-culturally mediated gender hierarchies.

Spain The southern European borderland of Melilla, a Spanish enclave situated in North Africa, has become simultaneously a passage and a barrier to international migration routes to Europe. A medium sized city of approximately 84,000 inhabitants, Melilla is surrounded by militarized fences on one side and the Mediterranean Sea on the other. There are four official border passages between Morocco and this periphery of the European Union. Melilla and Ceuta, the other Spanish enclave in North Africa, used to belong to the Spanish southern region of Andalusia, and became autonomous cities in 1995 following a process initiated by the post-Franco 1978 Spanish Constitution.11 Ceuta and Melilla are today Spain’s only two autonomous cities, and differ in several aspects from the autonomous communities that constitute the administrative regions of mainland Spain. The two cities are also embedded into a regional migration regime: Moroccan residents 66

Pregnant Crossings of Tetuan and Nador are entitled to enter Ceuta and Melilla respectively on the basis of their Moroccan documentation. Melilla presents a complex mix of increased autonomy due to a state of “exceptionality,” which translates for instance into an adverse tax regime, and of stronger ties with Madrid than those of the autonomous communities, because the central government manages areas such as education and health in Melilla, which in autonomous communities have been transferred to regional authorities.  The healthcare system, including maternity care, is consequently managed by the National Institute of Sanitary Administration, INGESA (Instituto Nacional de Gestión Sanitaria), which falls under the Ministry of Health. In addition, the strategic importance of Melilla as Spain’s land border with the African continent places this limited territory at the heart of national border control policies. In terms of the articulation of migration and care policies, the autonomous city thus finds itself in the position of a “central periphery.” The universal access to healthcare that existed in Spain was officially terminated in 2012 with the Real Decreto-Ley 16/2012, which limits the issuing of Spanish health cards (tarjetas sanitarias) to individuals with legal residency. Following this decree, undocumented migrants have access only to emergency care. The 2012 Royal Decree Law addresses, however, the situation of pregnant women as exceptional, and their right to access pre-natal, birthing, and post-partum care is maintained. Maternity care for undocumented women is composed of a network of actors in Melilla, which enter into play at different moments according to the trajectories and profiles of the pregnant women; i.e., the different circumstances under which they are undocumented. Pregnant women without documentation accessing the maternity care system can be schematically grouped into three categories, which the maternity care system manages differently: women living in the city of Melilla without residency permits, women living in the Moroccan region of Nador and entitled to cross the border on the basis of their residence in the borderland but without possessing the tarjeta sanitaria, and finally migrants and asylum seekers residing in the Centre for the Temporary Stay of Immigrants (CETI),4 run by the Spanish Ministry of Employment. Amongst the first group, those who were able to have their residency certified by a social worker’s visit to their 67

Women and Borders home will have access to maternity care free of charge. This administrative procedure limits however access in practice and many resort to private care provision. Women who cross the border from Morocco are entitled to emergency care, and are thus admitted to the hospital in case of obstetric emergencies or when they have started labor. In 2015, births by women without social security represented 60 percent of all births in the hospital according to the hospital internal statistics, most often related to pregnant border crossings. In the latter cases, the pregnancy has not been medically controlled as planned by the maternity care scheme outlined in the Spanish Pregnancy Health Notebook (Embarazada Cartilla de Salud), which constitutes a major challenge for healthcare workers in the maternity ward. As for migrants and asylum seekers residing in the CETI, their access to maternity care is managed by the Red Cross, the only NGO commissioned to provide care inside the center. Red Cross healthcare professionals provide basic maternity care, and work in collaboration with the local health center and the hospital for visits to the midwife and to the gynecologist according to the pre-determined maternity care scheme mentioned above. Migrant women are assigned a number, which does not equal the issuing of a tarjeta sanitaria, but which nevertheless guarantees access to maternity care throughout the pregnancy. Only 207 kilometers north-west of Melilla, in peninsular soil at the Malagan port, border (re)configurations shape the conditions in which differentiated care relations unfold, beyond what local legal frameworks, and national and supra-national migration management regimes have defined. Migrants living in Spain and registered within its municipalities were granted by Law 4/2000 the same healthcare and education entitlements as Spaniards, regardless of their legal status of residence.12 After the central government, held then by the conservatives from the Partido Popular,13 passed the non-voted decree RDL 16/2012 mentioned above, legally, migrant collectives were to be officially uncovered through this national policy decision. Nonetheless, today, the implementation of this law by regional health authorities still remains a highly contested domain. Whereas in some places and regions within Spain, undocumented migrants in general, not only pregnant ones, continue to enjoy healthcare coverage, in other parts of Spain migrants struggle to receive care, even 68

Pregnant Crossings in the face of an emergency, a chronic disease, and other life threatening situations.14 However, ten regions representing 70 percent of the Spanish population, including Andalusia,15 have designed alternative pathways for undocumented migrants to access healthcare. While care provision often falls outside the official healthcare system and into the NGO ambit, some local health centers use a special category that does not require the person seeking healthcare to have a tarjeta sanitaria. Rather, patients are received as “occasional care” patients. This ad-hoc solution has long-term detrimental effects, specifically affecting if not preventing appropriate continuum of care. Far from counteracting the Royal Decree Law 16/2012, local health systems in fact endure extra pressure from such improvised practices: consultations may take place without the possibility for a follow-up visit, and, as we have been told, migrants without a tarjeta sanitaria or even asylum seekers are not eligible for specialized care. Providing healthcare under these circumstances and particularly in social spaces with an added mixed influx of temporary migrants such as retired individuals, students and tourists represents a concrete logistical and ethical burden to biomedical practitioners. Local healthcare systems and especially employees themselves16 endure and cope with these challenges as best as they can. In one interview we held at a local hospital, a matrona (midwife) expressed: “Working like this is anarchism! There should be more personnel; we have to be focusing not on solving emergencies, but on preventing them. I would very much like to be doing maternal education; you know, there is a cultural and a time lag, so we need to work there too, not just here, when they come (referring to Moroccan mothers and Syrian asylum seekers in her service).” Local structural underinvestment and precarious working conditions among public health officials contribute to the reproduction of systemic health inequities on the ground, for which migrant patients pay a disproportionately high price.

Greece In Athens, the capital city of the European Union’s south-eastern buffer, networks of maternity care wind through the public sector, the world of 69

Women and Borders NGOs, the activities of independent volunteers, and the terrain of leftist activism. As we set out to map these networks, one of our earliest conversations was with a seasoned, middle-aged leftist; a leading figure in a group of people who had come together to form one of the city’s refugee squats. Squats, they argue, represent an alternative to the state’s policy of housing refugees in camps far from urban, populated areas, and thus depriving them of the chance for social integration. Yet, while these activists clash with the state in terms of broad reception paradigms, they are loath to absolve it from what they consider its responsibility to provide social rights to people within its jurisdiction. In terms of maternity care for the pregnant women who inhabit the squat, this translates into propelling them toward the maternity departments of public hospitals, where the squat’s operators had taken care to establish rapport. Almost nobody among the personnel there was averse to providing care to refugee women, our interlocutor said; with very few exceptions, they were very friendly and accommodating. According to figures provided by the Greek government, some 60,000 refugees are currently in Greece;17 meanwhile, almost 60 percent of those entering Europe as of January 2016 were women and children.18 Where do pregnant migrants live, and where do they seek care? What is the division of labor between state and the various non-state health providers? The picture that emerges via early interviews and archival material shows networks of maternity care that feature multiple nodes of conflict between actors and structures of diverse ideologies, affiliations, and agendas. Pregnant women’s journey to relative safety – and, most likely, to their first prenatal examination – on Greek soil has been blocked since March 20, 2016 by the infamous EU-Turkey agreement, which mandates that Turkey prevent refugees from reaching its neighboring, GreekEuropean shores.19 As a result, those who did manage to reach Greece despite Turkey’s efforts to hold them back have been detained in five hotspots, in the islands of Lesvos, Chios, Leros, Samos, and Kos,20 awaiting their mandatory return to Turkey, unless Greek asylum officers deem that Turkey is not a safe country for them. The so-called “hotspot approach” to managing migration21 has entailed the creation of closed facilities for people who enter Europe irregularly, to ensure a rigorous identification 70

Pregnant Crossings and registration process. Because of their proximity to Turkey’s shores, these Greek islands receive the bulk of newcomers from the neighboring country. In the case of Greece, newcomers subject to the EU-Turkey agreement must stay in island hotspots until their asylum claims are processed. These spaces have become zones of often violent conflict between local vigilantes – people, often overtly or covertly affiliated with the neoNazi Golden Dawn party, who protest the presence of large numbers of refugees in the islands by staging demonstrations and often physically attacking refugees22  – and pro-refugee activists or refugees themselves, and among refugees themselves exasperated by their indefinite – de facto, if not de jure, given the slow pace in which asylum claims are processed – detention, the dire living conditions, and, reportedly, inter-ethnic tensions. In the intra-European arena, the hot-potato approach evinced by the re-institution of internal border controls23  and by Germany’s recent announcement that it will be resuming Dublin transfers24 to Greece halted since 201125 far from create conditions for continuous maternity care and overall stable living conditions. Further, the Greek state has seen its sovereignty curtailed, since the European Union started releasing funds for the care of refugees directly to NGOs,26 which staked their spots providing different types of services in refugee camps – in the Schisto camp, for example, located in the city’s industrial outskirts, three different NGOs are in charge of providing maternity care, psychological support to recent mothers, and breastfeeding consultations.27 The living conditions – particularly nutrition, sanitation, and the lack of gender-safe spaces – in these camps, as well as in island hotspots, have come under fire by such NGOs and by human rights organizations.28 Yet conflict does not dominate these interactions; collaboration also occurs. Mid-level personnel in government ministries, in NGOs, and even in the Greek branch of the UNHCR often comes from the same pool of highly educated, young Greeks with at least a leftist, if not an explicitly activist, background. These are people who navigate the same social networks, and hold similar socially emancipatory views. Humanitarianism, as top-down ideology and practice, and solidarity, which fosters horizontal relations of care often mesh in ground-level processes of maternity care. Leftist activists denouncing the state yet  also intent on holding it 71

Women and Borders accountable to what they consider its responsibility to provide social rights to people within its jurisdiction constitutes an example of this complexity.

Italy Lampedusa is the southernmost part of Italy and Italy’s southernmost island in the Mediterranean Sea. This island is located 205 kilometers away from Sicily and 150 kilometers away from northern African coasts. Tunisia, which is about 113 kilometers away, is the closest landfall to the island. Lampedusa is also the Italian land closest to the Libyan coast. Due to its geographical position, this island is the first Italian (and European) territory that migrants encounter along their journey from Africa. From the late 1990s to the present, more than 250,000 migrants have arrived in the island, to then be transferred elsewhere in Sicily and Italy. Hence, its official recognition as Europe’s gate to the Mediterranean Sea, as symbolically witnessed by “Europe’s Gate monument,” created in 2008 on the southern side of the island. Over the last few years, migrant women have become increasingly ubiquitous, and today they represent 25 percent of the migrants arriving in the island weekly. Eight percent of these women are mothers traveling with small children (up to three years old) or are pregnant women. If international data indicate that migration through the Mediterranean Sea is rising, the constant arrival of migrants in Lampedusa stands to change the local setting of this tiny island with an area of 20.2 square kilometers and a population of about 6,000 inhabitants. This demographic tension manifests itself in the organization of maternity healthcare in the island. The growing presence of pregnant migrants has led to the number of gynaecologists in the island to recently double from two to four. Concomitantly in 2015, a special maternity service for migrant women was created within the local healthcare center. Thus, today two separate maternity services co-exist in this small medical structure: one dedicated to pregnant migrant women suffering from urgent health complications and another one for local patients. The former is staffed by two gynecologists, three nurses and a cultural mediator available on-call 24-hours a day. The latter instead comprises of two gynecologists and two nurses who only work during day-time opening hours. The presence of 72

Pregnant Crossings more numerous health providers for foreign women than for local patients exacerbates local tensions. In particular, the characterization of pregnant migrants as vulnerable subjects who need immediate health assistance has led to choices that have not affected other categories of migrants, such as men, thus reiterating the importance of gender in the “assistance policies” carried out in the island. The current division of the medical assistance into two parallel systems of care, one for the migrants and one for local inhabitants, is strengthened by another paradoxical fact: nowadays, the only women who give birth on the island are migrants. Locals themselves describe Lampedusa as the island where one cannot be born, and this topic is one of the political cleavages that define the island with regards to its past traditions and local identity. During the postwar era (1950s-1960s) women were allowed to give birth on the island. At the time, traditional midwives would attend to the birth with little to no biomedical interventions. With the opening of the local health center in the 1970s, and the gradual policy move towards the concentration of perinatal health in hospitals, expecting mothers were exclusively directed to the maternity wards of Sicilian hospitals to give birth. The impossibility of giving birth in Lampedusa, according to the local population and medical staff, has one main cause and one main consequence. The cause is that on the island there are no adequate healthcare facilities (no surgery service for C-section, no reanimation, no amniocentesis) to allow women to give birth. The consequence is that the costs connected to pregnancy and delivery amount on average 3,000–5,000 Euros per birth. These costs include: the number of medical consultations carried out in Sicily before childbirth – ordinary antenatal screening until the eight month of pregnancy (in case there are no complications) are available on the island and the trip to Sicily at their own expense before giving birth –as women used to move to Sicily with their partners about a month before the due date; the hospital stay in Sicily after childbirth, whether C-section is needed or not. This complex situation has exacerbated a feeling of divisiveness between native inhabitants and migrants, because of a perceived privilege of the migrant women to have access to free and universal assistance during pregnancy as stated by the Italian law on universal access to primary care for migrants.29 Lampedusans, on the other hand, lament their meager partial entitlement to healthcare assistance. This is also connected 73

Women and Borders to a perception of unequal rights and social inequalities compared to the rest of the (continental, including Sicilian) Italian population, which benefits from better and more affordable health care. Furthermore, the fact that the only babies born today in Lampedusa are the children of ‘outsiders’ has exacerbated tensions between the sense of “belonging” to the local territory and medical discourses of “risks” forcing women to give birth away from their island.30

Undocumented Motherhood at the Border Pregnant women, either partially documented or undocumented, need to navigate complex networks of maternity care, as described in the previous section. Whether labeled refugees, migrants, or “border crossers,” pregnant women on the move find themselves in the midst of political debates ranging from rights, humanitarianism, and deservingness to questions of medicalization and quality of care. In Melilla, migration is a highly politicized issue and a ubiquitous matter that concerns all aspects of life on this borderland. Migration has huge economic significance, not only in relation to the importance of border trade, but also due to the “migration industry”31 that represents a source of labor for local workers. Migration-related issues are featured every day in local newspapers with different categories of migrants spanning the continua of visibility/invisibility and empathy/rejection. While the access to care of pregnant women residing in the CETI remains invisible as a political issue, border crossings by pregnant Moroccan women are a burning topic in political discourses. The local hospital is named Hospital Comarcal, in reference to the limited territory it provides for (comarca meaning a local administrative division). The additional costs and workload attached to pregnant border crossings are a source of tension both within the hospital and at the level of media and political discourses (as mentioned above, approximately 60 percent of women giving birth at the hospital in Melilla were Moroccan women crossing from the neighboring country in 2015). While these women do not possess a social security number, they are neither strictly speaking undocumented, nor migrants. They possess Moroccan documentation that identifies them and gives 74

Pregnant Crossings them the right to cross the border to Melilla; they thus find themselves legally in the Spanish borderland when they are admitted to the hospital to give birth. Furthermore, this documentation serves to process administratively all emergency visits at the hospital, so the medical history of the Moroccan women attended is retrieved each time, provided that names were spelled correctly. Precisely because these women are documented, a Partido Popular politician elected in Ceuta32 drafted a proposal in 2012 for the passports of Moroccan women to be kept by the hospital as security for payment; while the proposal was rejected, it is symptomatic of the tensions that arise around this issue.33 Moroccan women are by far the most populous female migrant group in Andalusia,34 however, when it comes to non-European undocumented migrant women, sub-Saharan Africans top the list. In the month of August 2016 alone, 615 people crossed into the Spanish mainland using small fishing boats called pateras or cayucos. Many of their passengers were pregnant women and, in some cases, minors too. The Spanish Red Cross usually leads the rescue operations along with the Salvamar Alnitak team, a salvation group based in Malaga. The small watercrafts often arrive at the port of Almeria or in the south, in Tarifa, Cádiz, and less often in Malaga and its surrounding seaside. In our fieldwork, we had the opportunity to engage in the daily activities that different NGOs carried out with this particular group of migrants, within the limits of the only program available to them in Andalusia, a program nominated as “Humanitarian Relief,” wherein asylum seekers can be granted access to more services and assistance through the “Reception Program.” Unless there is an asylum seeking claim in place then, this is the only pool of resources (humanitarian relief) that people might tap upon, explained a worker from the Spanish Commission for the Assistance of Refugees CEA(R).35 This program in particular is a putre program she referred and continued “I am totally against this program! It is very frustrating to keep on with it, because deep down we know that what we do is fattening the pig here.” To refer to something as being putre, in this case the so-called humanitarian relief program, means that some parts of it smell bad; as if there were processes of putrefaction happening within it, because, as she pointed out after, they are only “fattening the pig.” She used the colloquial expression 75

Women and Borders “fattening the pig” to refer to her work, but also the impact of that work. She acknowledged, using these symbolic expressions, that their aims stayed at a surface level in terms of offering relief, in terms of really being humanitarian; she recognized they do provide basic assistance (food, shelter, medicines) for a short amount of time (three months), after which migrants are left to their own “luck” again. These programs might help somewhat to restore the overall well-being of people on the move, but efforts are not directed towards forging a long-term engagement with them or with their well-being as human beings, despite, or even more so because of the vulnerable situation in which being undocumented puts these collective. After the three months mentioned, regardless of what their personal situation might be, each of them would have to head out of the accommodation provided, to continue their “European adventure,” as another CEA(R) employee referred to the fact that people come to Europe from Africa to “try their luck.” As we can grasp, those who work and care for migrants and asylum seekers might be deeply concerned and even disgusted by the current situation within the humanitarian sphere; they are mindful of it being wrong or unfair, however, as she expressed in dismay, “there is nothing we can do about it, but continue.” In Athens, pregnant migrants are not undocumented. Refugees in Greece fall into two broad categories: those who came in before the infamous EU-Turkey agreement, explained above, went into effect March 20 2016, and those who came after. The latter are detained in the islands where they arrive, until their asylum claims are processed. People who entered before the agreement have, in their vast majority, gone through the socalled “pre-registration” process, which equipped them with asylum seeker cards that allow them legal residence in Greece and access to health and education services.36 But even migrants with no legal papers in Greece have full access – at least on paper – to maternity care, since an April 2016 law that made care in state hospitals available for free to pregnant women with low means, irrespective of their legal status.37 Meanwhile, their presence in Greek hospitals fall into pre-existing, often conflictual conversations on citizenship rights, vulnerability, and socio-culturally constituted gendered agency. Our first point of contact at an Athens public hospital with a major maternity department was a highranking administrator whom we approached to request permission for 76

Pregnant Crossings research; a physician, albeit not a gynecologist. The population we wish to study, he said, abounds in his hospital – at that moment, they were treating about 400 migrant women, who had come to the hospital from the islands and the mainland camps, and about half of whom were there to receive maternity care. Since February, he continued, their numbers had been hiking; conversely, his hospital’s resources had been plummeting. We tried to interject that public health resources were already close to depletion after six years of austerity, but he was adamant that the number of refugees was to blame. After they got settled, he said – stepped on solid ground, and found food and shelter – they started looking for healthcare as well. “I am not a racist, for God’s sake,” he stressed. But what about the poor Greek who lost his small business, or the long-term immigrant who was fired from his job? Neither of these cohorts can pay into their social insurance fund anymore; meanwhile, for this administrator, refugees command the attention and resources of a number of national, non-governmental, and supranational agencies. For a senior Greek midwife, we interviewed, the presence of migrant women in the Greek maternity care system highlights and often exacerbates existing gender hierarchies. In the field of maternity care, she said, such hierarchies manifest in the insistence of many Greek doctors on performing C-sections38 and imposing a highly medicalized model of care. “This is what feminism should be about today,” she argued, her eyes flaring. In the case of migrant women, who may have already had several natural births and who are used to a less medicalized, more traditional model of care, this imposition is experienced more strongly, she argued. The senior midwife and the high-ranking administrator cited here are two among thousands of people involved in maternity care in Greece. Their discourses hint at the diversity of perspectives, sociocultural norms, and ideological compasses of actors in this social terrain. Their challenges, practices, and interactions with migrants and with each other evince, but also renegotiate, norms of social rights mediated through notions of vulnerability on one end and of political subjectivity on the other, as well as ideas related to the sociocultural dimension of gender hierarchies. Further west, in Lampedusa, the gendered character of the migratory journey’s inequality and often stark violence has become evident through 77

Women and Borders the experiences of our Nigerian interlocutors, who make up almost half (43 percent; 85 out of 200 in 2015–16) of pregnant migrants assisted in the island health center. Our findings so far show that most pregnant migrants assisted in Lampedusa are between 17 and 27 years old, and come from different African countries; e.g., Mali, Ivory Coast, Guinea Conakry, Guinea Bissau, and Gambia, in West Africa; Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somaliland, in East Africa. Focusing on Nigerian women, the first striking characteristic is the absence of partners during the medical consultations. Usually, women explain to doctors that they are traveling alone. Alternately, they mention “boyfriends,” who paid for their trip from Nigeria and are still waiting to set-up their own trip to Europe. Furthermore, some of them seek protection from other “boyfriends,” such as migrant men that they have met during their trip across the desert and during their stay in Libyan prisons. Most of them describe the pregnancies that result from these relationships as a choice to feel safer. The second element to underline is that, on the contrary, many women get pregnant, because they were victims of sexual violence during the migratory trip. As told by Mary and Jesse,39 20 and 22 years old, the sexual abuse generally occurs during the weeks spent in Libya. “The only way to have access to food was to have sex with the guards” explained Mary, who spent seven weeks in the Libyan prisons. “When you are there you have no choice; unless you want to die, you have to do what they ask,” she explained to the doctors of the service. Like Mary, some of these women talk openly with the doctors about the sexual violence they have endured, especially if they ask for an abortion. Other women, like Jesse, describe their pregnancy as a shame to them and to the baby they are carrying, and as a problem for their future life in Europe. These women also request terminations. To justify their demand, they explain that they took contraception (hormone injections) before leaving their country in order to avoid pregnancy on their journey. But, the duration of trip was longer than the period covered by the contraception (three months), so they get pregnant because of sexual abuse. Abortion, however, is not always available to them. Italian law (law n.194/78) prohibits, abortion after the third month of pregnancy. Faced with this prospect, 78

Pregnant Crossings most women whose medical consultations we observed refuse to see the image of their baby during the scan. The womb’s ultrasound screening appears as an additional source of suffering for them, as they are forced to “see with their eyes” the product of the violence experienced during their journey to Europe. Then, either when women seek the protection of a “boyfriend,” or when they suffer sexual abuse, women’s body appears as a “tool” for the success of the migratory project. Hence, beyond the negative effects of the travel conditions on their well-being and that of their child – in many cases, the overall health of the Nigerians is relatively worse compared to the health of other migrant women assisted in the maternity service of Lampedusa40 – the most distinctive element of their mothering experience is a “continuum of violence,” at a physical, mental, and social level. This long spiral of violence, in fact, begins in their country of origin, continues during their journey, and is reinforced by the fact that they cannot always end a pregnancy that is felt as a “necessary mistake.” Therefore, the case of Nigerian women exemplifies gender inequality crossing the migration process: an experience where womanhood increases the level of vulnerability as shown by the multiple factors of violence faced by women and rarely experienced by men, and which appear to be intimately connected to the instability and degree of internal warfare which unfold along each specific migration route into Europe.

Conclusion: Childbirth and Political Economies of Care at the Border The field studies presented in this chapter are all based in southern Europe, or rather, in Mediterranean migration hubs which have in recent years become conspicuous testimonies of tragedies of international migration triggered by conflicts and social and economic instability. The routes that migrants take into the European Union are increasingly more dangerous and deadly, because of the conditions under which these journeys unfold and the unimaginable degrees of violence which have been unleashed in some conflict zones. However, the routes themselves are not new, quite the contrary. Contemporary migration routes into the Mediterranean cut 79

Women and Borders across a deeply interconnected region whose rich and complex history of human mobility and exchange predates Ancient Greece. Today’s inhabitants of Lampedusa, Lesvos or Melilla are not mere representatives of hardened European border regimes, but members of peripheries whose regional cultural heritage has been sharply divided by the emergence of an international border governed by national and European central authorities they have little familiarity with. Pregnant crossings illustrate how in international border areas like the EU’s peripheries, there is no such thing as a single homogeneous category of migrant, but rather, various scales of mobility scenarios that require different forms of cross-border healthcare interventions, from Moroccan residents who decide to give birth in the nearest hospital in Melilla for convenience and safety, to the international migrants seeking refuge and protection after a long, transnational journey. As “people of the frontlines” of the current migration crisis, to quote how some of our interlocutors like to describe themselves, local populations have become caught in between the deep social ramifications and intimate webs of belonging which tie them to the region on the one hand, and the intense fragmentation of solidarity and hospitality regimes on the other. In this context, childbirth bears a peculiar symbolic and scaling value. As a practice of place-making and processual kinship, it brings local populations and migrants mothers in close physical proximity yet separates them further through vexatious hierarchies of deservingness and stately duties. It comes to no surprise that these borderlands have a character of their own which is in sharp contrast to national and European centers of decision making, yet are often drowned by the multiplication of international aid and rescue initiatives. For pregnant migrants, beyond systemic violence and sexual abuse experienced in transit, violence can manifest itself under the guise of good intentions, good policies, and best practices; in the management of reception and hospitality often reiterated under the global banner of humanitarianism which often confines patients in specific wards and strips them of personal space and intimacy. The perpetuation of migrants’ plight at every border unveils hidden instances of oppression, as well as the participation – explicit or implicit, deliberate or inadvertent – of diverse actors in systems, spaces, and processes where violence and oppression occur. 80

Pregnant Crossings These borderlands are, therefore, particularly revealing of the simultaneous implementation of caring and deterring policies. While journeys into the European Union have become increasingly dangerous due to restrictive EU and national policies, from the militarization of fences that surround the Spanish enclaves in North Africa to the 2016 EU-Turkey deal, the right to free maternity care remains fundamental, and networks of actors have emerged to facilitate its implementation. Further, the examination of pregnant crossings yields a crucial analytical challenge. To wit, we aim to understand the agency involved in crossing restricted borders, as well as to conceptualize such crossings as political statements – among other things – without being hindered by conceptions of these women as victims in the “gendered geographies of power”41 where they are embedded. We aim to examine, understand, and highlight the embodied violence and oppression endured, while challenging views of gendered violence as normal, natural, or expected. In closing, the perpetuation of what Popescu42 underlines is at stake; the border as such is never entirely, definitively, for once crossed; rather, bodies become carriers of a constant demand for status, which is not limited to legal status, but is about moral legitimacy as well.

Notes 1. This chapter is based on a collaborative research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) based at the European University Institute and led by Vanessa Grotti. The data we present here have been collected in various field sites across southern Europe since July 2016, using qualitative research methods such as participant observation and open-ended interviews. We are immensely grateful to local populations for their hospitality, kindness and patience. Special thanks to the Hospital Comarcal (Melilla), the CEA(R) (Malaga & Canaries), the Maternity Service ASP6 of Lampedusa, and refugee law expert Georgia Spyropoulou for her comments on this text. 2. Ruben Andersson, “Time and the Migrant Other,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 116, No. 4, 2014, pp. 795–809. 3. Jacqueline Andall, Gender, Migration, and Domestic Service: The Politics of Black Women in Italy, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000; Floya Anthias and Gabriella Lazaridis, Gender and Migration in Southern Europe, Oxford: Berg, 2000; Ruba Salih, Gender in Transnationalism. Home, Longing, and Belonging among Moroccan Migrant Women, London: Routledge, 2003.

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Women and Borders 4. Ilana Feldman and Miriam Ticktin, “Government and Humanity,” in Ilana Feldman and Miriam Ticktin, eds, In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care, Durham and London:  Duke University Press, 2010, pp. 1–26; Miriam Ticktin, Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France, 2011, Berkeley: University of California Press. 5. Ronit Lentin and Eithne Luibhéid, eds, Representing Migrant Women in Ireland and the EU, special edition, Women Studies International Forum, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2004; Eithne Luibhéid, Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002; Eithne Luibhéid, Pregnant on Arrival:  Making the Illegal Immigrant, Minneapolis:  University of Minnesota Press, 2013. Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Immigrants Raising Citizens: Undocumented Parents and their Young Children, New  York:  Russell Sage Foundation, 2011. 6. Imogen Tyler, “Naked Protest: The Maternal Politics of Citizenship and Revolt,” Citizenship Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2, 2013, pp. 211–26. 7. Maxine Baca Zinn, Michael Messner, and Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, eds, Gender through the Prism of Difference, Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2005. 8. Byron Good, Medicine, Rationality, and Experience:  An Anthropological Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 9. Priscille Sauvegrain, “La santé maternelle des ‘Africaines’ en Île-de-France: Racisation des patientes et trajectoires de soins,” Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales, Vol. 28, No. 2, 2012, pp. 81–100; Khiara Bridges, Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. 10. Sandrine Garcia, Mères sous influence. De la cause des Femmes à la Cause des Enfants, Paris: La Découverte, 2011. 11. Peter Gold, A Contemporary Study of the Spanish North African Enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000. 12. Marta Cimas, Pedro Gullon, Eva Aguilera, Stefan Meyer, José Freire, and Beatriz Perez-Gomez, “Healthcare coverage for undocumented migrants in Spain: Regional differences after Royal Decree Law 16/2012,” Health Policy, Vol. 120, No. 4, 2016, pp. 384–95. 13. In the midst of an economic crisis that heavily struck Spain in 2009, the People’s Party embedded austerity measures within the national health care system, revoking equal access to public healthcare. 14. Ibid. 15. Brambilla et al., Borderscaping: Imaginations and Practices of Border Making. 16. Ibid. 17. The exact number in October 3, 2016 was 60,788. General Secretariat of Information and Communication, Greek Government, “Summary Statement

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18.

19. 20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

of Refugee Flows (03.10.2016),” http://media.gov.gr/index.php/component/ content/ article/ 258- %CF%80%CF%81%CE%BF%CF%83%CF%86%CF%8 5%CE%B3%CE%B9%CE%BA%CF%8C- %CE%B6%CE%AE%CF%84%CE %B7%CE%BC%CE%B1/4125-summary-statement-of-refugee-flows-03-102016?Itemid=595 (accessed on October 3, 2016). UNFPA, “Report Warns Refugee Women on the Move in Europe Are at Risk of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence,” http://www.unfpa.org/press/reportwarns- refugee- women- move- europe- are- risk- sexual- and- gender- basedviolence (accessed on January 20, 2016). EUROPA, “EU-Turkey Agreement:  Questions and Answers,” http://europa. eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-16-963_en.htm (accessed on March 19, 2016). EUROPA, “Hotspot State of Play,” http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/whatwe- do/ policies/ european- agenda- migration/ press- material/ docs/ state_ of_ play_-_hotspots_en.pdf (accessed on September 30, 2016). EUROPA, “The Hotspot Approach to Managing Exceptional Migratory Flows,” http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/european-agendamigration/background-information/docs/2_hotspots_en.pdf (accessed on October 20, 2016). News247, “Λέσβος:  Η Στιγμήτης ΕπίθεσηςτωνΧρυσαυγιτών σεΓυναίκες [The Moment when Members of Golden Dawn Attacked Women],” http://news247. gr/ eidiseis/ koinonia/ lesvos- h- stigmh- ths- epitheshs- twn- xrysaygitwn- segynaikes.4273339.html (accessed on September 20, 2016); GiorgosPagoudis, “ΓνωστοίΑκροδεξιοίμε Μανδύα… Κατοίκου [Well-Known Leftists Masquerading… as Residents]” Efimerida ton Syntakton, http://www.efsyn.gr/arthro/ gnostoi-akrodexioi-me-mandya-katoikoy (accessed on September 13, 2016); GiorgosPagoudis, “Το ΦαιόΑυγότουΦιδιούστο ‘ΚόκκινοΝησί [The Grizzly Snake’s Egg in the ‘Red’ Island],” Efimerida ton Syntakton, https://www.efsyn. gr/arthro/faio-aygo-toy-fidioy-sto-kokkino-nisi (accessed on September 20, 2016). BBC News, “Schengen:  Controversial EU Free Movement Deal Explained,” http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-13194723 (accessed on April 24, 2016). The Dublin Regulation dictates that third-country nationals must request asylum in the first EU member state where they arrive, remain there while their claim is processed, and be returned there if they cross into another memberstate. Dublin returns to Greece were largely halted, however, after a European Court of Human Rights 2011 ruling that Greece violated asylum seekers’ rights. Keep Talking Greece, “Germany Insists on Sending Asylum Seekers back to Greece,” October 2, 2016, http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2016/10/02/ germany-insists-on-sending-asylum-seekers-back-to-greece/ (accessed on October 10, 2016).

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Women and Borders 26. Tania Bozaninou, “Υπογράφηκαν τα Συμβόλαια για τηΧρηματοδότηση τουΠροσφυγικού [The Funding Contracts for the Refugee Issue Have Been Signed],” To Vima, April 19, 2016, http://www.tovima.gr/society/article/ ?aid=793913 (accessed on May 23, 2016). 27. This is information that the researcher stationed in Greece acquired herself during a visit to the Schisto Camp on July 25. 28. Human Rights Watch (https://www.hrw.org/europe/central-asia/greece) and Amnesty International (https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/europeand-central-asia/greece/) have been particularly vocal, publishing numerous reports. 29. The first legislative text concerning migration was introduced in Italy in 1986. It is only since 1998 (286/98), however, that we have been witnessing a real regulation of foreign presence through the establishment of criteria for the access and permanent stay in the country. In this regard, the current law regarding foreigners is the Law 189, approved in 2002, which includes many of the prescriptions contained in the preceding ones: Laws 40/98 and 286/98. 30. Danièle Carricaburu, De l’incertitude de la naissance au risqueobstétrical: les enjeuxd’unedéfinition, Sociologie et Sociétés, Revue de l’Université de Montréal, XXXIX, I, 2007, pp. 123–44. 31. Ruben Andersson, Illegality Inc. Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe, California: University of California Press, 2014. 32. The Partido Popular is the main right-wing nationwide political party, Ceuta and Melilla being two traditional strongholds of the PP. 33. http:// www.elmundo.es/ elmundo/ 2012/ 06/ 12/ espana/ 1339497036.html (accessed on September 12, 2016). 34. See Sistema de Información Multiterritorial de Andalucía (SIMA). http:// www.juntadeandalucia.es. 35. Comisión Española de Ayuda al Refugiado defend the right to asylum as a universal right. 36. European Asylum Support Service, “Joint Press Release:  End of large scale pre-registration on mainland Greece,” https://www.easo.europa.eu/newsevents/joint-press-release-end-large-scale-pre-registration-mainland-greece (accessed on August 1, 2016). 37. Ministry of Health, Government of Greece, “Υπογράφηκε η Κοινή Υπουργική Απόφαση για τηνΠρόσβαση τωνΑνασφάλιστων στο ΕΣΥ [The Common Ministerial Decision on the Access of the Uninsured to the National Health Service Has Been Signed],” http://www.moh.gov.gr/articles/ministry/grafeiotypoy/press-releases/3844-ypografhke-h-koinh-ypoyrgikh-apofash-gia-thnprosbashs-twn-anasfalistwn-sto-esy (accessed on April 4, 2016). 38. Elias Mossialos, Sara Allin, K. Karras, and Konstantina Davaki, “An Investigation of Caesarean Sections in Three Greek Hospitals: The Impact of

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39. 40.

41. 42.

Financial Incentives and Convenience,” European Journal of Public Health, Vol. 15, No. 3, 2005, pp. 288–95; Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide, Oxford & New York: Routledge, 2016. Pseudonyms. Many patients present complications such as high blood pressure, pre-eclampsia and placental irregularities, unreported and under-treated from lack, if not absence of, continuum of antenatal care prior to their arrival in Lampedusa. Sarah Mahler and Patricia Pessar, “Gendered Geographies of Power: Analyzing Gender across Transnational Spaces,” Identities, Vol. 7, No. 4, 2001, pp. 441–59. Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering the Twenty-First Century: Understanding Borders, Lanham, MD:  Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012.

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4 Acknowledging and Addressing the Risks of Gender-Based Violence that Follow Refugees Across Borders: Escalation of Domestic Violence in Refugee Populations Melinda Wells, Suhail Abualsameed and Suse Prosser

It is unfortunately symptomatic of populations who have fled across borders that as time in exile grows, the risk of domestic violence and other negative coping strategies such as transactional sex and early and forced marriage also increase.1 This phenomenon has been noted in crisis after crisis, and has been seen in a range of displacement contexts.2 While gender inequality is at the root of gender based violence (GBV), conflict, disaster and displacement create stressors and risk factors that can exacerbate or increase the incidence of existing forms of GBV and trigger the appearance of new forms of GBV in a given population. To prevent the rise in violence in the aftermath of a crisis, human-made or nature-made, root causes (gender norms) must be identified and addressed. Internally displaced people and refugees can face many similar risk factors including trauma, loss of livelihoods, separation from families, and loss of community and the traditional forms of protection families and communities can provide. However, upon crossing an international border, these 87

Women and Borders risks are compounded by new risk factors, including loss of legal status, and multiple forms of discrimination, oppression or exclusion based on, among others, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability and/or linguistic, ethnic, cultural or religious background. Further, refugees are often confronted by prevailing negative stereotypes branding them as dangerous or in some way infectious or socially undesirable, and/or the perception that their very presence in the country poses a threat to scant resources that should be reserved for the host population.3 Many refugees face a prohibition against working in their host country, forcing them to navigate the risks and threats associated with engaging in the informal economy where exploitation is much more likely and the consequence of being caught and deported or refouled may be a question of life and death. Another important distinction between internal displacement and displacement across international borders is the encampment approach to refugee protection that was once the cornerstone of refugee protection, and persists today. UNHCR’s 2014 “Policy on Alternatives to Camps” acknowledges that the reasons for the existence of camps have passed and that, particularly over the long term, encampment can have a significantly negative impact on refugees, engendering dependency, weakening refugees’ ability to manage their own lives and perpetuating the trauma of displacement.4 In its 2016 report looking specifically at GBV prevention and response in urban centers, the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) laments the lack of movement on the implementation of such urban/non-camp policies and approaches.5 In a study conducted across four cities, WRC observed a range of GBV risks facing urban refugees, and the challenges in mitigating them. Globally, 60 percent of refugees live in urban settings and this fact, along with the complexity of assessing and mitigating risks related to the increased incidence of GBV for urban refugees in homes, in public, in workplaces and in schools, demand a community-based approach that addresses the particular GBV risks that urban refugee populations face. Key elements include: • outreach to at risk populations aimed at allowing them to articulate the risks they face, identify promising means of mitigation, and shape policies and programing that will directly affect their security and well-being; 88

Risks of Gender-Based Violence that Follow Refugees • mapping of current and potential linkages between humanitarian actors and a much broader range of host community nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), governmental actors, and civil society; • targeted actions to ensure refugees are provided with information tailored to their risks and needs, including facilitating access to peer networks and supporting refugee-led support groups and CBOs.6 This context-responsive, community-based approach builds on that contained in UNHCR’s Alternatives to Camps policy and would make a significant contribution to mitigating the risks of GBV for refugees. Further, as a community-based approach, it offers a more effective platform to disseminate information, launch other GBV prevention activities, and grow the knowledge base on risk factors and effective GBV prevention. Evidence-based GBV prevention has a growing, if variable, track record in countries in the global north7 and the global south,8 however both the causes and means of preventing the rise in domestic violence specifically in disaster and conflict-related crises have received little evidence-based analysis. While good GBV prevention practice exists, “much of the evidence for and learning from it has not been adequately documented or disseminated…[which] has resulted in a lack of agreement on how to define, prioritise, prevent and respond to gender-based violence in humanitarian contexts.”9 From a positive standpoint, there has been a recent period of growth that has “seen the development of a number of good practice standards, guidelines, training resources and other technical tools and materials.”10 Further, on a global level, there is growing evidence both for the positive impact of existing gender equality programing11 and, based on surveys of men’s gender-related attitudes and practices, for the proposition that normative change is under way in many populations.12 In light of these developments, and knowing that the phenomenon of escalating domestic violence is predictable, prevention should be possible. If we look to a public health approach, when we know there is an increased risk of communicable diseases where displaced people congregate, we work to address the risk factors for disease before it occurs. The same should be the case with increased risk of violence. If we limit our services to responding to families where domestic violence has started or been exacerbated by 89

Women and Borders displacement, we can no longer speak of primary prevention, but rather a secondary or tertiary model which seeks to limit further harm.13 Much more can be done to bring what we know about the root causes of GBV and the factors that exacerbate, and reduce, the risk of violence into the realm of humanitarian response and to anticipate and mobilize to prevent a rise in domestic violence from the moment conflict causes displacement within or across borders. In this chapter, we turn first to the root causes of GBV and will situate gender transformation and the discourse on the engagement of men and boys in gender equality’s evolving international legal and policy framework and in the normative framework governing humanitarian intervention. In the second half of this chapter, we present one component of the work of Collateral Repair Project (CRP), a small community-based NGO working with urban refugees in Amman, Jordan, as a case study on gender transformation and initial work that may serve to identify and mitigate risk factors associated with the escalation of domestic violence in the community CRP serves. The impetus for this project came from CRP refugee volunteers and staff who were concerned by reports from community members about rising violence in their families. In response, CRP piloted a project on gender justice and raising awareness on domestic violence to help engage community members in identifying genderrelated problems, with the belief that community-generated approaches to address those problems will follow. The CRP model offers some possible early steps for engaging refugee groups in community owned dialogue on GBV and women’s justice that can be employed from the outset of a crisis by creating safe spaces for purposeful engagement, dialogue and learning.

Gender Equality and Non-discrimination Gender equality is a global goal, articulated in numerous United Nations conventions and both the Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals, however gender inequality continues to compromise the lives of women and children in devastating ways. Across much of the world, rigid gender norms, and harmful perceptions of what it means to be a man or a woman, encourage men to engage in high risk behaviors, condone violence

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Risks of Gender-Based Violence that Follow Refugees against women, grant men the power to initiate and dictate the terms of sex, and make it difficult for women to protect themselves from either HIV or violence and to seek health services. Indeed, a growing body of research shows that these gender roles contribute to gender-based violence, alcohol, and drug abuse and exacerbate the spread and impact of HIV and AIDS.14

Equality is one of the cornerstones of the United Nations human rights system. The Charter of the United Nations, adopted in 1945, was the first international instrument to refer specifically to both “human rights” and to “the equal rights of men and women.” The doctrines of gender equality and non-discrimination, important when we consider the intersection of gender with race, nationality, ethnicity, socio-economic status, sexual and gender identity, disability, age, etc., were bolstered by the adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Various specific women’s rights were further strengthened in subsequent international conventions and declarations. However, a piecemeal approach proved insufficient to instil the rights of women. As a result, women’s rights activists advocated, and the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) led the push for a comprehensive, legally binding international instrument aimed at ending all forms of discrimination against women. In 1979, the General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Still, where violence against women is concerned, the international framework and its implementation were found wanting. Noting in the preamble of the 1993 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (DEVAW) that: violence against women is one of the crucial social mechanisms by which women are forced into a subordinate position compared with men; violence against women is an obstacle to the achievement of equality, development and peace and not only constitutes a violation of the rights and fundamental freedoms of women but nullifies their enjoyment of those rights and freedoms; that there has been a longstanding failure to protect and promote those rights and freedoms in the case of violence against women; and that some groups of women, such as women belonging to minority groups, indigenous women, refugee women and migrant women, female children, women with disabilities, 91

Women and Borders elderly women and women in situations of armed conflict are especially vulnerable to violence, the General Assembly concluded: there is a need for a clear and comprehensive definition of violence against women, a clear statement of the rights to be applied to ensure the elimination of violence against women in all its forms, a commitment by States in respect of their responsibilities, and a commitment by the international community at large to the elimination of violence against women[.]15

The UN gender equality framework has provided the “formal basis for the international discussion of the position of women since the 1975–85 UN Decade for Women, which has been a key element in the story of global feminism.”16 The role men and boys might play in achieving gender equality generally, and more specifically in preventing violence against women, emerged in international discussions in the 1990s. The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and the landmark documents that came out of those conferences were, according to Raewyn Connell, driven by strong feminist movements and expressly recognized that women’s empowerment and gender equality are central to achieving greater social justice, peace and security, and sustainable development. They were also significant for drawing specific attention to the need to work with men and boys in promoting women’s empowerment and gender equality.17

The ICPD called for greater male involvement in bringing about gender equality in all spheres of life, including family and community life.18 The Programme of Action of the ICPD stated that men share responsibility with women for, among others, responsible sexual and reproductive behavior and responsible parenthood and that “[s]pecial emphasis should be placed on the prevention of violence against women and children.”19 Heralding the discourse on gender transformation, the ICPD Plan of Action emphasized that “changes in both men’s and women’s knowledge, attitudes and behavior are necessary conditions for achieving the harmonious partnership of men and women.”20 92

Risks of Gender-Based Violence that Follow Refugees The Beijing Declaration expressed governments’ commitment to “encourage men to participate fully in all actions towards equality.”21 The language used and commitments made by governments marked a “concerted shift in international [gender equality] discourse…. Beyond just the nominal or symbolic involvement of men, the Beijing framework envisioned male engagement as a necessary means to addressing inequalities between women and men .”22 Gender-based violence was among the areas identified by the Beijing Platform as critical for male engagement. Prior to Beijing and Cairo, major policy discussions and documents regarding gender equality had dedicated limited, if any, attention to the role of men and boys…If and when men and boys were featured in policy documents and discussions, it was often as the implied or named obstacles to women’s struggle for equality—rarely were they identified as a potential or necessary part of the solution.23

In 2004, the 48th session of the CSW examined “The Role of Men and Boys in Achieving Gender Equality.” The report of the Secretary General to that session provides an overview of the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality. Of particular importance is its focus on the socialization and education of men and boys.24 In its Agreed Conclusions, the CSW echoed Beijing in reaffirming the need for both men and women to work towards gender equality and recommended continuing to expand the inclusion of men and boys in key areas, including the elimination of violence. The Agreed Conclusions are the first global-level policy statement focused on the role of men and boys in furthering gender equality. The CSW stressed the need to: Encourage and support men and boys to take an active part in the prevention and elimination of all forms of violence, and especially gender-based violence, including in the context of HIV/AIDS, and increase awareness of men’s and boys’ responsibility in ending the cycle of violence, inter alia, through the promotion of attitudinal and behavioural change, integrated education and training which prioritize the safety of women and children25

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Engaging Men and Boys in Preventing Gender-based Violence Gender equality is not an end in itself, but a necessary means to achieving social, economic and political empowerment for women and ending violence against women and children. Why involve men in gender equality and women’s empowerment? Put succinctly and pragmatically, one reason is the growing recognition that “without men, gender interventions can only go so far.”26 However, for feminist and pro-feminist thinkers and practitioners, engaging men and boys is not without its risks. There is a concern that men’s organizations, organized solely around the project of engaging men and boys in gender-equality, shift the focus from women as “disproportionately affected by inequality, discrimination and violence” onto themselves and conflate violence against women with the interests of men and boys.27 Although it is beyond the scope of this chapter to present the many feminist and pro-feminist perspectives engaged in this debate, one could summarize by saying the question surrounding engaging men and boys in preventing violence against women is not whether they should be engaged, but how? On whose terms? As a partial answer to that question, the following are a set of feminist principles and best practices the authors recommend to frame work with men and boys: (1) Conduct a gender analysis and culturally relevant context analysis, which is essential to understanding the ways in which women and girls’, men and boys’ experience pre- and post-flight are shaped by gender in a given context. (2) Create safe spaces in communities to enable men and boys, women and girls to challenge inequitable norms and the power structures that support them. As Promundo and others have observed, although men continue to hold the power in most contexts, “men struggle to conform to the idealized and exaggerated gender norms for manhood. One result of this is they don’t necessarily feel safe taking part in a dialogue about gender equality or changing ideas of manhood.”28 (3) Promote gender consciousness when conducting trainings with staff and with community members: Paulo Freire (1970) called it conscientization, which “refers to individuals’ capacity to reflect on the world

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(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

and choose a particular course of action informed and empowered by that critical reflection. This process … can promote personal growth, political and social awareness, and activism. In turn, engaging in activism and living in more egalitarian ways can create the conditions for achieving greater gender justice and social justice.”29 Be aware of multiple, often intersecting oppressions. Where training and behavior change are concerned, this leads us to ensure that intersectional analysis informs the critical reflection mentioned in the previous paragraph, including but not limited to consciousness of socioeconomic status, race, disability, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Where all aspects of program development and implementation are concerned, respect for diversity must be mainstreamed. To the extent that it is culturally acceptable, adopt a “gender synchronized” approach, which means to create an environment in which men and boys, women and girls “actively strive to examine, question, and change rigid gender norms and imbalance of power as a means of reaching gender equity objectives.”30 This does not mean that all programing is delivered across age and sex, rather, that we recognize that women and girls also play a role in perpetuating harmful gender norms. Practitioners can make decisions about what ages and sexes work together or separately based on the context and, importantly, in consultation with communities themselves. The intention “is to engage young women and men in confronting and changing gender inequalities in ways that are safe.”31 Men and boys must be accountable to women and girls, and to their broader community. As gender is about relations of social power, and social structures and institutions are still largely dominated by men, including in refugee/asylum contexts, “it is clear that men have a critical role to play alongside women and women’s rights organizations in advancing equality and women’s rights, and in dismantling the gender status quo. Efforts to engage men should explore channels of accountability to women and must be complementary to work with women and girls to promote gender equality.”32 Foster the belief that men’s conceptions of manhood can change. Many men are already taking part in this change, but the challenge remains in determining how to best encourage and support the process. “Those 95

Women and Borders who wish to spark and support men’s evolution toward gender justice must determine what stands in the way of men’s change, and what types of advocacy and activism, social and economic policies, educational campaigns, legal reforms, and programs best facilitate this process.”33 (8) Engender cultural competency of development and aid workers to enable them to engage sensitively with the community in which they work and mitigate any cultural safety risks. Ensure their understanding of the multiple layers of cultures (for example local, international, organizational, institutional) that are at play within each program or action addressing gender. (9) Understand the socio-economic contexts that create fertile breeding grounds for unhealthy masculinities and the enforcement of regressive gender norms. Poverty and economic class gaps lead to inadequate access to quality education, personal development and eventually an inability to achieve self-actualization. In societies where social status, employment and wealth are markers of masculine roles, their lack often results in men using violence against women and girls as a means to reassert their power.

Normative Framework for Humanitarian Intervention in GBV Prevention and Response “For the humanitarian community, the overarching challenge is to prevent GBV, while standing ready to respond effectively when it occurs.”34 The Interagency Standing Committee (IASC) is the primary mechanism for inter-agency coordination of humanitarian assistance provided by UN and non-UN humanitarian partners. The IASC was established in June 1992 in response to the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 46/ 182 on the strengthening of humanitarian assistance. Its 2015 “Guidelines for Integrating Gender-Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Action” (“IASC GBV Guidelines”) serve a standards/regulatory and policy  role for GBV prevention and response within and between sectors. One of its tenets is “Assume GBV is taking place” and indeed the 2015 96

Risks of Gender-Based Violence that Follow Refugees Guidelines address the predictability of GBV, including domestic violence, clearly and concisely: GBV is happening everywhere. It is under-reported worldwide, due to fears of stigma or retaliation, limited availability or accessibility of trusted service providers, impunity for perpetrators, and lack of awareness of the benefits of seeking care. Waiting for or seeking population-based data on the true magnitude of GBV should not be a priority in an emergency due to safety and ethical challenges in collecting such data. With this in mind, all humanitarian personnel ought to assume GBV is occurring and threatening affected populations; treat it as a serious and life-threatening problem; and take actions based on sector recommendations in these Guidelines, regardless of the presence or absence of concrete ‘evidence.’35

Where the exacerbation of GBV in a given humanitarian context is concerned: Risks of various forms of gender-based violence (GBV) are magnified. Factors that increase people’s level of risk can include, among other things: the loss of shelter; armed attacks and abuse; family separation; the collapse of family and community protection mechanisms; arbitrary deprivation of land, homes and other property; marginalization, discrimination and hostility in new settings; exposure to landmines or explosive remnants of war; long-standing gender inequalities; and the failure to address GBV prior to the emergency.36

According to the IASC, to integrate GBV prevention and mitigation into humanitarian interventions, humanitarian actors must anticipate, contextualize and address factors at societal, community, family and individual levels that may contribute to GBV. IASC stresses that although these factors may contribute to GBV, the root cause remains gender discrimination and gender inequality, which necessitate “not only working to meet the immediate needs of the affected populations, but also implementing strategies— as early as possible in any humanitarian action—that promote long-term social and cultural change towards gender equality.” Such strategies include, among others, ensuring leadership and active engagement of women and 97

Women and Borders girls, men and boys, in community-based groups related to the humanitarian area/sector.” The IASC impresses on humanitarian actors that they must be aware of the risks of GBV and—acting collectively to ensure a comprehensive response—prevent and mitigate these risks as quickly as possible within their areas of operation. Failure to take action against GBV represents a failure by humanitarian actors to meet their most basic responsibilities for promoting and protecting the rights of affected populations.37

The IASC is clear on the strong humanitarian imperative to prevent and mitigate GBV,38 yet in the case of domestic violence, little further guidance is provided by the IASC Guidelines on how to act, pointing yet again to the need for research and the development of evidence-based strategies and tools for preventing domestic violence in emergencies.

Collateral Repair Project: Community-based Model for Violence Prevention The policy guidance clearly points to a well-documented pattern of escalating violence among displaced populations. A growing body of work calls for early prevention approaches that engage women and girls, boys and men, including in humanitarian contexts. Where, then, can we look for concrete examples of work with refugee communities to raise awareness of the increased risk of violence in refugee communities? Jordan is home to well over 600,000 refugees.39 Much media attention has been devoted to Za’atari Refugee Camp and to Jordan’s other smaller refugee camps, but in fact, nearly 80 percent of the refugees in Jordan live in urban areas, not camps. Many refugee families struggle with traumarelated health issues, family separation, poverty, shifting gender roles, and other stressors related to their status as refugees. Members of host communities are, themselves, experiencing pressures due to poverty, unemployment, increased competition for scarce resources, and a heightened sense of tension within the community. Hashemi Shamali is a low-income community in Amman that has long been identified as a “poverty pocket” by the Jordanian authorities, and 98

Risks of Gender-Based Violence that Follow Refugees currently hosts a disproportionate number of refugees from Syria and Iraq. Collateral Repair Project (CRP)40 is a community based NGO that has provided basic needs and psychosocial support to refugees since 2006. To ensure that CRP never inadvertently contributes to increasing tensions between the refugees and the Jordanians and Palestinians in the host community, all services are provided based on need, not nationality or status. “We’re a small, community-based center, with very little bureaucracy, so there is really nothing stopping us from trying new things” explains Amanda Lane, CRP’s Executive Director. “From the beginning, CRP has focused on meeting emergency needs, but also on creating community. So the question is, what does that community look like?” Responding to beneficiary requests, CRP began offering English classes and computer training as well as a men’s dominos night, and a women’s crafting collective. When CRP introduced yoga classes, people warned Lane that refugees wouldn’t come. “They said maybe a few women might try it, but for sure not the men. They will never agree to take off their shoes and do yoga!” Today the Center offers weekly yoga classes for men and women, and has recently added men’s and women’s Trauma Release Exercise (TRE) classes. Male participants say the classes give them a bit of peace, and the space to take their minds off their many worries. In light of these successes, when women, and even some of the men in the community, began to talk to staff about an increase in violence in their homes, the CRP staff team felt it needed to take action. According to one staff member “both the men and women were describing families under increasing pressure: financial pressure, conflict-related trauma, frequent bad news from home, and the ongoing stress of life as a refugee. Women told us that the men needed help and support. And the men were telling us pretty much the same thing.” At first, the team looked for partner agencies to which they could refer men. They quickly learned that while some resources existed for women who were victims of violence, the resources for men were not there. “We started a men’s circle, recruiting a mix of men who we know are leaders in the community, and the men we felt really needed some help.” Using a circle model, the group is led by the men themselves, with the support of one of CRP’s staff, himself, a refugee. Two volunteers with experience hosting groups provide additional support and debriefing. “We are learning as 99

Women and Borders we go, learning from the group, and from our experience trying to engage men in finding healthy strategies for coping with stress, and shifting norms in the community.” The result has been a group that, nearly two years on, has grown due to word of mouth referrals from its members. “No one else is listening to us” says one participant when asked what the group means for him. The group is one important aspect of the organization’s engagement of men, a critical element of CRP’s evolving GBV prevention work.

Collateral Repair Project: Human Rights and Violence Prevention In the fall of 2015, CRP and the Government of the Netherlands partnered on a new initiative designed to raise awareness of the rights of women and girls, boys and men to live free of violence. Through this project, CRP has engaged its staff, and men, women and teen girls and boys from the refugee community on rights education and awareness, violence prevention, healthy relationships, stress management, and promotion of non-violent masculinities. The project has a bottom-up, community-based approach. CRP’s experience shows that programming has the most impact when beneficiaries define the issues, set priorities, and imagine possible solutions within the context of their lives and community. Having community members take a leadership role in addressing issues and articulating how to raise them in the wider community helps ensure an approach that is culturally sensitive, and increases the likelihood that the community will buy into the behavioral change proposed. The CRP team was concerned that it not be seen as “parachuting” values and knowledge into the community that do not fit its realities and culture. The approach developed reflects the belief that behavior change does not happen by learning a new way to behave, but rather by integrating an understanding of the full impact of current behaviors and generating new attitudes, understandings, and behaviors from within. Most of CRP’s staff and volunteers are, themselves, either refugees, or members of the local host community. An important component of 100

Risks of Gender-Based Violence that Follow Refugees the project is to build the capacity of CRP’s staff and core volunteers to understand women’s rights and gender justice and effectively and professionally respond to families struggling with domestic violence. Gaps in staff training were identified and addressed, including gender equity in humanitarian assistance and work with refugees. A review of the early phases of the CRP and Government of Netherlands project show that the project addresses important needs, and elicits strong engagement from participants. CRP is currently considering the best way to monitor longerterm impacts of the project as well a means to move forward with promoting gender justice and violence prevention work, which supports the community to promote safe and peaceful families. The training and engagement components of the project follow.

Staff and Volunteer Assessment The project began with an environmental scan, and staff and volunteer needs assessments. This focused on two thematic areas: (1) Organizational Context: How do team members see the organization’s engagement on issues of gender education and training, and the level of comfort around discussing such topics? This thematic area also looked at team members’ desire/readiness to engage in such a conversation within the organization. (2) Knowledge and skill base:  Team members’ attitudes towards basic principles of gender equity and non-violent relationships between men and women were assessed. This thematic area also assessed perceptions on gender-based violence in the local community. Prior to this project, CRP’s staff training consisted of a general codeof-conduct orientation and briefing on work with refugees, and did not include an orientation or training for new staff or volunteers that specifically addressed gender and gender-based violence. Although most team members demonstrated a level of comfort discussing issues related to gender and gender-based violence, some expressed the need for caution due to sensitivities between people from different cultural backgrounds 101

Women and Borders (Iraqis, Syrians, Jordanians, Palestinians). There was an agreement among all staff and volunteers both on the need for this project, and the desire to be involved. Because the CRP staff are the face of the organization to the public, as well as being influential members of the community in their own right, their role as models for the attitudes and behavior change targeted in the project was seen as very important. Although most team members had a positive attitude towards gender equity, some referenced what the facilitator described as “traditional/ religious” views on women and relationships. Examples included the perception that women are weak, more emotional, need help and protection from men, or that women have responsibility for enabling men to be violent. A clear divide between Arab and non-Arab staff and volunteers was evident on this topic. Religion was a major reference point for most Arab staff interviewed and it influenced their positions on gender and equity, both positively and negatively. Team members who came from the refugee community had a much clearer understanding of the impact of the refugee experience on families, women’s empowerment and the increased levels of domestic violence the community was experiencing. For example, two male staff members who are also refugees themselves had a ready understanding of the impact of injustice and violence on their own lives, and as a result, messages around gender rights and GBV prevention resonated with them. They were able to then relate to the idea of connecting family health to the security of the community in general. Iraqis and Syrians interviewed had different perceptions of the refugee experience, women’s empowerment and gender-based violence, suggesting that among refugee populations, different approaches and entry points are needed. For example, women in the Iraqi refugee population were often more vocal, active and “empowered” than the Syrian refugee women, and as a result, conducting mixed gender groups was easier with Iraqis than with Syrians. However, there is a wider cultural and ethnic diversity among Iraqi urban refugees in Amman that can result in tensions between different groups. The greater social cohesion among Syrian refugees provided opportunities for education and mobilization work with less communitybuilding effort required. 102

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Identifying and Training Community Mobilizers Based on the initial assessment, all CRP staff members were provided specific training on principles of gender, human rights and GBV prevention as well as cross cultural work, organizational development and self-care. In consultation with the staff, two four-day trainings were developed for two groups consisting of 29 refugee men and women. From this group, 12 were identified by trainers and staff as having the ability to mobilize others, and offered additional training to enable those community mobilizers to provide further sessions to the community. The newly trained community mobilizers varied in education, literacy and life experience. While some had relevant experience in the past that could help them run discussion groups and deliver educational content, others did not. Given this reality, the goal was not to graduate professional trainers within the scope and capacity of this project, as much as it was to provide basic skills and tools that community mobilizers could use to engage other community members in open conversations. These include session curriculum and guides that offer a flexible platform for mobilizers to deliver the content and messaging in a manner that fits with their own communication styles. Syrian and Iraqi refugees from diverse backgrounds participated in the trainings, ranging from late teens to people in their sixties. Participants selfidentified as Muslims, Christians, Sabe’a and Yazeedis. Members of other religious groups may have participated without identifying themselves. All trainings were conducted in Arabic and involved a mix of methods and tools. Direct presentations on main topics and themes provided the general framework of the training, with a number of interactive exercises and breakout groups. The methodology ensured that there was sufficient space for questions and answers, participants’ contributions and group discussions. Three interactive exercises were conducted in each training to help visually illustrate principles of gender, stereotypes, and the impact of language and power imbalances in relationships between men and women. A number of participant-generated exercises helped frame the topics and relate them to the local context. For example, participants were asked to work in small groups to brainstorm and present what they saw as the costs

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Women and Borders and benefits of gender inequality. The outcomes were then referenced and built on throughout the training. This helped solidify concepts and ideas discussed in the presentations and offered participants a sense of ownership of their learning experience.

Training Community Mobilizers on Gender and Gender Justice The first four-day training, on gender and gender justice, covered the following topics: • • • • • • • • • • •

Introduction to Gender, Gender Based Violence (GBV) and Identity; Language and Gender; Principles of Gender and Stereotypes; Violence as a Gender Issue; GBV – Local and Cultural Context; GBV – Incidental Context (War and Refugee Experience); Role of Men and Boys; Challenges and Opportunities to Working on GBV Prevention; Cost and Benefits of Gender Equality/Inequality; Fatherhood/Parenthood; Impact of the Refugee and Forced Migration Experience on Gender Dynamics and GBV; • Self-Care for Men; • GBV and People Living with Disabilities. Key elements for engagement and participation were identified including making time for questions and answers and participants’ contributions; ensuring space for women’s voices; conducting group discussions; and facilitating interactive exercises. Incorporation of participant-generated content helped ensure that the learning was locally relevant. The goals of the training included language and knowledge acquisition; listening to the voices of others; embodying personal change/envisaging change in families and community; and combating social isolation. Feedback was gathered from participants informally throughout the training, as well as through structured “check-out” sessions at the end, and 104

Risks of Gender-Based Violence that Follow Refugees in an anonymous, written evaluation form. Some highlights and observations from the participant evaluations include: • The training provided an opportunity to leave the house, engage with others and feel useful, which is something participants highly valued; • Most participants had never had the chance to learn and talk about issues relating to gender and GBV; • Many participants reported that they gained a new ability to have conversations in their family and community around healthy relationships and gender equality; • The interactive, semi-casual facilitation style was identified by many participants as one of the elements that lead to the success of the training; • Providing the opportunity for women’s voices to be heard during the training (for example, to express how they experience street harassment) was impactful, and served as practice for real life; • CRP staff, who co-facilitated the sessions, valued the opportunity to interact with beneficiaries and get to know their realities better and in person. Community participants expressed appreciation of staff and the work CRP does after getting to know them closely throughout the training days. The quotes from participants’ anonymous feedback (translated from Arabic) put forward their thoughts: “The topic of this training is very important in these circumstances we live in”; “It was a fantastic workshop that I benefited from a great deal in a way I did not expect… I did not feel the time passing and wish there was more days to continue presenting topics, our society needs change”; “At first we thought the time of the training is too long, but as the first day went by we wanted more and looking forward to coming back”; “We learned and understood many new things about life that we did not know about”; “we got to realize new things although we live these issues every day because of the well-designed teaching style”;

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Women and Borders “I will talk about what I learned with my friends and family and try to influence them to create positive change… This experience was unforgettable”; “I will be proud to convey what I learned here to my friends and family… I learned a lot from the diverse experiences of participants from different backgrounds”; “One of the best courses I had attended in Jordan, it made me feel much better and left a positive impact that will help me control my behavior and how to interact with people from diverse backgrounds.”41

Next Steps CRP intends to continue the workshops and make them an ongoing part of its activities with the goal of reaching more people and further developing community leaders’ abilities to engage with and present the material. CRP staff are encouraged by the quality of the discussions that took place during the workshops, the enthusiasm and increased confidence of the community trainers and, more generally, the enthusiastic reception of the project. Participants say they are happy for the opportunity and outlet to express themselves and engage in these topics, and affirm that they are relevant to their current lives. The peer education/engagement component, in which the initially trained community members take the knowledge and skills to their community using the 20-session lesson plan has now been delivered twice. CRP is also exploring strategies to keep the group that is already trained, engaged. This could include working more intensively on trainer/facilitation skill-building. In the longer term, this work is not just about awareness-building and education, but also, and more importantly, developing skills to integrate gender awareness in everyday practices and interactions. The project makes a contribution towards shifting the dynamics in people’s daily lives, and linking an understanding of gender dynamics to their well-being and that of their community. Now that members of the community are learning and engaging in these issues, what comes next? How can they begin to influence those around them to adopt change? As a follow-up step, CRP is looking at 106

Risks of Gender-Based Violence that Follow Refugees designing action projects and initiatives that give beneficiaries the opportunity to implement the values of gender justice in practical, real life situations.

Conclusion For many refugees, violence does not stop at the border. Once the dangers associated with armed conflict are put behind, the risk of other types of violence and exploitation linked to displacement and marginalization increase for many. However, displacement contexts can also present an opportunity for engagement and awareness-raising, including challenging the notions of traditional masculinity. Refugees and other displaced people, by necessity, are in a process of redefinition of identity, often taking on roles or responsibilities they may never have previously imagined. Especially in contexts where they are prevented from working, as is often the case in displacement across borders, many may have more time to devote to exploring new ideas, and may welcome a space to come together with others to share experiences, and seek support. An important factor in the CRP project was that the organization already had robust and well-known programming designed to address the basic survival needs of refugees in the community where it worked. Many people who were involved in the project initially approached the organization with urgent needs for assistance, and this served as the basis of their relationship with CRP. Through this initial connection, a strong level of trust and engagement with the community was built prior to the start of the project, which then allowed CRP staff to engage beneficiaries in its psychosocial programming. Another key element was the deep belief on the part of staff and volunteers in community members’ own desire to heal and move in a positive direction. The Collateral Repair Project pilot, along with the promising work being done by some other international organizations, shows there is value in creating safe spaces to engage refugees, and, in particular refugee men and boys, on the issues of gender equality and sexual and gender-based violence during protracted humanitarian crises. Existing cultural norms and ideas around issues of masculinity and power imbalances between genders can be exacerbated by the stresses associated with displacement, including loss of employment and status, and the sense of powerlessness many refugees feel. 107

Women and Borders However, when properly approached these norms can also be challenged, with the possibility of new, non-violent concepts of masculinity emerging. In this community project, meaningful, respectful engagement is building initiative and ownership we hope will allow the community to address the issues of domestic violence families raised with CRP. We believe this is a solid model on which to build community initiative and ownership for preventing and responding to the violence that is too often present in communities whether displaced internally or across borders.

Notes 1. According to the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (Guidelines for GenderBased Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Settings, IASC, 2005), the severity and incidence of gender-based violence often increases in the aftermath of both natural disasters and humanitarian crises. With regard to the Syria crisis see for example:  Ghida Anani, “Dimensions of gender-based violence against Syrian refugees in Lebanon” Forced Migration Review, No. 44, September 2013, http://www.fmreview.org/detention/anani.html (accessed on August 15, 2016); UNHCR, “Sexual and Gender Based Violence Prevention in Refugee Situations in the Middle East and North Africa,” 2015, https://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/ download.php?id=9843 (accessed on August 18, 2016); UN Women, “Interagency Assessment [of] Gender-Based Violence and Child Protection among Syrian Refugees in Jordan, with a Focus on Early Marriage,” July 2013, https://data.unhcr. org/syrianrefugees/download.php?id=4351 (accessed on August 18, 2016); CARE Jordan, “Baseline Assessment of Community Identified Vulnerabilities among Syrian Refugees living in Amman”, October 2012, https://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/download.php?id=1177 (accessed on August 15, 2016). 2. International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), “Unseen, Unheard:  Gender-based Violence in Disasters,” 2015, http://www. ifrc.org/Global/Documents/Secretariat/201511/1297700_GBV_in_Disasters_ EN_LR2.pdf (accessed on September 3, 2016).With regard to disaster-related displacement, the IFRC notes:  “Researchers have found significant increases in GBV after disasters in high income countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States; fewer academic studies have been undertaken in other parts of the world. Overall, it seems that disasters tend to increase the risk of GBV and that new forms of GBV can emerge in their aftermath.” (pp. 7–8) Based on its research, one of the IFRC conclusions was that in some settings, “both domestic violence and sexual violence (assault, sexual abuse, and exploitation) increase following disasters. In other settings, notably

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3.

4. 5. 6. 7.

8.

9.

10.

where levels of GBV are already high, it is difficult to determine whether violence increased as a result of disaster.” (p. 8) Women’s Refugee Commission, “Mean Streets: Identifying and Responding to Urban Refugees’ Risks of Gender-Based Violence,” 2016. https://www.womensrefugeecommission.org/gbv/resources/document/…/1272 (accessed on December 10, 2016). UNHCR, “Policy on Alternative to Camps,” 2014, p. 4. http://www.unhcr.org/ 5422b8f09.pdf (accessed on December 14, 2016). Women’s Refugee Commission, p.4. Ibid. For example, in Canada, the White Ribbon Campaign “is the world’s largest movement of men and boys working to end violence against women and girls, promote gender equity, healthy relationships and a new vision of masculinity. Starting in 1991, we asked men to wear white ribbons as a pledge to never commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women and girls. Since then the White Ribbon has spread to over 60 countries around the world.” See http://www.whiteribbon.ca/. The Moose Hide Campaign, a First Nations’ initiated violence prevention campaign, whose goal is “to end violence towards women and children.” Their solution: “To use our cultural teachings to motivate and enlighten men to our indigenous ways of being ultimately changing the cycles of violence in our communities.” http://moosehidecampaign.ca/, Lebanon’s Abaad at http:// www.abaadmena.org. For example, Uganda’s RaisingVoices at http://raisingvoices.org/; Brasil’s Promundo at http://promundo.org.br/ (Spanish and Portuguese) or Promundo Global at http://promundoglobal.org/ (Portuguese and English). Regionally, for example: Sonke Gender Justice at http://www.genderjustice. org.za/; Engender Health at https://www.engenderhealth.org/index-main.php; and South East Asia’s Partners4Prevention, a joint program of UNDP, UNFPA, UN Women & UNV at http://www.partners4prevention.org/; and MenCare at http://men-care.org/. Rebecca Holmes and Dharini Bhuvanendra, “Preventing and Responding to Gender-Based Violence in Humanitarian Crises” (Overseas Development Institute, Humanitarian Practice Network: 2014), p. 1. http://odihpn.org/wpcontent/uploads/2014/02/NP_77_web.pdf (accessed on September 3, 2016). In response to the above-noted challenges, the objective of the Network paper was to map and critically analyze “good practice in preventing and responding to gender-based violence in humanitarian contexts to support humanitarian practitioners and policymakers to improve the quality of GBV programming.” Ibid. Note the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s 2015, updated version of the Guidelines for Gender-Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian

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Women and Borders Settings, is a good example of such guidelines, although less so where domestic violence prevention is concerned (see below). 11. See for example: B. Heilman, L. Hebert, and N. Paul-Gera, “The Making of Sexual Violence: How Does a Boy Grow Up to Commit Rape? Evidence from Five IMAGES Countries,” Washington, DC: International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and Washington, DC: Promundo, June 2014, http://promundoglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/The-Making-of-Sexual-Violence-How-Does-a-Boy-GrowUp-to-Commit-Rape.pdf (accessed on September 2, 2016); Instituto Promundo, “Engaging men to prevent gender-based violence: A multi-country intervention and impact evaluation study,” Washington, DC: Promundo, 2012, http://promundoglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Engaging-Men-to-Prevent-GenderBased-Violence.pdf (accessed on September 2, 2016). 12. Gary Barker, J.M. Contreras, B. Heilman, A.K. Singh, et al., “Evolving Men: Initial Results from the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES),” Washington, DC: International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Promundo, January 2011. http://www. icrw.org/ sites/ default/ files/ publications/ Evolving- Men- Initial- Resultsfrom-the-International-Men-and-Gender-Equality-Survey-IMAGES-1.pdf. Michael Kaufman, “Engaging Men, Changing Gender Norms: Directions for Gender-Transformative Action: MenEngag-UNFPA Advocacy Brief ” 2014, p. 4. https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/resource-pdf/Advocacy%20Brief%20Gender%20Norms-1.pdf (accessed on September 2, 2016). Starting in 2009 and 2010, MenEngage partners carried out large-scale household surveys on men’s attitudes and practices. Led by Promundo and the International Center for Research on Women, partner researchers, supported by UNFPA in several countries, administered the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES) to more than 20,000 men and women in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Chile, Croatia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Mali, Mexico and Rwanda. (Subsequent surveys are underway in Malawi and other settings. A similar survey, based in part on IMAGES, is being coordinated in several countries in Asia by the UN project Partners for Prevention, also in collaboration with UNFPA). The survey covers attitudes and practices relating to men’s employment, education, childhood experiences, domestic and parenting duties, ideas about gender equality, sexual relations, use and experience of policies related to gender equality (IMAGES, 2011). Such data is important for gauging men’s actual support (or rejection) of gender equality. This allows for a realistic assessment of national attitudes and helps advocates refine their messages and policies, as well as providing a baseline to measure the impact of future campaigns and initiatives. The data suggests broad shifts are underway in men’s relations with gendered social, economic and political structures.

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Risks of Gender-Based Violence that Follow Refugees 13. Canadian Red Cross, “Predictable, preventable:  best practices for addressing interpersonal and self-directed violence during and after disasters,” 2012. http:// www.ifrc.org/ PageFiles/ 94522/ ViolenceInDisasters- English- 1up.pdf (accessed on September 2, 2016). 14. Dean Peacock and Gary Barker, “Working with men and boys to promote gender equality: A review of the field and emerging approaches” 17–20 September 2012, Expert Group Meeting: Prevention of violence against women and girls. Bangkok, Thailand. (2012), p.1. http://www.unwomen.org/~/media/ Headquarters/ Attachments/ Sections/ CSW/ 57/ EGM/ EGM- paper- Peacockand-Barker%20pdf.pdf (accessed on September 2, 2016). 15. UN General Assembly, Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, A/RES/48/104, 85th Plenary Meeting, 20 December 1993. 16. Bulbeck as cited by Raewyn W. Connell, “Change among the Gatekeepers: Men, Masculinities, and Gender Equality in the Global Arena”, Signs, Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 30, No. 3, 2005, 1801. http://xyonline.net/ sites/default/files/Connell,%20Change%20among.pdf (accessed on September 3, 2016). 17. Ibid., pp. 1801–25. 18. United Nations Population Fund, “Programme of Action, International Conference on Population and Development” (ICPD, 1991). 19. Report of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994) (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.95.XIII.18), chap. I, resolution 1, annex, para. 4.27. An overview of recommendations is available at: ww.un.org/women watch/daw/egm/menboys2003/language.pdf (accessed on September 1, 2016). 20. ICPD, para. 4.24. 21. United Nations, “Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for Equality, Development and Peace” (Beijing, 1995), paragraph 25. 22. MenEngage Alliance, “Men, Masculinities and Changing Power, A discussion paper on engaging men in gender equality from Beijing 1995 to 2015” (2014) p.18 (emphasis in original). https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/ resource-pdf/Men-Masculinities-and-Changing-Power-MenEngage-2014.pdf (accessed on September 1, 2016). 23. Connell, “Change among the Gatekeepers,” 2005, pp. 1801–25. 24. UN Secretary General, “Thematic issue before the Commission: The role of men and boys in achieving gender equality”; E/CN.6/2004/9; (Commission on the Status of Women, Forty-eighth session, 2004). http://www.unhcr.org/ 543b9ea66.pdf (accessed on September 6, 2016). 25. UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “Agreed Conclusions of the Commission on the Status of Women on the Critical Areas of Concern of the Beijing Platform for Action 1996–2009” (2010) para. 6(r),

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26.

27.

28. 29.

30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41.

p. 136. http:// www.un.org/ womenwatch/ daw/ public/ agreedconclusions/ Agreed-Conclusions-English.pdf (accessed on September 1, 2016). Sylvia Chant and Matthew C. Gutmann, “‘Men-streaming’ gender? Questions for gender and development policy in the 21st century,” Progress in Development Studies, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2002, p. 271. “Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Rashida Manjoo” (Human Rights Council, 26th session, Agenda item 3: 28 May 2014) (A/HRC/26/38). http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/ HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session23/A_HRC_23_49_English.pdf (accessed on September 2, 2016). Ibid., p.10. Promundo, “Program H/M/D: A Toolkit for Action/Engaging Youth to Achieve Gender Equity” Promundo, Instituto PAPAI, Salud y Género and ECOS, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Washington, DC, USA: Promundo, 2013. p. 2 http://promundoglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Program-HMD-Toolkit-forAction.pdf (accessed on September 2, 16). Ibid. p. 3. Ibid. Michael Kaufman, “Engaging Men, Changing Gender Norms: Directions for Gender-Transformative Action”; (UNFPA & MenEngage, 2014), p.9. https:// www.unfpa.org/ sites/ default/ files/resource-pdf/Advocacy%20Brief%20Gender%20Norms-1.pdf (accessed on September 2, 2016). Ibid., p. 2. IFRC, “Unseen, Unheard”, p.41. IASC, “Guidelines for Integrating Gender-Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Action (2015); p. 2. (emphasis in original). http://gbvguidelines.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2015-IASC-Gender-based-ViolenceGuidelines_lo-res.pdf (accessed on August 22, 2016). Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 14 (emphasis omitted). Ibid., p. 16. For a general overview of the Syrian refugee situation in Jordan, see http://syrianrefugees.eu/jordan/; for more detailed data and information on the Syrian refugee response in Jordan and elsewhere in the region, see “Syria Regional Refugee Response” at http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php. More information on Collateral Repair Project’s work may be found at www. collateralrepairproject.org Human Rights Awareness and Domestic Violence Prevention Project. Final Report, Collateral Repair Project, 2016.

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5 Trapped in a Cycle of Abuse and Violence: A Case Study of Nigerian Women in Italy Carolina Montenegro

Introduction Favour is a 9-month-old baby girl from Nigeria rescued in the Mediterranean Sea by the Italian coast guard. The boat that capsized, left dozens of people dead and many others adrift. Her pregnant mother died during the shipwreck. Before the rescue teams arrived, Favour was taken care of by a group of women survivors of the wreck. They took turns holding the child for hours adrift. Hours later, safe on the Italian island of Lampedusa, Favour became famous after a picture of her in the arms of an Italian doctor became viral online. The tragedy of the unaccompanied child moved Italy and quickly authorities initiated procedures to find her a legal guardian. The Italian President visited Lampedusa and declared Favour would become an Italian. Favour, however, is not the first one. What is rare is this fortunate outcome, as the Mediterranean Sea becomes an increasingly this dangerous “border,” especially for women and girls. Trying to escape wars, poverty and hunger, they end up trapped in an endless cycle of violence.

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Women and Borders According to the European Commissioner for Human Rights, in March 2016, for the first time since the beginning of the refugee and migrant crisis in Europe, women and children on the move outnumbered adult men. “While in 2015 about 70 percent of the population on the move were men, women and children now make up nearly 60 percent of refugees and other migrants crossing into Europe. This also means that more women and children risk and lose their lives in the Mediterranean Sea and on the land routes to Europe. Of more than 360 persons who died in the Mediterranean in January 2016, one third were women and children.”1 In July, the United Nations children’s fund (UNICEF) reported: more than 9 out of 10 refugee and migrant children arriving in Europe in 2016 are unaccompanied. In the first five months of the year, the total was about 7,009 children, the double of the same period last year. Besides death, this situation may pave the way towards abuse and exploitation as more and more separated children cross the Mediterranean from North Africa, to reach Italy. Most of them rely on human smugglers, getting a “free ride” on the boat in exchange for work or sexual exploitation later. The enticement of refugee and migrant girls into prostitution is one of the most under-reported angles of the Mediterranean refugee crisis. This chapter analyzes the issue, with a focus on Nigerian women and girls in Italy. Many of them fled extreme poverty or Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria and risked their lives to reach Europe. They represent one of the biggest groups of migrants today in Italy subject to smuggling, human trafficking, prostitution, abuse and violence. Lack of protection, medical care, housing and employment are some of the big challenges for their integration in the host country. This complex situation makes one speculate about the fate of the 9-month-old baby from Nigeria. What would have happened if Favour was a teenager or if she was a pregnant woman or even a woman all by herself? What risks would she have confronted after crossing the Mediterranean in search of a new life? The aim of this chapter is to assess the problematic situation refugee and migrant women and children confront after arriving in Italy. The intersection of border, conflict and gender is the background in which this study is constructed. It is primarily based on interviews conducted with 114

Trapped in a Cycle of Abuse and Violence experts and practitioners assisting victims of trafficking in Italy. By looking at the challenges from the perspective of Nigerian women, this study aims to mainstream the plight of refugee and migrant women.

Trafficking in Persons: Definition and Worldwide Status The United Nations emphasizes three elements while defining trafficking in persons: the act, the means and the purpose. According to the Trafficking in Persons Protocol, adopted by 160 UN member states, “act” means the recruitment, transport, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons. The “means” are threat or use of force, deception, coercion, abduction, fraud, abuse of power, giving payments or benefits. The purpose is always exploitation that can take various forms, including, sexual exploitation, forced labor and removal of organs. Different countries and jurisdictions may define these terms differently. The broad definition provides the states flexibility to adapt their national legislation to criminalize trafficking in persons as a specific offense. This, however, creates a diverse legal framework, leading to the weakening of the judicial response to trafficking in persons. In response to the urgency of human trafficking on the international policy arena, several potentially important international legal instruments have been introduced in the past decades, including the UN Convention and Anti-Trafficking Protocol and the Council of Europe’s 2008 Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. Several states quickly ratified the Anti-Trafficking Protocol. The Anti-Trafficking Protocol, in particular, represents an important step forward, by providing an internationally recognized definition of human trafficking as well as introducing three important policy dimensions: prosecuting (criminalizing) traffickers, protecting victims, and preventing the crime of human trafficking.2 Officially known as the “Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children,” it is one of the three Palermo protocols adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2000. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is responsible for implementing the protocol and offering practical help to states with drafting laws, creating comprehensive national anti-trafficking strategies, and assisting with resources 115

Women and Borders to implement them. Furthermore, the protocol commits the ratifying states to prevent and combat trafficking in persons, protecting and assisting victims of trafficking and promoting cooperation among states in order to meet the objectives. Although the exact magnitudes and dimensions of the trafficking in person are unknown, available statistics suggest that human trafficking is one of the most serious transnational crimes in the 21st century. According to the US Department of State’s 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report, there are more than 12 million victims of human trafficking worldwide. Interpol estimates that human trafficking is a multibillion-dollar business, amounting to the third largest transnational crime, following drug and arms trafficking.3 According to UNODC’s Global Report on Trafficking in Persons (2014),4 trafficking in persons is a global phenomenon: between 2010 and 2012, victims from at least 153 countries were detected in 124 countries worldwide. Trafficking for sexual exploitation is the main form registered in Europe (66 percent), while forced labor accounts for 26 percent of the cases. A great majority of the victims detected are females (49 percent). Women and girls are not only trafficked for sexual exploitation, but also for forced labor and other purposes. The percentage of children among victims is increasing. They now comprise nearly one-third of all detected trafficking victims in the world, a 5 percent increase compared to the 2007–10 period. Out of every three child victims, two are girls and one is a boy. The data from UNODC indicate women are involved in trafficking in persons, not only as victims but also as offenders. For nearly all crimes, male offenders vastly outnumber females. This is true for the case of trafficking in persons as well. The share of women offenders in this crime is nearly 30 percent.5 And, although 90 percent of the countries covered by UNODC criminalize trafficking in persons and many countries have passed new or updated legislation on the issue, impunity prevails. There are few convictions for trafficking in persons.

Nigerian Women: A Special Case Recently, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) warned that the trafficking of Nigerian women from Libya to Italy by boat was 116

Trapped in a Cycle of Abuse and Violence reaching a “crisis level.” According to IOM, from January to May 2016, as many as 1,692 Nigerian women reached the ports of Italy, compared to 738 in the same period of 2015. From January to 31 July 2016 the total jumped to 5,346, out of this 1,616 were minors and 1,435 unaccompanied. In the entirety of 2015, 5,633 Nigerians arrived in Italy compared to 1,454 in 2014. If the numbers are already staggering, the most worrisome is that 80 percent of the Nigerians landing in Italy are victims of trafficking, according to IOM. “What we are seeing at the moment in terms of the numbers and scale of the criminal trade in Nigerian women is unprecedented,” said Simona Moscarelli, an anti-trafficking expert at the IOM, in an interview with the British newspaper the Guardian.6 “Earlier also these women were exploited but there was a possibility to pay off their debts and become free. Now these girls are literally slaves and subject to terrible violence. The age of these victims is getting younger, to the extent that a large percentage of those arriving now are considered unaccompanied minors when they get off the boats,” she added. The age of these women is worrisome. Most are now between 15 and 24 years but declare themselves to be over 20 even when their physical appearance clearly shows otherwise. Experts claim that these young women are instructed to do so by the traffickers in Nigeria. They arrive in groups of four or five and declare that they did not pay for the trip and even show signs of recent violence. During the trip from Nigeria to Libya and later in Libya, many suffer repeated physical and sexual violence and arrive pregnant to Italy. According to IOM, these women speak little and hesitate to talk to the Italian authorities. All of them already have a phone number to call in Europe, provided by the traffickers’ network. The women are deceived to believe they would be working in Italy. “It is common that trafficking starts with the help of someone close to the family, an aunt, a neighbor. This person pays for the trip; around 30,000 is the price. The Nigerian women think this value is in naira (the local currency). Only later they are informed that the currency is Euro,” informed Alessia Cassia, a cultural mediator at NGO AccoglieRete NGO in Syracuse, Italy.7 Cassia has been working with the Nigerian women for the last four years. Although many are aware or suspicious that this journey could end up in prostitution, they are not informed about the conditions they would 117

Women and Borders face in Europe; working in the streets or earning 5 Euros for a ride in a client’s car (and under precarious situations related to hygiene, informal market, violence and exploitation). By Italian law, prostitution is not a crime, but the exploitation of it is. “These women trust people bringing them to Italy. Most do not understand exactly the conditions. However, even this is acceptable to many. Arriving in Italy through all possible ways and staying there irrespective of all the problems and exploitation is a solution for earning money and supporting the family in Nigeria. The living in Nigeria is not considered a good option. Even if there is 1 percent hope for a relatively better life abroad, the women would opt for it,” said Cassia. The factors promoting the trafficking of women in Nigeria include corruption, poverty, illiteracy and unemployment. Nigerian researcher Emmanuel Duru, argues that in Nigeria figures and statistics on the number of Nigerians involved in trafficking have been inconsistent but recent statistics show that the number is increasing.8 From March 1999 to April 2000, about 1,126 trafficked women were deported from various countries, according to the Nigerian Police Force and the Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF). For Duru various factors are responsible for the upsurge in human trafficking in Nigeria. These factors include: social, cultural and religious practices of the people, weak institutional and legal framework, official and institutionalized corruption, unequal access to education; poverty and lack of legitimate and fulfilling employment opportunities, increasing demand for foreign workers, globalization, lack of access to legal redress, devaluation of women and children’s human rights, perversion of cultural traditional practices and lack of information. Known as the “Giant of Africa,” Nigeria has one of the largest population and economy in the continent. Its 184 million inhabitants, representing 500 different ethnic groups, make the country one of the most populous in Africa. The majority in the South of the country follow Christianity and Muslims are the biggest religious group in the North. Since 2014, Nigeria overtook South Africa as Africa’s largest economy. Inequality and corruption, however, continue to cripple the country and create huge disparities between different regions of the country. Most of the Nigerian women and girls arriving in Italy come from Edo, Delta, Lagos, Ogun and Anambra regions. The regions are predominately 118

Trapped in a Cycle of Abuse and Violence in the rural South of the country and these women, in general, have little access to education and belong to poor families. Edo state, in the South of Nigeria, is the main point of origin of women and girls being trafficked from the country to Italy. Although the region is rich in oil production, corruption and inequality have been taking a heavy toll on the region’s development. Estimates suggests that 85 percent of the Nigerian women trafficked to Europe come from this region, renowned for being a very poor area. Even if the legal framework to fight human trafficking is fully in place in Nigeria, compliance is rare. Implementation of the legal framework and lack of will to prosecute and punish traffickers are considered a major problem. It is nevertheless important to note that Nigeria officially recognizes international regulations, such as the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (2000) and the Supplementary Trafficking Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Palermo Protocol, 2003). Nigeria is also a party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. It is also a signatory to important international treaties on women’s rights, like the Maputo Protocol and the African Union Women’s Rights Framework. Nevertheless, women confront generalized discrimination in a series of spheres of public life in Nigeria. Forced marriage of girls and female genital mutilation are still common practices, although the federal ban on both practices is in place since 2015.9 Regionally, other legal mechanisms have been adopted by Nigeria for the prevention of trafficking in person. This includes the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981), the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990) and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Rights of Women (2003). Also, the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria clearly stipulates gender equality, but customary and religious laws continue to restrict women’s rights. The disparities between Nigerian women and men in terms of political, social, educational and economic achievements are inseparable from other problems that hinder parity between the two genders. Such problems include low participation of women in politics, limited rights in terms of access to resources 119

Women and Borders (land ownership and credit) and opportunities (education, training, occupation), especially for the predominantly Muslim northern women. There are also more than 250 ethnic groups with various customs, with many, constraining women’s full participation in society.10 The challenge of gender parity in Nigeria is less in the provisions of the Constitution but more their implementation. Nigeria falls short of the desired result of according gender equality and equal access to opportunities to advance socially, economically and politically. Evidence abounds of several forms of gender-based discrimination in Nigeria.11

Key Elements Two key elements are particularly significant to understanding the trafficking of Nigerians to Italy: the madams and the juju. Madams are older Nigerian women, in general, themselves ex-prostitutes that after paying their debts continue in the “business,” enticing younger women. Many of them approach girls and women in Nigeria. They may even travel with them to Italy to guard them during and after the journey. “Juju is a voodoo ritual. All these rituals are to control the girls, to ensure they do not run away from the madams. The girls are afraid of dying, getting crazy, or putting in danger their families in Nigeria. Everything is run and organized by Nigerians,” explained Cassia. Widely practiced in various countries in West Africa, countries in Central America and Brazil, voodoo is a traditional religion or system of belief devoted to the cult of the ancestors. In these countries, many of those who are officially Christian or Muslim also incorporate some voodoo elements into their beliefs. For some, voodoo is more than a belief system; it is a complete way of life, including culture, philosophy, language, art, dance, music and medicine.12 Among the common practices of the voodoo are the use of herbs to cure diseases, and sacrifices of animals (like chickens, birds or sheep). It is estimated that 5–10 percent practice indigenous religious traditions.13 These elements were present even 30 years ago when the trafficking of Nigerian women to Italy became known. The difference is that in the past, women would arrive in Europe through regular flights, with fake passports provided by the traffickers. The instable situation in Libya allowed 120

Trapped in a Cycle of Abuse and Violence traffickers to cut the travel cost by using the sea route to Italy. Women, therefore, embark on a dangerous 2,500-mile journey through Africa and Libya to cross the sea and reach Italy. At the Italian ports, a team from IOM, Save the Children and Italian authorities try to intercept women and children that may have been trafficked. If intercepted the victims are isolated from the bigger group of migrants for interview and legal orientation. If they are declared to be victims of trafficking they are offered to join special protection programs run by the Italian government. “It is rare that they denounce traffickers at the port itself…. Around 90 percent of the Nigerian women request asylum, but most of the time(s) their appeals are rejected,” informed Cassia. IOM also works with special anti-trafficking teams in Sicily. “We noticed that the incidents of Nigerian women trafficking are increasing. So we established two anti-trafficking teams,” said Simona Moscarelli in an interview for this study.14 At the ports, IOM works with cultural mediators and legal counselors. “Their work is crucial. Most important is to speak individually with the women and especially with minors. We have little time to identify and talk with women, only during their arrival at the ports, before they are transferred,” added Moscarelli. “But we cannot deal with everything. Our team is still small. Maybe later we will be able to have more people. There are also other NGOs working in Italy on this issue. Our focus is on (the) capacity building,” she said. While waiting for the asylum request acceptance, Nigerian women live in reception camps. Unaccompanied children and families are sheltered in special camps and cannot be sent back to their country of origin even if their asylum process is rejected, according to Italian law. The process can take months or even a year. For this period, the applicants remain captive of the trafficking network, which penetrates the Italian administration. “They work as prostitutes on the roads during the day, when they can go out of the camps. Even in the camps there are madams living with the trafficked Nigerian women. Other Nigerians also try to persuade them to fear the juju. Many girls escape from the camps; traffickers take them in cars to the north of Italy or other parts of Europe. Traffickers use persuasion techniques, like offering mobile phones, and Nigerian food. Authorities in the 121

Women and Borders camp are supposed to report the irregularities, such as someone receiving by post a mobile from France,” explained Cassia.

Limitations of the Protection Programs For women confessing to being victims of trafficking, Italian law provides extra protection through a special protection program. In practical terms, it means women are isolated from their friends and family in Italy and transferred to other areas of the country where they can be sheltered and receive help to find a job and restart their lives. Although Italy has in place effective protection programs for victims of trafficking, some major issues raise concern. The first issue is related to the difficulties for victims of trafficking to be inducted in the protection programs. Besides fearing the consequences of the voodoo ritual, women fear harm from the traffickers to themselves and to their families in Nigeria. “Programs of protection are not only about security. They should promote social insertion for the women victims of trafficking to become independent, to work and study. Many women prefer not to denounce their traffickers because the protection programs can protect them but not their family back home, and not even against the ‘juju,’ ” explained Oriana Cannavò,15 from Italian NGO Penelope. The trafficked women can experience violence in various forms. “Women fleeing abuse or violence may get trapped by brokers, recruiters and traffickers. Women who have been trafficked may encounter abuse and violence from their employers (e.g. violence towards sex workers or women working in factories) and/or from their agents or brokers (e.g. using violence to prevent the escape). Unfortunately, women may also experience violence if she has escaped her trafficker. She may encounter violence by the authorities (e.g. abuse in detention centers, abuse by law enforcement) or by service providers who control women’s movements as a method of “saving” them. Violence can also be a risk when a woman returns to her community, either from traffickers or from her community, because of the stigma related to the trafficked women.16 To rebuild life far away from friends and the primary network of Nigerian contacts that first helped to bring these women to Italy is also a challenge. 122

Trapped in a Cycle of Abuse and Violence “This is a global problem. Identifying the victims of trafficking is possible but helping them to abandon this network system is the hardest,” said Moscarelli from IOM. Some Nigerian victims of trafficking, however, were able to disengage from the networks to rebuild new lives in Italy through protection programs or by personal will. Those who managed individually to get out of the prostitution racket were motivated primarily by weddings or formation of new personal relations. Those who opted for the protection program were counseled by NGOs working with trafficking in persons. The story of a Nigerian woman named Princess Inyang Okokon is emblematic. She was a single mother of three young children, when in 1999 she accepted an offer to relocate to Italy for work. She came to know the woman who approached her at the restaurant she worked in Nigeria. The deal was that she would be able to pay back her debt working in another restaurant in Europe. She flew to London with a fake passport and a man picked her up at the airport and drove her to Italy, where she ended up in a house in Turin with other Nigerian women. The next day she learned from her madam that she would have to work as a prostitute in the streets to pay back her 45,000 Euro debt before being able to leave. After refusing to work as a prostitute, Princess was severely beaten and hospitalized. For the next eight months she worked every day and night on the streets of Turin. Princess was threatened and beaten by Italian clients. She wanted to leave this life but did not know how. However, things started to change when she met an Italian DJ working in nightclubs in Turin, called Alberto Mossino. He approached her and offered help to pay off her debts. Mossino kept his promise and since then they have been partners in life and work. She and Mossino got married. Princess sued her madam and won the case. The trafficker was sentenced to four years of imprisonment. Mossino founded an NGO for assisting victims of trafficking, PIAM. Later Princess also started working with him. She is now a cultural mediator, reaching out to Nigerians in the streets and roads of Italy to provide them with legal counseling, orientation and offer help and medical assistance. When they started the association they were working with 10 to 15 women a year, now they work with 30 to 40 women per month. “I decided to help the victims, it is my mission,” said Princess in an interview for this chapter.17 “Our main objective is to help the women. We provide them shelter, home, enrol them in school and find jobs for them. 123

Women and Borders To save their lives from trafficking is our main job,” she added. According to Princess, many Nigerian women work 5 to 6 years on the streets of Italy to pay their debt. “As a cultural mediator, they trust me, and also because I’m Nigerian. I always declare myself as a victim of trafficking and they immediately relate with me,” she explained. “Our biggest challenge now is that the Italian government decided to cut our funds. All the shelters are going to be shut down in the Piemonte region. The assisted women will have no food, no shelter. We are not having anymore the street units. The girls are calling me every day and I do not know what to say to them. The government authorities said the NGOs lost the public call because of technical faults on our submission. However, we all are working for more than 15 years on the issue of human trafficking in Italy. They should have called us, or alerted us, if there was a problem,” said Princess. Presented in 2014 to the Council of Europe by the Italian government as a model of best practices in anti-trafficking initiatives, PIAM is now confronting financial crunch. In the beginning of August 2016, the Ministry of Equal Opportunities announced the result of a public call to finance anti-trafficking institutions and allocation of resources. Among the measures was a cut of funding for anti-trafficking programs in Sicily and in the other regions in the North of the country. Only one program in Ragusa will continue to be financed, while funding in Palermo, Messina and Catania will be ending. Likewise, anti-trafficking organizations in Piemonte, Sardinia, Basilicata and Liguria will stop receiving public financial support. Many organizations working for ten years in the area had their projects rejected, some for technical problems in the application and others over alleged concerns of the government over the quality of the services provided. However, the government shared little information with the organizations. The NGOs and United Nations agencies warned that the Italian government’s decision risked undermining efforts to create a national response to the country’s human trafficking problem and it would severely jeopardize assistance to the victims in a very sensitive moment of flow of migrants in Italy. Furthermore, they recalled that according to the Italian law the protection of victims of trafficking has to be ensured at the national level. The government defended the decision and declared that the amount of resources for anti-trafficking programs and policies has been increased 124

Trapped in a Cycle of Abuse and Violence from 8 million Euros to 13 million Euros, but the funds would be distributed to a smaller number of service providers. Nevertheless, IOM representatives expressed concern over the cuts and the risk of reduction of places for trafficking victims in protection programs. “We definitely need more shelters for the victims of trafficking in Italy,” said Princess.

Conclusion and Recommendations According to Princess, the trafficking of Nigerians to Europe, and especially Italy, has been increasing recently because of two reasons. “Traffickers are using the migration routes through Libya as business. And because the political and economic situation in Nigeria is very bad, it is easier for traffickers to convince women, offer them a job or tell them about prospects of earning lots of money in Europe,” she said. Since 2011, Libya has been engulfed in an ongoing conflict that started with popular protests to overthrow the president Muammar Gaddafi. Violence, instability and a lack of a united government has turned Libya into a hub for traffickers of all kinds. Arms, drugs and people have been systematically smuggled from Africa to Europe through Libya. Most of the trafficking takes place in the Mediterranean, via crossings from Libya to the Italian coast. Most testimonies collected from Nigerian women crossing the sea to Europe involved passages through Libya. Princess stressed the fact that there is no international program to raise awareness about the risks and dangers of trafficking in persons in the countryside of Nigeria. “Most of these women and girls arriving in Europe are from rural areas, they have little education and they have no access to no information. There is no TV and few radios. In 2008, IOM organized a program in Nigeria to raise awareness about the risks of trafficking and being exploited as a prostitute in Europe and it worked, the trafficking was reduced then,” she recalled. Although powerful, public awareness campaigns about trafficking have been under scrutiny from experts. Most of these campaigns have a strong focus on women, children, or both. The messages are often based on ideas about women’s vulnerability rather than a gender-based analysis of the issue. Concerns have been raised over the type of message

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Women and Borders communicated in anti-trafficking public campaigns, specifically confusing sex work with trafficking and the theme of “victimhood” that is displayed on posters, in print and visual media, in commercials, and movies, these campaigns capture only certain elements of women’s stories. The traditional “helpless/hopeless victim” storyline that is communicated in these campaigns very often leaves out other potential storylines, such as how a trafficked person decided to migrate, how she resisted exploitation, or how she survived, escaped and recovered.18

While the “victimhood” appeal can catch media and fundraising attention, it focuses mostly on violence and specific cases, not dealing with the bigger picture or the reasons behind the trafficking, as for example the lack of migration opportunities for working-class women. The use of radicalized women in Western anti-trafficking public awareness campaigns also provides a socially acceptable way to sustain ideas about women’s vulnerability, by defining a certain type of women in need of assistance from women in wealthier countries, e.g. female victims from the “third world” needing rescue.19 Another important aspect of some media or campaigns is that the abuses suffered by the trafficking victims can be exposed with details but they are not so commonly identified as human rights violations. A human rightsbased approach can be more empowering for trafficked persons and includes a more holistic approach to human needs (e.g. right to livelihood, right to health) so it is puzzling why a human rights-based approach is not embraced in public awareness campaigns. Trafficked persons may be able to exercise their power and agency in a human rights-based framework. A human rightsbased approach can also maintain the focus on redressing the wrongs done to a person rather than a protective approach’s focus on what makes certain persons weaker or more vulnerable. A protective approach can perpetuate the pattern of doing something “to” a person whereas a human rights-based framework allows more space for people to assert what they are entitled to.20 For Princess, grassroots awareness is important. We need to work in Nigeria. Let’s go to schools, let’s go to markets in rural areas of Nigeria. They need our voices. We need to have operators working on the ground, the same way the traffickers have; they map regions, they know the people and their

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Trapped in a Cycle of Abuse and Violence needs. Maybe 50 percent of the women and girls would decide not to leave for Europe, and that would be a big change.

Other crucial steps to be taken on fighting trafficking of Nigerian women are to encourage more victims to offer testimony, improve assistance and to increase awareness and education efforts on the issue in Italy. There is a lack of employment opportunities being offered to the Nigerian women by the Italian authorities. Hence, it is still far from an incentive for them to abandon their prostitution work. Princess suggested The Italian police is doing their job but we have to make it better. The criminals have good lawyers, they know their way out. The women have to identify more traffickers that is why it is urgent to employ more mediators to talk with them during the entry in Italy, to identify as fast as possible the smugglers and the madams. Another important question is: what are we offering the victims? The traffickers are offering money, job opportunities, and perspectives. Italy should also offer access to jobs, because even if they receive a smaller salary they would have a life of peace and dignity and they would understand that money is not everything. Something else to be done is sexual education in Italy to reduce trafficking and prostitution. There is trafficking because there is a demand for prostitution.

Deterring the traffic of Nigerian women to Italy requires commitment and political will in a holistic manner, at three important policy dimensions, as detailed first in the UN Anti-Trafficking Protocol: prosecuting traffickers, protecting victims and preventing the crime of human trafficking. It means that, in the case of Italy, the government should envisage concerted solutions and alternatives in close partnership with the actors on the ground, the NGOs and local associations assisting victims on a daily basis across the country. Furthermore, improving and expanding protection programs for women victims of trafficking is urgently recommended, given the constant increase of migrants in Italy in the last two years. To guarantee a regional coverage of the anti-trafficking programs it is also of ultimate importance for the First National Plan against Trafficking21 (adopted by the Italian government in February 2016) to be fully implemented. NGOs and organizations assisting the 127

Women and Borders victims of trafficking in Italy should assure that their services are in full compliance to international standards and laws. They should also increase activities to approach Nigerian women working as prostitutes. There is also a need to actively provide legal counseling and assistance to victims of trafficking during their arrival at the port and their stay at camps for asylum-seekers. The National Commission judging the asylum requests should enforce a special procedure (of identification and information-sharing with the interviewers about the protection programs) concerning Nigerian women, specifically, given their confirmed situation of risk and vulnerability as victims of trafficking. This special procedure should be applied on a fast-track manner especially during the summer, the period in the year when Italy records the highest increase in migrant arrival via sea. The role of UNODC and IOM to safeguard international laws and standards on the fight against trafficking in persons is crucial. They should be promoted by the Italian government, especially regarding the monitoring and early identification of victims of trafficking during arrival of rescue boats and later in the camps, where asylum-seekers live for up to one year waiting for their case to be judged. Special attention should be paid to Nigerian girls being trafficked to Italy, as they are vulnerable to the same prostitution and exploitation networks Nigerian women are susceptible. In this context, stronger partnerships with UNICEF (UN fund for children) and international organizations such as Save the Children are highly recommended, not only in terms of monitoring but also in relation to providing assistance and care. It is important to note that local NGOs assisting migrant and refugee children have been facing severe financial and human resources constraints for the last two years, especially in Sicily, where the largest number of reception centers for minors are located. To date, the Italian legislation does not have a national reception system for minors, even though there is already one for migrant and refugee adults arriving in the country. The Italian government should also consider supporting and implementing long-term policies for fighting trafficking, based on prevention and awareness, in close collaboration with the Nigerian and Libyan governments. While the lack of a unified and internationally recognized government in Libya still poses a challenge to establish dialogue, Nigeria has 128

Trapped in a Cycle of Abuse and Violence been consolidating its relations with Europe and with Italy on many fronts in the last few years, especially on economic terms, which in turn has provided room for closer relations and exchanges in the political sphere.

Notes 1. “Human rights of refugee and migrant women and girls need to be better protected.” See: http://www.coe.int/be/web/commissioner/-/human-rights-of-refugee-and-migrant-women-and-girls-need-to-be-better-protected (accessed on July 23, 2016). 2. Seo-Young Cho, Axel Dreher, Eric Neumayer. “Determinants of AntiTrafficking Policies: Evidence from a New Index,” The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Vol. 116, No. 2, April 2014, pp. 429–54. 3. Ibid. 4. UNODC, “Global Report on Trafficking in Persons,” See more at: https://www. unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/glotip/GLOTIP_2014_full_report. pdf (accessed on July 30, 2016). 5. Ibid. 6. See more at: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/aug/07/ nigeria-trafficking-women-prostitutes-italy (accessed on July 26, 2016). 7. Personal interview, August 5, 2016. 8. Emmanuel Joseph Chukwuma Duru and Ufiem Maurice Ogbonnaya, “Combating human trafficking in Nigeria: An Evaluation of State Policies and Programmes,” Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 3, No. 3, September 2012, pp. 161–4. 9. CM: National Population Commission, Demographic and Health Survey Survey 2013, Nigeria, 2014, p. 345. 10. Chinwe R.  Okoyeuzu, P.  Egbo Obiamaka, J.  U. J.  Onwumere, “Shaping the Nigerian Economy:  The Role of Women,” Acta Universitatis Danubius. Œconomica, Vol. 8, No. 4, September 2012, pp. 15–24. 11. Ibid. 12. BBC, “The reality of voodoo in Benin” (11/18/2011). See http://www.bbc.com/ news/world-africa-15792001 (accessed on July 24, 2016). 13. “Nigeria,” Harvard Divinity School, https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/nigeria-overview (accessed on March 23, 2017). 14. Personal interview, August 8, 2016. 15. Personal interview, August 11, 2016. 16. GAATW, Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, Beyond Borders: Exploring Links between trafficking and Gender. Series 2010. See http://www. gaatw.org/publications/WP_on_Gender.pdf (accessed on July 24, 2016).

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Women and Borders 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

Interview by phone, Italy, August 23, 2016. GAATW. Ibid. Ibid. “Primo Piano nazionaled’azionecontro la tratta e il grave sfruttamentodegliesseriumani.” http://www.pariopportunita.gov.it/images/Piano%20nazionale%20di% 20azione%20contro%20la%20tratta%20e%20il%20grave%20sfruttamento%20 2016%202018.pdf (accessed on July 24, 2016).

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6 Unhindered Flow of Gendered Suffering through the India-Nepal Open Border: Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation Seema Shekhawat

The border was calm, but busy when we crossed it. We were three school-going girls with two men. All three of us dreamt (of) a good life – getting a dignified job in India, earning good money, coming back to our family, and getting married to rich men and living a settled life. None of our dreams turned real. Forget getting a dignified job, now I can never go back to my family and get married…. I don’t know the whereabouts of the other two girls.1

The case of a foreign diplomat in India sexually abusing his domestic help of Nepalese origin in 2015 highlighted a crucial but often less-focused issue of women trafficking through peaceful and open international borders. Thousands of women are trafficked each year through borders, which may not necessarily be contested or violent, and, the majority of these women are forced to join the much-loathed but flourishing industry 131

Women and Borders of commercial sex. In Asia, India has emerged both as a destination as well as transit for the trafficked women for commercial sexual exploitation. India is an infamous destination for the trafficked women forced into commercial sex, mainly from two neighboring countries- Nepal and Bangladesh. And, consequently, India is also an infamous destination for sex tourism. The porous border between India and Nepal witnesses smuggling, trafficking and cross-border crime, which not only affect the relations between the two countries but also wreaks havoc for various vulnerable groups, particularly women. Arguably, the open border can be characterized as “conduit for dehumanizing women,” keeping in mind the unrestrained flow of the trafficking and the consequent suffering and stigma the women undergo. Trafficking through the open border, and forcing vulnerable women to engage in commercial sex, has become a low-risk and high-profit business. These women are mostly sold to brokers in exchange for a meager sum, who in turn sell them to Indian brothels at exorbitant rates. The consequences for these trafficked women are lifelong. Notably, many of these women blame the open border for their suffering. By documenting the narratives of the Nepalese women crossing an open border to become sex workers, this chapter aims to broaden the prevailing discourse on borders and violence. It contends that amidst the discourse of a borderless world, it is crucial to understand that an open border can equally be a tormentor. It argues that the intersection of gender with border and violence in the case of India-Nepal is instructive for understanding the complex nature of borders in this part of the world. It further makes a case for India and Nepal to jointly address a critical humanitarian issue emanating from a peaceful and open international border. This chapter is a product of the narratives collected over the years due to my sustained interest in this issue, following an unforgettable encounter during a train journey in 2012. In this qualitative study, I have primarily relied on the informal interactions, and formal, unstructured interviews in person and by phone. Keeping in mind the sensitivity of the topic, it was not easy to identify the respondents and, more so, to know their stories even after identifying them.2 132

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India-Nepal Border: The Openness The modern-day Indo-Nepal economic and political relations can be majorly traced to the Indo-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1950 and related documents. The Treaty allowed free movement of people and goods between the two countries and called for close collaboration on matters of defense and foreign policy. Article 7 of the Treaty read: “The Governments of India and Nepal agree to grant, on reciprocal basis, to the nationals of one country in the territories of the other the same privileges in the matter of residence, ownership of property, participation in trade and commerce, movement and other privileges of a similar nature.” 3 The Treaty, however, did not clearly define the procedures for the regulation of the international border and movements across it. The socio-cultural, ethnolinguistic similarities are inevitably pronounced across the Indo-Nepal border; hence, any distinction becomes difficult in many places. The access is extremely easy and interaction, hence, is frequent. The citizens live and work in the other country without bothering about the physical boundaries, which exist de jure but not de facto, at least for the people. Crossing the border is central to the lives of many Nepalese and Indians as they move back and forth without bothering about immigration issues. For a considerable number of people in India and Nepal, the open border is, in fact, the lifeline. Scores of people from nearby places cross the border every day to meet their relatives, to go to their jobs, for marketing and many other activities. In fact, the number of local people crossing the border is noticeably higher than the travelers from outside.

The Problematique The open nature of the Indo-Nepal border has recently been subject to increasing scrutiny due to the growing reports of misuse of the open border. The ever-increasing number of security personnel deployed on the either side to keep a greater vigilance is an indication of an open, desecuritized, border becoming resecuritized. Ironically, the increasing deployment of 133

Women and Borders forces has not able to prevent misuse. The illegal movement of people and goods, even dangerous ones – violent extremists and weapons – is not uncommon. The recent reports in this context are quite revealing wherein it is contended that the terrorists are using the open Indo-Nepal border to their advantage. The developments raise the question whether a closed border is better in this era of growing global violence with terrorist networks making use of every means, including open and flexible borders, to their advantage. The issue of a closed vs open border in the context of India and Nepal has become a matter of debate with many scholars and even common people arguing in favor of a closed border to ensure state security. While researching for this chapter, my thoughts swung like a pendulum on whether I favor an open or a closed Indo-Nepal border. As a student of Political Science, I studied and even argued in favor of flexible borders across South Asia while answering essay-type examination questions. The threat of terrorism has increasingly become an issue of concern for South Asian states and even for states across the globe, and this development has strengthened the argument in favor of closed borders. However, there are other threats, some of which are of serious concern for humanity, and need to be raised in while debating the issue of a closed vs open border. There is no dearth of literature on how open borders pose a threat to the economic and political stability of a state. The issue of human trafficking is also the focus of many studies. The case of human trafficking through India-Nepal border has been an area of concern as well as research for quite some time. Smuggling in contraband items is also a major issue as far as the border under scrutiny is concerned. However, illegal smuggling of goods and people are two different issues. The smuggling of goods, drugs, arms, movement of criminals and terrorists are issues of major concern for states. For this chapter, I contend that the smuggling of people, or what is widely known as trafficking, is not only illegal but also inhumane, and it becomes further worse when an open border, which most of us cherish in this era of globalization and liberalization, becomes a facilitator. The issue of human trafficking needs specific attention in the context of the openness of Indo-Nepal border. 134

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Human Trafficking Despite being widely recognized as a case of a human rights violation, human trafficking has emerged as an ever-growing global menace. It is one of the world’s largest organized crimes along with drugs and arms trafficking. Bechard termed it as the fastest growing criminal industry in the world in the mid 2000s and the trend has not changed.4 “The international trade in human beings is on the increase, and the trafficking of hundreds of thousands of women and girls for forced prostitution is one of the most difficult to fight,” argues Deane.5 Human trafficking is a multi-dimensional threat – depriving the victims of their basic rights and freedom, leading to their exploitation in multiple ways, with life-long physical and psychological implications. It also propels global health risks of deadly diseases, and fuels organized crime to the extent of threatening security of states. A report details, “Human trafficking has a devastating impact on individual victims, who often suffer physical and emotional abuse, rape, threats against self and family, and even death. But the impact of human trafficking goes beyond individual victims; it undermines the health, safety, and security of all nations it touches.”6 The United Nations defines trafficking as: illicit and clandestine movement of persons across national and international border, slavery from developing countries and some countries with economies in transition, with the end goal of forcing women and children into sexually or economically oppressive and exploitative situations for the profit of recruiters, traffickers and crime syndicates, as well as other illegal activities related to trafficking, such as forced domestic labor, false marriages, clandestine employment and false adoption.7

The international organization also expressed “its grave concern over the worsening problem of trafficking, particularly the increasing syndication of the sex trade and the internationalization of the traffic in women and girl children.”8 Trafficking is largely understood as the procurement of people through improper means including, but not limited to, deception, force, or fraud, with the goal being exploitation. Trafficking, hence, involves two acts: the means used to procure people and the goal. These two interrelated acts, while helping the traffickers to make good money, ruin lives 135

Women and Borders of the trafficked, especially the ones forced to get involved in selling their bodies, with most of the time, irreparable physical, psychological and social consequences. Human trafficking is a global concern with borders in conflict regions facilitating sustenance of this inhuman act in a highly condemnable way, argues a United Nations report. This ever-growing instance calls upon the states to develop new approaches, warned a United Nations rights expert. “Trafficking in people in conflict situations is not a mere possibility but something that happens on a regular basis,” the United Nations Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, told the United Nations General Assembly during the presentation of her report. She further argued: Conflicts always create a favourable situation for human traffickers… As institutions break down, the protection normally offered by families and communities is destroyed. Organized criminal groups can operate with impunity, and people are impoverished or displaced…. Traffickers target vulnerable people and offer them an opportunity to leave the country. However, this places people at high risk of sexual or labour exploitation, as they are compelled to repay the traffickers in order to continue their journeys.9

The Special Rapporteur talked about the need to implement the declaration that which was agreed upon earlier at the New York summit on migrants and refugees. The summit called for the establishment of safe channels for human movement across the borders to check trafficking and exploitation. The report of the Special Rapporteur brought into the forefront, the link between conflict and trafficking. This is also a subject of concern for the International Organization for Migration, which claimed that more than 70 percent of refugees and illegal migrants reaching Europe from North Africa become victims of exploitation, primarily human trafficking.10 With the substantial increase in vulnerabilities during conflict situations, trafficking becomes easy and frequent. However, the issue of trafficking transcends conflict situations. Not only do the conflict-infested fragile borders facilitate this human tragedy; the peaceful, largely settled international borders also need to be critically investigated in this context. 136

Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation And, the Indo-Nepal border is a case in point. The brutal and predatory nature of this open border as far as human trafficking is concerned is all perceptible. Millions of people are trafficked annually across international borders, peaceful or contested, violent or silent. A recent report rightly contends, “Victims are trafficked along a multitude of trafficking flows; within countries, between neighbouring countries or even across different continents. More than 500 different trafficking flows were detected between 2012 and 2014.”11 The majority of those trafficked are women. According to Rice, “Trafficking in persons is a modern-day form of slavery, a new type of global slave trade. Perpetrators prey on the most weak among us, primarily women and children, for profit and gain. They lure victims into involuntary servitude and sexual slavery.”12 Trafficking is a gendered problem even though men and boys too become victims of this global menace. Women and girls are primary victims of trafficking worldwide owing to their socially vulnerable status in almost all societies, developing or developed, with varying intensity. Poverty continues to be a primary factor contributing towards a person’s vulnerability to being trafficked, with porous borders lavishly facilitating the unabated continuation of this inhuman activity. The victims are trafficked to become sex workers, domestic servants, beggars, factory workers in hazardous situations, mine workers, and whatnot. And, women are forced to be involved in sex work. Even while human trafficking in itself is a heinous crime, what is arguably considered worse is sex trafficking. Sexual exploitation is the most common form of human trafficking, followed by forced labor. Sex trafficking may be commonly defined as the usage of coercion or deception to engage vulnerable victims in commercial sex activities. The India-Nepal border is one of the busiest borders as far as trafficking for commercial sex is concerned. There are no reliable statistics available regarding the number of trafficked women for commercial sex through this open border. Generally, it is estimated that between 5000 to 10,000 Nepalese women are annually trafficked into India to sell their bodies. Some estimates even suggest that about 50,000 Nepalese women are trafficked to Indian brothels each year. Estimates aside, it remains a fact that the poverty-stricken people of Nepal consider it an easy way 137

Women and Borders out to enter India for livelihood through an open border, but they are actually duped by the traffickers. Even though poverty continues to be a major factor facilitating the trafficking, it becomes worse with natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The vulnerability of vulnerable demographies, particularly women and children, increases during the times of human-made conflict situations and during times of natural disasters. Trafficking becomes easier and if there is an open border, such as in the case of India-Nepal, then it becomes more lucrative and riskfree. According to reports, the aftermath of the earthquake in Nepal in 2015, the trafficking business witnessed a sharp rise. To quote a news report: The urge to escape depressing poverty has for years forced the Nepalese to cross over to India, either legally or illegally. However, the April 25 earthquake that ravaged large parts of the neighbouring country seems to have pushed the illegal exodus in an unprecedented way. According to home ministry data, human trafficking from Nepal has seen a three-fold jump after the quake. Compared to 2014, human trafficking from Nepal has seen a 500 percent rise in 2015, with two months yet to go.13

India has already emerged as a popular transit as well as a destination for Nepalese and Bangladeshi women trafficked for sex work, even while continuing to be a source of sex trafficking. As per a report of Reuters, India is working to find ways to curb the widespread trafficking of women and children in the country, including those from neighboring Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, said Maneka Gandhi, India’s Minister for Women and Children. South Asia, with India at its center, is the fastest-growing and second-largest region for human trafficking in the world, after East Asia, according to the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime. Speaking at a conference on child adoption in India’s northeastern state of Meghalaya, Gandhi told delegates that the government was in the process of putting in place a series of policies to prevent human trafficking.14

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Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation “India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking,” contends the 2016 Trafficking in Persons Report released by the US department of State.15 It details; Experts estimate millions of women and children are victims of sex trafficking in India. Traffickers use false promises of employment or arrange sham marriages in India or Gulf States, and then subject women and girls to sex trafficking. In addition to traditional red light districts, women and children increasingly endure sex trafficking in small hotels, vehicles, huts, and private residences. Traffickers increasingly use websites, mobile applications, and online money transfers to facilitate commercial sex. Children continue to be subjected to sex trafficking in religious pilgrimage centers and tourist destinations. Many women and girls—predominately from Nepal and Bangladesh, and from Europe, Central Asia, and Asia, including minority populations from Burma—are subjected to sex trafficking in India. Prime destinations for both Indian and foreign female trafficking victims include Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi, Gujarat, Hyderabad, and along the India-Nepal border; Nepali women and girls are increasingly subjected to sex trafficking in Assam, and other cities such as Nagpur and Pune. Some corrupt law enforcement officers protect suspected traffickers and brothel owners from law enforcement efforts, take bribes from sex trafficking establishments and sexual services from victims, and tip off sex and labor traffickers to impede rescue efforts.16

India, with a significant section of vulnerable demographies is confronting internal trafficking on a large scale and the issue needs an urgent analysis and response. However, keeping in mind the scope of this study wherein the intersection of border and gender is the focus, it would be prudent to remain focused on how an open border is aiding sex trade. The open and unregulated border provides an easy passage in and out of India for organized human trafficking to flourish. Many of those belonging to vulnerable demographies including poor uneducated young men, children and young women cross the peaceful and open Indo-Nepal border every day in search of a better life in India. Little 139

Women and Borders do they know what will unfold once they cross. Young men most often become servants in middle-class Indian families, who prefer to hire them as they are considered less threatening and are ready to work for minimal wages. And many Nepalese women, especially young ones, take a different course or to put it bluntly, are forced to take a different course, a course which changes their lives forever. Arguably, exploiting vulnerabilities seems to be basic human nature. As the famous British philosopher, Thomas Hobbes argued, the state of human nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” One can find the perfect play of this Hobbesian human nature if one goes into the intricacies of sex trafficking. The sellers, mediators, buyers and most prominently of all – available customers (who are part of mainstream, normal society unlike the trafficked women who belong to a marginalized group, unable to lead a normal life) makes one wonder whether duplicity and hypocrisy are the defining traits of human beings. All of these groups of people go back to normal life after playing their part; only their women victims are left to live an abnormal life, a life of perpetual exploitation, suffering and disdain. And, it is notable that while “traffickers are overwhelmingly male, women comprise a relatively large share of convicted offenders, compared to most other crimes. This share is even higher among traffickers convicted in the victims’ home country. Court cases and other qualitative data indicate that women are often used to recruit other women.”17 The plight of trafficked Nepalese women for sex has been well-narrated by Soma Wadhwa. According to her, Every year between 5,000 and 7,000 Nepalese girls are trafficked into the red light districts in Indian cities. Many of the girls are barely 9 or 10 years old. 200,000 to over 250,000 Nepalese women and girls are already in Indian brothels. The girls are sold by poor parents, tricked into fraudulent marriages, or promised employment in towns only to find themselves in Hindustan’s brothels. They’re locked up for days, starved, beaten, and burned with cigarettes until they learn how to service up to 25 clients a day. Some girls go through ‘training’ before being initiated into prostitution, which can include constant exposure to pornographic films, tutorials in how to ‘please’ customers, repeated rapes.18

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Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation She continues, Trafficking in women and girls is easy along the 1,740 mile-long open border between India and Nepal. Trafficking in Nepalese women and girls is less risky than smuggling narcotics and electronic equipment into India. Traffickers ferry large groups of girls at a time without the hassle of paperwork or threats of police checks. The procurer-pimp-police network makes the process even smoother. Bought for as little as Rs (Nepalese) 1,000, girls have been known to fetch up to Rs 30,000 in later transactions. Police are paid by brothel owners to ignore the situation. Girls may not leave the brothels until they have repaid their debt, at which time they are sick, with HIV and/or tuberculosis, and often have children of their own.19

Nothing much has changed for the better since her writing in 1998. The plight of those trapped into this inhuman profession continues to remain the same. The trafficking for commercial sex through the open India-Nepal border is a curious mixture of deception and coercion, one following the other. First, the victims are lured to cross the border and then they are coerced to sell their bodies. The process starts in Nepal. The traffickers work to isolate victims from their poor families, in lieu of meager money or with the promise of fetching them a good job. This promise of a better life for themselves and their families back home through crossing a border is sufficient to keep the women silent. The border is open, there are no major restrictions, no major checking and when the women do not object in any way, the crossing is a cake walk. The silent woman would have no idea of what is going to happen to her until she crosses the border and reaches her destination, a place which is not actually her dream destination, a place that would make her repent the decision to cross the border throughout her life. These women are often kept locked in filthy places with several other women and are not permitted to communicate with each other. The temporary residences serve multiple purposes: they may be used as temporary shelters (until the trafficked are sold), as training centers (to help the novice to become professional) and even torture cells (to “tame the unruly,” as told an ex-broker).20 tags depending largely on age, the younger the girl 141

Women and Borders the higher price. These women are sold as a commodity, the height of the objectification of women, while at times forced to display their “assets” to several brothel owners before being purchased. Once sold, the girls are then the property of the brothel owners until the time they are able to pay back the amount that was paid for them, at times with interest, by selling their bodies. These women are permitted to keep a small portion of the money earned for their basic necessities such as food and clothes, while their owners take up to 95 percent of their earnings. They are forced to see as many as 20 to 30 customers a day with, at times, no rest, and no break. And, a considerable number of these Nepalese women are made to cross several other international borders, essentially peaceful and even closed ones, to serve an international clientele.

The Narratives There are myriad narratives of human trafficking through the Indo-Nepal border. These narratives need to be documented not only to bring the stories of the victims to the center of discourse on gender, border and violence, and help engender enabling policies, but also to interrogate the very nature of an open border, which instead of facilitating positive human engagement has contributed to a human tragedy of catastrophic nature. “This open border has made lives of vulnerable women like us hell. Back home our families and friends would say it is good for us to have an open border. Some even talked about a borderless world. But, they need to see our condition. We are living examples of being victims of an open border,” said a respondent during an informal introduction during a train journey. This respondent was a “call girl” and was sharing the air-conditioned coach along with me and other passengers. She was somewhat different from my other respondents, speaking English, well-dressed, with an expensive purse in her hand. I was traveling from Mumbai to Jaipur and Neena, her pseudonym, was also going to Jaipur. I was writing an article and Neena asked what I was typing on my laptop. I told her that I work on women’s issues and she got interested. She talked a lot about Nepal and the status of women there. We got along well and talked about a lot of things. I asked what she was doing in Mumbai and her reply was in the form of a question. 142

Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation “If I tell you the truth would you continue talking to me?” she asked and my response was the affirmative, but with a tinge of surprise. She then said, “Didi (elder sister) I am a call girl.” It was an unexpected answer and admittedly I did not know how to react. There was a long pause. She then continued, “I know you must be feeling odd sitting with me. No good girl would like to talk to us. We are in demand but we are not allowed to be part of the mainstream society.” Her words were unnerving. We again started talking but now the discussion was led by her. She detailed her horrifying story of becoming a “bad girl” from a “good girl” “just by crossing a border.” In fact, her constant reference to the open Indo-Nepal border for all her suffering prompted me to keep thinking how borders can be so hostile, particularly for women. As soon as we crossed the border our lives changed forever. There is no going back. This border is not open for women like us – we can cross it but cannot go back. This open border has proved to be a curse for unaccounted Nepalese women… If you get a chance, please publish my story – that of fraud, that of a border which appears peaceful but hostile, that of suffering, exploitation, stigma, misery and that of a being a living dead, a person who does not even own her own body…I wish this border gets closed once for all.

Neena was going to Jaipur to “attend a marriage party where I will be serving drinks and sex to the chosen few. The host is a wealthy businessman so I will be staying in a luxurious hotel and will have a chauffeur-driven car. I dreamt of this luxury but not in this way. This luxury would cost me my body and that too in many filthy ways,” Neena said. Neena was traveling all alone and I even suggested to her to run away. “No, there is no escape. If I do not oblige, my family would have to pay the cost. And, even otherwise, our owners have networks all over, so sooner or later they will find me. I tried running during the early days but every time I was caught and the consequences were unbearable. Even otherwise I am used to this life now,” she said. On reaching the destination, Neena hugged me tightly, whispering in my ears, “Didi pray for me, do not forget me and do write about me one day.”21 I was short of words to assure her that everything will be fine since I knew things will never be the same for her. But, I remember her, 143

Women and Borders her story, her tragedy and her bête noire – the open border. This volume, and particularly this chapter, is a product of my interactions with Neena. Unfortunately, Neena is not alone in her suffering. Thousands of such stories of fraud, exploitation and life-long suffering are scattered across the Indian landscape. Documentation of all these stories may not be possible but a glimpse at some of these narratives is enough to gauge the tragedy that has befallen the Nepalese women due to their proximity to an open border. It may not sound logical to make an open border the raison d’être for all the suffering that women crossing the border undergo. However, it is plausible to argue that had the border been closed, thousands of women might have been saved from the exploitation. “This business has flourished because of the open border. I know women are brought illegally into India even through other borders such as from Bangladesh but when we walk across an open border, where there is no questioning, no restrictions, no hiding, no need to cross at night, with so many dreams and finally land in these filthy places we have no one but the border to blame,” said a New Delhi-based respondent with whom I met only after a lot of persuasion in November 2014. “From being a school-going girl I became a sex-serving woman overnight. Thanks to the open border,” she sarcastically summarized standing near a busy bus stand, a place I interviewed her because, in her words, “here no one recognizes me and no one can threaten me over talking with you.” The young girl came to meet me “directly from the home of a regular customer” where she spent the night with “a group of drunk men.” Sensing the guilt I felt for making her speak about her traumatic past and present, the girl said, “Didi, don’t bother, this is routine now. I have reconciled with my fate.” At the end, she said, “you cannot do anything for me but please tell our governments to close this border. This border is even more violent than the Indo-Pak border. The violence that our Nepalese women are suffering due to this open border is beyond description and beyond documentation.” She went away saying “I need to go and have a good sleep to keep off under-eye dark circles to retain my customers.”22 I asked the respondents why they do not run away or go to the police. The answers reflected on the corrupt law and order system, which instead of stemming the trafficking, has contributed to its growth. “The police 144

Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation are corrupt. Even if there is a raid, we are back in these places after a few days. And, going back to Nepal is not an option. The open border allows us to come to India but crossing it again to go back is forbidden. Our families would not accept us now,” said another respondent.23 In that sense, it can be argued that in practice the border, which was open to cross to the Indian side, is closed for the return journey. This very paradoxical nature has been one of the reasons for sex-trafficking. Neena was rather succinct, “you must be knowing the Bollywood song, jeena yahan marna yahan (we have to live here and we have to die here).” And then added, “there is no escape from this work. The humiliating work continues because there are people who oppose it in the day and love it in the night.”24 The ordeal of being a sex worker starts with the trafficking and ends with the life of the trafficked. “It is a life-long ordeal. Let me tell you my story,” told a respondent in her late 30s who was forced to “retire” because the customers ask for “young flesh.” She then resorted to tasks such as managing the brothel and training the newcomers. “This is a vicious circle. There is no going back. The border is open for us to come but is closed if we want to go back. Here the border is not just physical but also social and psychological. Once a prostitute, always a prostitute. I know people say prostitute is a derogatory word but using a better word [does] change our fate or circumstances.” She then returned to her story, “I was sixteen years old when a relative of our neighbor, during his stay in our village, talked to my parents about the opportunities in India. He portrayed as if India was a place of fairy tales. The person wanted that my parents send both my sister and me. My sister was only 14 then. Since our two brothers had died a year ago in an accident my parents wanted at least one of us to be with them.” After a brief pause she added, “I am glad that she did not come with me.”25 The post-trafficking ordeal does not merely revolve around the chaos of being unwanted in civilized society and at the same time being wanted in the dark of the night by the civilized. It continues to haunt the victims throughout their lives in the form of stigma, misery and scores of sexually transmitted diseases including AIDS. “People hate us and even say this is our chosen life. A chosen life? Selling your body and sleeping with all kinds of people with all kinds of demands – can this be a chosen life? And, then, dying a slow death with sexually transmitted diseases – can this be a 145

Women and Borders chosen life? We did not cross the border for this life,” said a respondent.26 It was revealing that many customers prefer Nepalese women; they being considered “more attractive.” “Many of the customers ask for Nepalese women. They find us more attractive. We are in demand and you know more the demand, more the supply. We have to make the customers happy,” said a Nepalese woman having her “own business of supplying girls to customers in hotels and homes.”27 Another revelation was even more horrifying: sex with a Nepalese virgin is believed to cure AIDS. “When a teenaged virgin girl arrives here, we get the highest payment from her first customer. At times there is a bidding and the one able to pay the highest would sleep with the girl. This happens not only because our customers cherish virginity but also because sex with a virgin may cure the disease of AIDS,” the respondent added.28 AIDS is a deadly disease spreading widely all over the globe, including in India. Generally, in India, it is considered that those people who visit brothels often fall prey to this disease. “I know I got this disease from a prostitute,” said an AIDS patient, while confessing that he had sexual relations with several of his office colleagues as well.29 “Prostitutes are the ones who are spreading this disease,” he loathed. The other side of the story remains unheard. Are sex workers spreading AIDS? Who infects them? Who forces them to have sex without protection? Imagine the plight of a young virgin Nepalese girl forced into offering sex services to a man suffering from AIDS, just because of the belief that he may get cured. There are ample chances that the girl would get infected too. And, certainly, her owner would not allow her to quit after one night. She would continue to be part of the dangerous game until the deadly disease would be difficult to hide. She would then be out of the game but would lead probably even a worse life. The stigma of being a sex worker would continue to haunt her throughout her struggle to live a lonely and miserable life until the death would come to her rescue. Once HIV infected, Nepalese girls, trafficked and sold into prostitution in India, are abandoned.30 A report suggests that out of the 218 Nepalese girls rescued in February 1996 by Mumbai police about 60–70 percent were HIV positive.31 Wadhwa succinctly argues, “HIV is what India’s given them,” while documenting the tragedy of Nepalese girls rescued from Indian brothels.32 Citing a report, Eller and Mahat argue that

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Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation about 50 percent of HIV-positive women in Nepal have been deported from India, where they worked in the sex industry.33 I have come across several such narratives of extreme suffering brought by a cocktail of deception and coercion, emanating from an open border, in loud voices, in whispers and in silence since I started working on this issue.

Conclusion There are petitions to close the Indo-Pak border due to increasing sex trafficking. A petition from a non-profit organization titled, “To close the border between India and Nepal and put an end to human trafficking,” read, “At present, the border between India and Nepal is ‘open’ and human trafficking is thriving. This means that Nepalese women and children can be freely trafficked into India without documentation, identification or a passport. Every 26.28 minutes a girl in Nepal is trafficked across the border to India for an average price of $104.63 (AUD). That’s 54 girls every day, almost 20,000 every year. Once in India, they will be lost forever. They may be trapped in brothels, repeatedly sold and abused or their body parts auctioned off to the highest bidder. There are communities in Nepal, completely devoid of women and children. Communities without mothers and daughters, without futures and without generations of families.… We ask you to sign this petition and help us force the government to close the borders and protect the Nepali people from these predators.”34 The details provided in the petition are horrifying. Should India and Nepal follow the unusual pattern – from debordering to rebordering – to put an end to this human tragedy? Charting a new course in bilateral relations, India and Nepal agreed in 2014 to “review, adjust and update” the 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship to “better reflect the current realities” and expand ties in “a forward looking manner.” The agreement between Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Sushil Koirala is supposedly aimed at addressing the Indian concerns over the use of Nepalese territory for terror activities directed at India. It was relayed to the media that Modi and Koirala directed respective authorities to ensure that “the open border, a unique feature of Nepal-India bilateral relations, is not misused by unscrupulous elements

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Women and Borders posing security threats to either side.”35 There are many other concerns such as human trafficking, which may not pose a threat to state security, but certainly pose a threat to humanity. Neither India nor Nepal should turn an ostrich eye to this humanitarian disaster – the human trafficking for sexual exploitation. The moot question then arises – should the open border be closed? There are several laws in place, in India as well as in Nepal, to regulate trafficking of women for commercial sex. But, they seem to be ineffective keeping in view the nexus between corrupt officials and trafficking agencies. Although, both countries are aware of this activity as expressed in occasional official concerns, trafficking continues, or rather, thrives. Misuse of this open border is a serious concern, which needs to be addressed. Both countries have on more than one occasion agreed to control the illegal activities across the border, but an effective approach continues to remain a chimera. The closure of the border may not put an end to the trafficking. There are borders in the South Asian region, such as India-Bangladesh or India-Myanmar, which are highly controlled but they have not been successful in eliminating trafficking. “Poverty increases one’s susceptibility to becoming a victim of trafficking, but even if poverty is eradicated, trafficking will remain a problem as long as the industry is one of lowrisk and high profits for the traffickers themselves. This is particularly challenging because the traffickers face a rapidly growing demand.”36 An open border increases the susceptibility of the vulnerable demographies to trafficking, but even if a border is closed, trafficking will remain a persistent problem while it remains a low-risk, high profit and, hence, lucrative industry. Until there is a demand and until there is a vulnerability, trafficking for commercial sex will remain a flourishing industry. As mentioned earlier, Indo-Nepal open border is a life-line for many people. The need is to better control, coordinate and collaborate to put an end to human trafficking through the open border. A sustained, integrated and genuine approach towards making the border impermeable for the traffickers may prove effective in rescuing uncounted Nepalese women from deception and eventual sexual exploitation in India and elsewhere. 148

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Notes 1. Informal interaction with Neena during a train journey, June 12, 2012. And, I dedicate this piece to Neena. 2. I wish to acknowledge the help of my Delhi-based friends, Sushant and Ruhi. They helped me to connect with my respondents. And, I hope to continue collecting many such narratives to give voice to a vulnerable and voiceless group. 3. Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs. “Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the Government of India and the Government of Nepal, Kathmandu, July 31, 1950. http://mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/ 6295/Treaty+of+Peace+and+Friendship (accessed on May 13, 2016). 4. Raymond Bechard, Unspeakable: The Hidden Truth Behind the World’s Fastest Growing Crime, New York: Compel, 2006. 5. Tameshnie Deane, “Cross-Border Trafficking in Nepal and India – Violating Women’s Rights,” Human Rights Review, Vol. 11, No. 4, 2010, p. 493. 6. US Department of State, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Trafficking in Persons Report, June 4, 2008. http://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/ tiprpt/2008/105376.htm (accessed on May 13, 2016). 7. Traffic in women and girls, United Nations, General Assembly, December 23, 1994, http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/49/a49r166.htm. 23 (accessed on May 15, 2016). 8. Ibid. 9. “UN expert urges fresh action on conflict-related people trafficking  – New UN report,” New York / Geneva, October 31, 2016. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ NewsEvents/ Pages/ DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20803&LangID=E#sthash. l12BxQkO.dpuf (accessed on November 2, 2016). 10. Ibid. 11. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2016,” Vienna, 2016, p.  5. https://www.unodc.org/documents/dataand- analysis/ glotip/ 2016_ Global_ Report_ on_ Trafficking_ in_ Persons.pdf. (accessed on December 26, 2016). 12. US Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report, June 2007. http://www. state.gov/documents/organization/82902.pdf. (accessed on May 15, 2016). 13. “Three-fold jump in human trafficking from Nepal to India after quake: MHA,” The Indian Express, November 4, 2015. 14. “India is working to curb trafficking of women, children: minister,” April 19, 2016. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-trafficking-idUSKCN0XG1AX (accessed on May 13, 2016). 15. US Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report 2016. https://www. state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/countries/2016/258784.htm (accessed on November 6, 2016).

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Women and Borders 16. Ibid. 17. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2016, p. 7. 18. Soma Wadhwa, “For Sale: childhood,” Outlook, February 23, 1998. http://www. outlookindia.com/magazine/story/for-sale-childhood/205123. 19. Ibid. 20. Phone interview, August 23, 2015. 21. Informal interaction, June 12, 2012. 22. Personal interview, November 13, 2014. 23. Ibid. 24. Informal interaction, June 12, 2012. 25. Phone interview, March 14, 2015. 26. Phone interview, March 18, 2015. 27. Phone interview, February 24, 2015. 28. Ibid. 29. Informal interaction, March 14, 2016. 30. Robert Hardman, “Prince brings hope to Nepal’s rescued sex slaves,” Telegraph, February 9, 1998. 31. Tim McGirk, “Nepal’s Lost Daughters, ‘India’s soiled goods,’ ” Nepal/India News, January 27, 1997. 32. Wadhwa, 1998. 33. Lucille Sanzero Eller, Ganga Mahat, “Psychological Factors in Nepali Former Commercial Sex Workers with HIV,” Journal of Nursing Scholarship, Vol. 35, No. 1, 2003, pp. 53–60. 34. Petition:  “To close the border between India and Nepal and put an end to human trafficking,” 3Angels Nepal, https://www.change.org/p/the-traffickingin-persons-office-tip-to-close-the-border-between-india-and-nepal-and-putan-end-to-human-trafficking (accessed on 3 November 2016). 35. “2014 and beyond:  India, Nepal agree to refresh 1950 treaty,” The Indian Express, August 5, 2014. 36. Deane, “Cross-Border Trafficking in Nepal and India,” 2010, p. 509.

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7 Migration, Border Crossing and Women: Female Migrant Sexualities Between Objectification and Empowerment Andreanne Bissonnette and Elisabeth Vallet

In the context where migration is either represented or studied as a homogenous male flow, female sexuality is depicted as a barrier to female mobility. The specifics of migrant women are often overlooked in studies focusing on the effects of the migration process on individuals: most of the research will focus on sexual violence as being the only impact on women. This representation generates an image of migrant women as solely victims; they are seen as passive actors objectified by other migrants or criminal organizations. Women’s sexualities1 in a context of migration can also become an asset to the migration and a space of empowerment during and after migration. Interviews conducted with migrant women have shown that the research may observe a different relation to sexuality. While it is true that women are particularly submitted to sexual violence and abuse (rape and forced prostitution for instance), some of them tended to depict the articulation of their prostitution, in the context of migration as positive. Instead of understanding their gender solely in terms of risks of violence, some choose to reclaim their sexualities in order to articulate it in a framework 151

Women and Borders that would benefit them in achieving their goal: crossing the border. For some, it also became a means of social change in the destination country. Moreover, the way women relate to their sexualities, how they view it and how it is articulated, either as an asset or a drawback, varies with a large scope of criteria (whether cross-border migrants, temporary workers in the US, or at the border on the Mexican side). This chapter will explore this dual embodiment of sexuality in a context of migration through double lenses: we will focus on the way migrant women perceive their own sexuality while we assess its instrumentalization by women and other actors at the border. We will therefore delve into the case of the Mexican-American border, where there is clearly a feminization of the migration process over the recent years – as 20 percent of all undocumented migrant at the border are women.2

Sexual Objectification as a Liability One of the greatest causes of violence against women is linked to the regulation of their sexuality…recognizing women’s rights to sexual autonomy and sexual health will be a major step forward in eradicating violence against women.3

Sexual violation appears to be the most documented consequence of international migration for women. In 2014, 80 percent of women and girls migrating from Central America to the United States reported being raped during the journey through Central America and Mexico4 – a 20 percent jump from Amnesty International’s estimates in 2010.5 As many authors and scholars have claimed over the years, these numbers are only an indication of the scope of the problem, and remain an estimate since migrant women are reluctant to speak up about any form of physical abuse in fear of consequences due to their undocumented status or due to authorities’ involvement in the abuse.6 Initially, scholars were linking rape to illegality and therefore to smugglers. Recent studies though, have shown that rape and other forms of sexual violence on migrant women involve, directly or indirectly, other actors.7 Other scholars have tried to widen the definition of sexual violence itself, to include prostitution at the border as a form of sexual abuse.8 152

Migration, Border Crossing and Women We have chosen in this chapter to adopt the broad definition of sexual violence as defined by the World Health Organization where sexual violence is stated as: “any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed, against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting, including but not limited to home and work.”9 This definition allows for the inclusion of rape, sexual abuses, psychological sexual violence as well as forced prostitution and marital rape. However, in the context of migration, the interpretation of what constitutes a sexual assault is modulated according to the sociocultural background of women:  “the place (or places) where a woman has lived, the sociocultural landscape where she developed as a woman, necessarily influence her interpretation of an act or event as sexually violent or not.”10 Regardless of the definition adopted though, two conclusions appear to be general to all studies: first, rape is an endemic problem affecting almost all women at some point during migration; and secondly, women’s bodies are considered as objects that can be controlled, used, sold and treated violently by men, a reality that in some cases leads to murder.11

When sexual violence becomes the norm The representation of rape as an inescapable reality of migration for women is preeminent not only in studies on women and migration, but more broadly in migration studies. The most common, and best-documented, cases of rape along the border or during the crossing of Mexico remain the abuses perpetrated by smugglers. In order to facilitate the migration process and increase the chances of success while faced with an ever-increasing security dispositive at the border,12 a constantly increasing number of migrants seek the services of smugglers. While, for some smugglers, it seems to be an explicit part of the border crossing deal since the beginning of the negotiation,13 others will ask women for sexual favors during the crossing of Mexico: “Coyotes14 may refuse to take a woman with them, threaten to turn her over to unknown men or abandon her midway if she refuses his advances.”15 That has been highlighted by Maria Salinas’ story as reported by PBS. The 43-year-old woman who traveled with her 153

Women and Borders 18-year-old daughter and hired the services of a coyote stated that “she couldn’t keep up. One coyote said he’d help – on one condition. “If I gave him my daughter, then he’d wait for me.”16 As smuggling activities are more and more linked with drug cartels and other criminal gangs, scholars are including the study of rape by gang related individuals.17 As presented by Olivia Ruiz and the organization Beta Sur, sexual assault has become part of the modus operandi of gang-related individuals who attack and rob migrants either in northern Mexico or on migrant routes in the Chiapas province (closer to the Guatemala-Mexico border).18 The important contribution of scholars studying women’s life and sexualities at the border, resides in their work on female prostitution. While many scholars consider women’s sexuality through the narrow spectrum of sexual assaults (physical sexual violence),19 these studies20 broaden the range of what constitutes sexual violence, to include forced prostitution. Along the migration route, women and girls face the risk of being abducted by individuals, related or not to gangs or cartels, which then proceed to sell them to crime-related individuals.21 Even though the individuals who buy and sell women may not sexually abuse them directly, they are part of an activity that profits from their sexual exploitation. In the United States, between 14,500 and 17,500 females are estimated to be victims of trafficking; in Mexico, estimates are around 18,000.22 Contrary to a convenient popular belief that danger is on the other side of the border, migrant women also reported being sexually assaulted and raped by Border Patrol agents once in the United States. Through her work on sexuality at the border, Eithne Luibhéid offers a review of some of the cases that were brought before the courts in the United States regarding rape of migrant women by Border Patrol, INS or ICE agents.23 Although the cases studies occurred in different locations and at different times, they all share a similar pattern of rape, which led Luibhéid to reconsider her assumption that “rape functioned as a form of crude, violent, border defense strategy.”24 Indeed, rather than arresting migrant women, raping them and then taking them into custody, agents would release raped women downtown or in remote areas to continue their routes. Amy Lind and Jill 154

Migration, Border Crossing and Women Williams state that “undocumented migrant women are thus vulnerable to sexual violation from Border Patrol agents who promise to release them if they are sexually compliant.”25 To support their conclusion, the authors bring forward the case of Scott Anthony Sullivan, which has been studied by Roebuck: “Agent Scott Anthony Sullivan was convicted in April of 2007 of violating an undocumented woman’s civil rights when he pulled her over at a checkpoint in 2003, confiscated her birth certificate and then raped her several times at a nearby hotel.”26 It has been suggested by some scholars27 that Border Patrol agents are re-creating and reinforcing the definition of “otherness” through the domination of female bodies, migrant women representing in that instance something foreign “due to their national origins, undocumented status, poverty, and gender.”28 This is even more accurate when considering that many cases brought before other police officers are dropped due to lack of proof or credibility.29 In recent years, cases have arose in detention centers where some migrant women have decided to speak up. One case reported in early 2016 occurred in the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) facility in Santa Ana, California where ICE agents strip searched and physically and sexually abused migrant women.30 This situation led 31 women to file a civil complaint, while Human Rights Watch investigated the matter.31 While these complaints are presented by Human Rights Watch as being still under investigation, they highlight some critical realities of migration detention in the United States, not only in terms of how women’s bodies are being sexually abused and violently treated, but also when it comes to filing a complaint. Taking legal action against Border Patrol agents or ICE agents is a challenging step for migrant women who are facing deportation threats. For Sylvanna Falcón, in that sense, rape is no less than a weapon of war, reinforced by the militarization of the border and, hence, the idea that the border is at war. Whether at the US-Mexico border or at the borders of war-torn countries, “the outcome remains the same – the systematic degradation of women,”32 but there is definitely, according to Falcon, at the US-Mexico divide, “a symbolic connection between women’s bodies and territory.”33 Olivia Wood goes further by stating that the objectification and exploitation of female body on the US-Mexico divide “represent the unequal transnational relationship between these two nations.”34 155

Women and Borders Therefore the inherent risk in migration of being sexually assaulted leads many migrant women to take birth control pills or seek other means of contraception before engaging on the migration route in order to diminish the possibility of a forced pregnancy.35 While the decision to take birth control beforehand rest on the migrant, it can be seen, in the light of human rights, as a form of sexual violence36 in the sense that migrant women make their decision based on a risk of sexual violence and not for personal reasons. On the other side, women face scarcity of contraceptive means, which make them switch methods in some cases, as mentioned by Anna Ochoa O’Leary and Gloria Ciria Valdéz-Gardea’s study of reproduction rights in the Altar, Sonora region.37

“Private is public”: when the State takes control of women’s sexualities Less studied is the objectification and violation of migrant women’s bodies by government policies on both sides of the border. While the actions of other migrants, criminal groups or citizens are visible due to their direct impact on migrant women’s bodies, the actions of government entities, both local and national, fall under the radar. On the American side of the border, many laws were enacted in the 1990s and more in the years following 9/11 in order to limit the attractivity of the United States and to encourage those living illegally on US soil to migrate back to their country of origin. Through these laws, many states restricted access to social and healthcare services by mandating the organizations in charge of providing those services to check the identity of users, or even to report undocumented migrants to immigration services.38 Through these procedures, states are limiting undocumented migrants’ access to basic health services. This situation is particularly critical for women: they may not be able to seek medical help to get an abortion or contraception or supervise a difficult pregnancy. Not being able to access medical help in order to terminate an unwanted pregnancy constitutes a two-fold violence against migrant women: first, it is a direct violation of women’s sexualities as states frame women’s options and sexual freedoms by restraining their access to abortion. Second, it is violence in the sense that, due to this lack of access to abortion 156

Migration, Border Crossing and Women services, women will have to pursue an unwanted pregnancy and ultimately birth a child – who could be the result of rape. This is further emphasized by Nora’s story, recounted by Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez, “Her only daughter was the consequence of this assault. During our interview, she showed anxiety when the topic of virginity came up. Nora had refrained from any sexual activity for 28 years.”39 A critical example of those legal impacts is obvious in Texas where access to abortion services has already been limited by a conservative legislature.40 Therefore, following the adoption of a law defining strict conditions under which clinics are allowed to perform abortions, many of them were forced to close, leaving only 19 clinics where legal abortions can be performed.41 All Texan women are of course impacted by theses measures but migrant women are more concerned since all of those clinics cannot be accessed from the border without crossing a checkpoint: all of them are located inland, further from the border, making it more difficult for undocumented migrant women to seek medical help during pregnancy or to access birth control prescriptions.42 Hence, states Ana DeFrates, Texas director for policy and advocacy at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, “undocumented families are literally landlocked. When you eliminate clinics that were south of those internal checkpoints, you limit access to care.”43 By restricting women’s access to health and social services in an effort to put an end to illegal immigration, US officials, both at the federal and local levels, against women and limit their ability to take control of their bodies. The Mexican government also plays a defining role in the ill-treatment of migrant women through its inaction regarding the murders of hundreds of women in border towns (such as Ciudad Juárez where an epidemic situation of feminicide is taking place since 1993).44 Moreover, government officials fuel the representation of women as sexual objects in the public discourse, invoking sexism rather “than to admit that the murders reveal a masculine attitude of power, subordination, and fatal indifference to the health and welfare of poor working women.”45 Indeed, in a public statement, the governor of the state of Chihuahua blamed the victims for the way they dressed and implied that they were immoral since they were seen in bars and clubs.46 By blaming the victims, the Mexican authorities “absolve themselves from blame for the crimes and divert public sympathy 157

Women and Borders from the victims.”47 Through the use of these sexist public statements, authorities reinforce the already violent gender division in Mexican society and try to control women’s sexualities by reinterring what is considered as moral in a gendered way. This adds to the already difficult legal reality of Mexican women. Indeed, in the state of Chihuahua, the domestic violence category is often mobilized to hide systemic sexual feminicide while the Criminal Code provides for far more lenient sentences to men who murder their wives for extramarital affairs than men who commit “feminicide.”48 In 2001, state legislators went even further when they “passed a bill that minimized sentences for rapists who were ‘provoked’ by their victims.”49 This bill considers female rape victims as “immoral,” therefore reinforcing the hardship for victims and implicitly supporting men’s control over women’s sexualities by diminishing criminals’ responsibilities and by trivializing women’s death. More so, it accentuates the idea that women’s sexualities are men’s private property.

“Las que se quedan”: Definition of sexualities for those left behind In relation to policies and practices on the Mexican side of the border, there are some specifics concerning women’s sexualities in maquiladoras. About 60 percent of all maquiladoras employees are women, many of whom are migrant women coming from southern Mexico and Central America in search of a job and independence. Employers in maquiladoras hire women into unskilled positions, which allows for a lesser salary than their male counterparts. In addition to this discrimination against women, maquiladoras make it mandatory for any female employee to go through a medical exam prior to being hired – in order to confirm that she is not pregnant. As Jessica Livingston’s extensive work on maquiladoras workers has shown, after being hired, women workers must undergo random pregnancy tests to certify that they are still not pregnant and are offered full health coverage for birth control pills. This has also been documented by Norma Iglesias Prieto, who, for the purpose of her research, interviewed for a position in a maquiladora in Tijuana. The practices regarding reproductive monitoring go from simple questions to abdomen palpation,50 158

Migration, Border Crossing and Women pregnancy tests, and even verification of menstrual pads.51 In order to avoid paying for women’s social security coverage during the third trimester of pregnancy as required by Mexican law, maquiladoras employers are “regulating the lives of female employees”52 by controlling their reproductive rights. Indeed, when a female worker gets pregnant, she is pressured to quit or is harassed until she does so.53 Elvia Arriola highlights the fact that female worker’s bodies are sexualized while maquiladora work reinforces gender division: female workers are preferred to their male counterparts due to their obedience and fastidiousness.54 Maquiladoras manager also play on existing gendered and sexualized roles in order to implement control mechanisms, cultivating a “highly-sexualized environment” which leads to sexual harassment and promises of job security in return for sexual favors.55 Therefore “the maquila program relies strongly on prevailing patriarchal family relations”56 in order to maintain the female worker as docile and less likely to organize into unions. For Wood, this work environment contributes to the objectification of Mexican women and leads to the redefinition of women sexualities by men.57 Thus, through the definition of women as a consumable and disposable good, maquiladoras contribute to the redefinition of women’s sexualities and worth in society, reinforcing an inherent machismo. Therefore, many men tend to see “the women as part of their male rights over their sexuality and reproductive capacity.”58 Mexican law regarding extra-marital sexual relations further emphasizes this.59 As highlighted by Monárrez Fragoso in her research on women and feminicide in border towns, the violence towards women reinforces unequal social relations and differentiation between sexes and gender.60 These violations and objectifications of migrant women’s bodies, by smugglers, criminal gang-related individuals, other migrants or state officials, all contribute to the (re)construction of borders. As shown by many border scholars, borders are not solely defined by a physical line between two states, but rather as the addition of external and internal borders. Internal borders involve social, economic, political, psychological and symbolic border layers that include gender and sexuality. In that sense, rape is a border per se since it “is a site for reinscription by the state of the social body as stratified by gender, sexuality, race, class, and legal status.”61 Therefore, although female migration is rising steadily in the US-Mexico 159

Women and Borders context, needless to say that gender and sexuality remain as borders in the sense that they constitute barriers to female migration, women’s mobility and women’s opportunities to maintain/regain control of themselves. However this approach fails to address the perspective where migrant women see their own bodies as an asset rather than a liability.

Sexuality as an Asset In immigration policies as well as in migration studies, migrant women are too often considered as passive objects, dependant on male migrants. This is why Mirjana Morokvasic has tried to demonstrate that migrant women can also be positive agents through migration.62 Even though migration does not invalidate the gender order, migrant women can instrumentalize these barriers in order to defend their interests. Furthermore, immigration also constitutes a process leading to life changes and can remodel “the gendered way daily life is lived,”63 or, as argued by Deborah A. Boehm, can reconstitute and compromise masculinity “which, in turn, liberates and puts new controls on women, redefining what ‘I’ means to be a woman.”64 Therefore, when studying migrant women sexualities in a context of migration, we must transcend the dominant representation of women and consider sexuality as a means through which empowerment can be gained.

Empowerment during migration When the Immigration Reform and Control Act was enacted in 1986, provisions regarding women migrants were essentially centered on family reunification: that, per se, perpetuated women’s dependency on their male counterparts. When studying migration from Central America and Mexico to the United States, one cannot omit the feminization of those flows, especially since the 1990s,65 and the striking increase in numbers of women migrating alone or with their children. Women migrate for economic reasons, but also for security reasons. They are 20 to 29 years old and are mainly coming from from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico.66 The demographics of migration have changed strikingly and so 160

Migration, Border Crossing and Women do the assessment of women migrants: they cannot be reduced to a duality halfway between victimization and threat: if scholars view female migration as a multilayered phenomenon favoring “favours agency over victimization,”67 sexuality can be assessed by migrant women themselves as an empowering tool to migrate north. The most common use is sexuality as a means to gain protection. Indeed, many women coming from Central America stated in the testimony of their journey that in exchange for sex they were able to gain protection.68 Indeed, as stated by Luis Flores, head of IOM in Tapachula, “Sexual abuse has lost its terror.” He further explained how this has led to a change in the representation of the migrant’s body: “The body becomes a credit card, a new platinum-edition “bodymatic” which buys you a little safety, a little bit of cash and the assurance that your travel buddies won’t get killed. Your bodymatic, except for what you get charged, buys a more comfortable ride on the train.”69 This is further emphasized by Gloria GonzálezLopez; “But virginity is not the only aspect of a Mexican woman’s sexuality that has an exchange value. Within the context of marriage and family life, sexual intercourse may be subjected to a process of commodification.”70 While this practice can be, and has been, indirectly questioned by exterior actors or researchers,71 migrant women who used sex as a way to gain security tended to view and represent it as a powerful tool: according to their testimonies they were able to gain control over their sexualities and use it at their convenience, rather than being viewed and treated as sexual objects. This is shown by the story of Erlinda, a 31-year-old woman from Honduras: “And if sexuality was going to be part of the clandestine route, maybe it’d be necessary to give it a utility value […] Erlinda consented to have a relationship in exchange of migratory experience and protection.”72 It is reiterated in Myriam’s story: “Myriam, like Erlinda, knew that her body could simultaneously be a handicap and an asset on the clandestine route. She wasn’t blind to the power relations governing the passage space, and that is why she was going to instrumentalize them.”73 In those terms and the way migrant women have chosen to represent those options, sexuality becomes an asset because these women maintain the perception that they had a choice. By choosing a partner among other migrants, these women felt that they were reducing the risk of being raped, and had the clear feeling 161

Women and Borders that they had limited the level of violence they were going to face along the way.74 Through their migration process, they claim that they regained control of their sexualities, using it to pursue their venture and secure their future. The lack of studies on the matter and the few testimonies available or used by authors and researchers raise questions regarding the free will of these women. Is it really a sexual emancipation and an empowerment through the control of their own sexuality? Or is it another expression of an internalized masculinist system? Could it be that migrant women are simply responding to the representations that are made of them, as being weak and in need of male support to migrate, and therefore responding with sexual submission? Even though these questions remain, the current state of the information available leads us to the conclusion that through migration, at least some women are able to regain control over the articulation of their own sexualities. Another way by which women are using sexuality as an empowering tool during the migration process is through sex work. Indeed, as mentioned by Morokvasic, sex work is multiform “and are not all related to prostitution.”75 Following this idea, Laura Agustin, through her work on sex tourism, sex work migration and police and immigration authorities’ interventions,76 “seeks to break down this duality of seeing migrants as unwanted intruders or powerless victims.”77 This is further highlighted by Melissa Wright’s work on women in Ciudad Juárez and sex workers in La Paz. Sex workers in La Paz, Juárez do not have pimps; “they are independent entrepreneurs.”78 Many of them migrated north in the hopes of finding a paid position in a maquiladora but chose to work in prostitution instead mainly due to the important difference in salary.79 These women regained control of their bodies through the process of migration and, for some, during migration, as Ciudad Juárez is not the last stop on their journey. But the control they gained became an empowering tool as they faced oppression from authorities and organized themselves to fight against their removal from downtown Ciudad Juárez.80 They gained leverage and claimed their place in the public space while fighting women’s devaluation. The simple decision made by women to migrate north contributes to the redefinition of gender roles and to women’s empowerment. 162

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Migrating to get control and empowerment As we have seen previously, while for some women the process of regaining control of their sexualities is articulated through and along the migration process, for others the whole idea of migration and its results (a life in a new social, cultural, political and economical environment) constitutes the way through which they regain control of their sexualities and morph it into an empowering tool. For some, migration comes as a solution to the shame they were put through after being raped in their hometown, either by a family member, a boyfriend or a stranger, for others it is the new social and economic context in which they live in the US that challenges their conceptions of sexuality and alters their intimate lives.81 In Mexico and Central America, policies tend to leave aside women victims of sexual or physical abuses and assaults. Building on the idea that sex outside of marriage is unforgivable, rape is often represented as a shame that affects the whole family rather than as what it is: a violation of one’s body and will. Some established migrant women in the San Diego region reported that after being raped, they were pressured into marrying their attacker in order to “make it right.”82 Others were told to stay silent in order to preserve the family ties: “Although ‘sexual silence’ might not be exclusive to Mexican families it functions as a protection from a fear of family rejection and shame in the lives of Mexican women exposed to sexual assault.”83 For many women, this has led to prompt migration, like in the case of Candelaria who, after being sexually assaulted by a family friend, decided to migrate. During her interview with Gloria GónzalezLópez, she stated: “He was one of the reasons why I came to the United States.”84 While the decision to migrate after being raped can be seen as an act of empowerment in itself, the success of the migration process is often, as we have seen above, the trigger to sexual empowerment. Indeed, many women who migrated from Mexico to the San Diego area reported that they chose to fight against the machismo culture and patriarchal gendered ideology inherent to the Mexican upbringing once established in their new socio-cultural environment.85 “He can be kind of a machista, but I don’t put up with it any more […] I can support myself, I can live without a man. So now I have sex only if I want to, not just because he

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Women and Borders wants to.”86 Indeed, as shown in the interviews conducted by Olivia Ruiz with women aged between 25 and 50 in the San Diego area, women who were raped or sexually assaulted in their hometown before fleeing Mexico or during their migration process, tended to adopt a different approach when it comes to the sexual education of their children.87 Women who have experienced sexual violence, either before or during migration, use sexual education, and sexuality more broadly, to break the cycle of misogyny and machismo that are very much anchored in social norms in Mexico and Central America. This is further analyzed by Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez work on migrants’ sexual journeys: “families – via maternal authority – become an important institution establishing and shaping beliefs and practices with regard to femininity and masculinity, courtship, heterosexual love, and sexuality.”88 Therefore, by regaining control of their sexualities through migration and by expressing their will to change the perceptions of women’s sexualities, these women, through parenting, impact not just their own lives but that of generations to come.89 For other women, coming from indigenous communities in Southern Mexico, migration to northern parts of the country or to the United States also constitute a way to regain control of their sexualities by running away from an arranged marriage to an older man, a violent marriage or from the possibility of being sold by poor parents, as Elizabeth Maeir describes in her work on indigenous women in California and Baja California,90: in her research, those indigenous women who have chosen to defect forced matrimony through migration do claim their will not only to better their condition and empower themselves but also to change the future of their daughters. They do not renounce their culture and traditions, but they advocate for, if not equal rights for women and men, at least the consideration of women and girls as human beings and not sexualized objects.91 In that sense, they use their sexuality as an empowering tool, therefore becoming powerful agents of change. A similar result can be seen through a different lens in maquiladoras. Maquiladoras contribute to the reproduction and reinforcement of male control and definition of women’s sexualities. However the maquiladoras industry can also be seen as a means for women to access a form of financial independence, and more broadly a form of liberalization through the decompartmentalization of gender roles.92 Indeed, “the opportunity 164

Migration, Border Crossing and Women for women to earn their own income has emancipated them from their dependence on men.”93 Capitalizing on this economic emancipation, some women will therefore see these economic opportunities as a way to gain control over their sexualities since they are breaking the link of dependence within their family units.94 Indeed, for many Central American as well as Mexican women and indigenas living in southern states, migrating north to seek jobs in maquiladora plants is not only a way by which they can gain financial independence, but it is also an opportunity to be sexually emancipated.95 Theoretically at least, their financial empowerment allows women to make choices in what they choose to accept or not. But as stated by Ursula Biemann, “sexuality has become a site where desires for selfexpression and control mechanisms converge violently.”96 Therefore, even if maquiladoras constitute a space where women’s sexualities are often instrumentalized, redefined by men and controlled by employers, the economic attractiveness they hold and the financial relief they provide for women who are still too often confined to gendered roles, constitutes a side of the maquiladora reality that has yet to be acknowledged and would deserve further investigation. This is however limited to the few migrants who try to transcend their own experience of violence and perceive themselves as agents of change. They are still few and the limits to their empowerment are back into male hands: “even as migrant women in Salinas, California, and Alburquerque, New Mexico, transform gender relations through their political activism and participation in the workforce, respectively, they nevertheless continue to live under the threat of deportation and new forms of male control.”97 This idea of empowerment through work and money is further analyzed by Gloria González-Lopez. The author highlights how work and money lead to power and “sexual bargains” through women’s stories in post-immigration situation: “That ended a long time ago! I do not have to cry if he doesn’t give me money, or if he doesn’t give me enough to buy groceries. I don’t even have to have sex with him. I do not depend on him. It [sex] is not an obligation anymore”98 (Azalea, a 43-year-old woman who migrated to the Los Angeles area from Mexico City). Even though they are now a definite part of migration flows aiming northward, women are depicted either as passive victims or as intruders and women’s sexualities are often viewed and analyzed as an infirmity 165

Women and Borders and a danger.99 But women migrants cannot be reduced to that sole duality; they need to be viewed as a multilayered phenomenon, “one that favours agency over victimization,”100 which is why sexuality is here represented as an empowering tool for women migrating north. And migration is leading to new forms of empowerment: “even as people move and struggle to change the foundations on which social relations are built, these structures may remain the same, requiring migrants to come-up with creative ways to transform social and institutional practices.”101 However, the masculine framing of policies, and the male dominant discourse at the border defines the terms of border violence in a way that still predominantly affects women more than men.

Notes 1. Following feminist theorist Lynne Segal’s proposal that women have multiple heterosexualities, this chapter will refer to “women’s sexualities” rather than to “women’s sexuality.” See Lynne Segal, Straight Sex: Rethinking the Politics of Pleasure, California: University of California Press, 1994. 2. Olivia Ruiz, “Women, Migration, and Sexual Violence. Lessons from Mexico’s borders,” in Kathleen Staudt, Tony Payan and Z. Anthony Kruszewski, eds, Human Rights along the U.S.-Mexico Border: Gendered Violence and Insecurity, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2009, p. 32. 3. R. Coomaraswamy, Integration of the human rights of women and the gender perspective. Presentation to the Commission on Human Rights, 58th session, April 10, 2002, Geneva, Switzerland. 4. Erin Siegal McIntyre and Deborah Bonello, “Is Rape the Price to Pay for Migrant Women Chasing the American Dream ?” Fusion. http://fusion.net/story/17321/ is-rape-the-price-to-pay-for-migrant-women-chasing-the-american-dream/ (accessed on June 30, 2016). 5. Amnesty International, “Invisible Victims: Migrants on the Move in Mexico,” April 2010. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/AMR41/014/2010/en/ (accessed on June 23, 2016). 6. UNHCR, Women on the Run  – First-Hand Accounts of Refugees Fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, 2015, p. 43. The UNHCR report cites one woman: “In Guatemala, the police got all of us off the bus and robbed one of the migrants. Then, five police got a beautiful girl off the bus. We were pretty sure that they took her off to rape her. This story illustrates why there is a lack of trust from migrant women in police officer and law enforcement

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7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

groups.” See also: Human Rights Watch, Brutality Unchecked: Human Rights Abuses Along the U.S. Border with Mexico, 1992. In a handful of cases, INS agents have been prosecuted for rape of undocumented migrant women, but more frequently it is not reported. Undocumented female rape victims are doubly vulnerable: not only must they endure the humiliation of being raped, but they also risk deportation or retaliatory criminal charges if they complain. Thus, even when cases of sexual assault come to the attention of human rights groups, the women involved commonly refuse legal assistance or any form of publicity regarding what happened to them.” (p. 35) See, Alyson L. Dimmitt Gnam, “Mexico’s Missed Opportunities to Protect Irregular Women Transmigrants: Applying a Gender Lens to Migration Law Reform,” Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal Association, Vol. 22, No. 3, 2013, pp. 713–49. See also, Maureen Meyer and Stephanie Brewer, “A Dangerous Journey through Mexico: Human Rights Violations against Migrants in Transit,” Washington Office on Latin America, 2010, https://www.wola. org/ sites/ default/ files/ downloadable/ Mexico/ 2010/ DangerousJourney.pdf. Also important: Human Rights Watch, “US: Immigration Detainees at Risk of Sexual Abuse: Government Should Act Quickly to Increase Protection, Improve Procedures,” August 25, 2010. https://www.hrw.org/news/2010/08/ 25/us-immigration-detainees-risk-sexual-abuse. For abuses by Mexican officials in detention centers see: United States Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2014 – Mexico, July 25, 2015. http:// www.state.gov/documents/organization/236914.pdf. Melissa Farley, “Prostitution is Sexual Violence,” Psychiatric Times, Vol. 21, No. 12, October 2004. See also: C. Stark and C. Hodgson, “Sister Oppressions: A Comparison of Wife Battering and Prostitution,” in M. Farley, eds, Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress, New York: Haworth Press, 2003, pp.17–32. Etienne G.  Krug et  al., eds, “World Report on Violence and Health,” World Health Organization, Geneva, 2002, p. 149. http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/ 10665/42495/1/9241545615_eng.pdf (accessed on June 25, 2016). Ruiz, “Women, Migration, and Sexual Violence,” 2009, p. 34. Pascha Bueno-Hansen, “Feminicidio: Making the Most of an Empowered Term,” in Rosa-Linda Fregoso and Cynthia Bejarano, eds, Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010, p. 304. In the last two decades or so, it has been possible to observe a tragic increase in the number of deaths among women throughout Latin America. These gender-related crimes paved the way to the theorization of feminicide which consists in the murder of women due to their gender. The introduction of the term feminicidio “recognized women as subjects and, more important, reveals them as subjects with the right to freely exercise their sexuality. This free expression

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12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

20.

21. 22.

23. 24. 25.

26.

of women’s sexuality is exactly what the murder of women due to their gender extinguishes in order to maintain patriarchal power and control.” See Reece Jones, Violent Borders:  Refugees and the Right to Move, Brooklyn, Verso, 2016. UNHCR, 2015, p. 44. “One woman from Guatemala who was traveling with her daughter said that the coyote raped her every day of her 20-day trip. She said the coyote offered a reduced smuggling fee if she had sex with him, but she accepted only because she was afraid that he would kill her or rape her daughter if she protested.” A coyote is person who smuggles migrants across the US border for money. Ruiz, “Women, Migration, and Sexual Violence,” 2009, p.35. Jude Joffe-Block, “Women Crossing the U.S. Border Face Sexual Assault with Little Protection,” PBS, March 31, 2014. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ updates/facing-risk-rape-migrant-women-prepare-birth-control/ (accessed on June 24, 2016). See Segal, Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men, Camden: Rutgers University Press 1990, p. 420 on rape as a rite of passage. Ruiz, “Women, Migration, and Sexual Violence,” 2009, p. 32. See: Gloria González-López, “Nunca he dejado de tener terror: Sexual Violence in the Lives of Mexican Immigrant Women,” in Denise A. Segura and Patricia Zavella, eds, Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Durham: Duke University Press, 2007 pp. 224–46. See also: Argán Aragón, Migrations clandestines d’Amérique centrale vers les États-Unis, Paris: Presses Sorbonne, 2015. Ananda Rose, “Northbound:  What Happens After Crossing the Border,” Foreign Affairs, July 2, 2014. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/1069541 (accessed on June 20, 2016). Ibid. Mario Luis Fuentes. “Urge combatir la esclavitud en Mexico,” Centro de Estudios e Investigation en Desarollo y Asistencia (CEIDAS), Mexico, http://www.iesam.csic.es/doctrab2/dt-0506.pdf. As cited by Ruiz, “Women, Migration, and Sexual Violence,” 2009. Jones, Violent Borders 2016. Eithne Luibhéid, Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2002, p.128. Amy Lind and Jill Williams, “Engendering Violence in De/Hyper-nationalized Spaces: Border Militarization, State Territorialization, and Embodied Politics at the US-Mexico Border,” in Anne Sisson Runyan and et. al., eds, Feminist (Im) Mobilities in Fortress(ing) North America: Rights, Citizenships, and Identities in Transnational Perspective. Farnham, GB: Ashgate, 2013, p.110. Ibid.

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Migration, Border Crossing and Women 27. See Sylvanna Falcón, “Rape as a Weapon of War: Advancing Human Rights for Women at the U.S.-Mexico Border,” Social Justice, Vol. 28, No. 2, 2001, pp. 31–2; Sylvanna Falcón, “Rape as a Weapon of War: Militarized Rape at the U.S.Mexico Border,” in Denise A. Segura and Patricia Zavella, eds, Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. 28. Ruiz, “Women, Migration, and Sexual Violence,” 2009, p.37. 29. Falcón, “Rape as a Weapon of War,” 2007, p.208. 30. Jorge Rivas. “Immigrant women say they’re being illegally strip searched by male officers,” Fusion, February 1, 2016. http://fusion.net/story/261668/ women-male-stripped-search-santa-ana/ (accessed on June 23, 2016). 31. Adam Frankel. “‘Do You See How Much I’m Suffering Here?’ Abuse against Transgender Women in US Immigration Detention”. Human Rights Watch, March 23, 2016. https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/03/23/do-you-see-howmuch-im-suffering-here/abuse-against-transgender-women-us (accessed on June 23, 2016). Through its investigation, Human Rights Watch intended to highlight how transgender women are particularly affected by the strip searches in detention facilities. 32. Falcón, “Rape as a Weapon of War: Advancing Human Rights” 2001. 33. Falcón, “Rape as a Weapon of War: Militarized Rape” 2007, p.204. 34. Olivia Wood, “An Investigation into Exploitation of the Mexican Female Body along the U.S.-Mexico Border,” http://womenontheborder.org/2012/01/aninvestigation-into-exploitation-of-the-mexican-female-body-along-the-u-smexico-border/. (accessed on June 23, 2016). 35. See UNHCR, Women on the Run 2015, p. 8 and 44. See also: Kathryn Kessler, Shira M. Goldenberg and Liliana Quezada, “Contraceptive Use, Unmet Need for Contraception, and Unintented Pregnancy in a Context of Mexico-U.S. Migration,” Field Actions Science Reports, Special Issue 2, 2010. 36. Ruiz, “Women, Migration, and Sexual Violence,” 2009, p. 34. 37. Anna Ochoa O’Leary and Gloria Ciria Valdéz-Gardea, “Neoliberalizing (Re)Production: Women, Migration, and Family Planning in the Peripheries of the State,” in Anne Sisson Runyan et al., eds, Feminist (Im)Mobilities in Fortress(ing) North America: Rights, Citizenships, and Identities in Transnational Perspective, Farnham, GB: Ashgate, 2013, p.85. 38. Gabriel J. Chin, Carissa Byrne Hessick and Marc L. Miller, “Arizona Senate Bill 1070: Politics through Immigration Law,” in Otto Santa Ana and Celeste González de Bustamante, eds, Arizona Firestorm: Global Immigration Realities, National Media, and Provincial Politics, New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012, p.76. See also: Senate Bill 1611, State of Arizona – Senate, 50th legislature, First regular session, Lanham, Maryland 2011.

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Women and Borders 39. Gloria González-López, Erotic Journeys:  Mexican Immigrants and their Sex Lives, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005, p. 36. 40. Texas State Legislature, H.B. No. 2 – An Act relating to the regulation of abortion procedures, providers, and facilities; providing penalties, Legislative session 83 (2), July 15, 2013. http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/832/billtext/ pdf/HB00002F.pdf#navpanes=0 (accessed on July 2, 2016). The enactment of this law led to the closing of about half of the state’s abortion clinics in 2013 alone. Today, there are 10 clinics (out of the initial 36)  that are still in services. Women have to travel up to 4 times as far to get to a clinic. See:  Alyssa Figueroa, “6 Abortion Clinics for 13 Million Women? Inside Texas’ Latest Assault on Women’s Rights,” Alternet, April 2, 2014. http:// www.alternet.org/ activism/ 6- abortion- clinics- 13- million- womeninside-texas-latest-assault-womens-rights. See also:  Emily Crockett. “Study: Women had to drive 4 times farther after Texas laws closed abortion clinics.” Vox, March 20, 2016. http://www.vox.com/2016/3/20/11269226/ texas-abortion-women-drive-study. 41. Alexa Ura et al. “Texas Abortion Clinics That Have Closed Since 2013,” The Texas Tribune, June 28, 2016, https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/28/texasabortion-clinics-have-closed-hb2-passed-2013/ (accessed on July 13, 2016). 42. Rachel Pearson. “Texas abortion law ruling: Latinas more likely to avoid clinics and self-terminate.” The Guardian, June 10, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/ us- news/ 2015/ jun/ 10/ texas- abortion- latinas- immigrantspoverty (accessed on July 18, 2015). See also: National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. “Immigrant Latinas & Abortion: The Fight for Access to Comprehensive Coverage and Care.” Fact Sheet, March 2015. http://www.latinainstitute.org/sites/default/files/NLIRH_ImmWmnAbrtn_FactSheet_Eng_ R6.pdf 43. Ibid. 44. Bueno-Hansen, Feminicidio 2010, pp. 290–311. See also, Marie-France Labrecque. Féminicides et impunité: le cas de Ciudad Juárez, Montréal: Écosociété, 2012. 45. Elvia R.  Arriola, “Accountability for Murder in the Maquiladoras:  Linking Corporate Indifference to Gender Violence at the U.S. Mexico Border,” Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2007, p. 616. 46. Ibid. 47. Wood, “An Investigation into Exploitation of the Mexican Female Body” p.38. 48. CLADEM (Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean for the Defense of Women’s Rights). Investigación feminicidio. Monitoreo sobre femicidio/feminicidio en El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua y Panamá. CLADEM regional, 2007. http://www.cladem.org/images/archivos/investigaciones/regionales/violencia/sistematizacion-feminicidio-2007.pdf.

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Migration, Border Crossing and Women 49. Melissa W.  Wright, “Protests to Politics:  Sex Work, Women’s Worth, and Ciudad Juarez Modernity,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 94, No. 2, June 2004, p. 378. 50. Norma Iglesias Prieto, Beautiful Flowers of the Maquiladora, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1997. 51. Elvia Arriola, “Where the Borders of Class, Race, Age and Sexuality Meet,” Women on the Border, http://www.womenontheborder.org/sexdiscrimination. htm (accessed on 23 June 2016). 52. Jessica Livingston, “Murder in Juarez:  Gender, Sexual Violence, and the Global Assembly Line,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2004, p. 61. 53. Labrecque, Féminicides et impunité 2012, p. 40, 48. 54. Melissa W.  Wright, “The Dialectics of Still Life:  Murder, Women, and Maquiladoras,” In Denise A.  Segura and Patricia Zavella, eds, Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Durham:  Duke University Press, 2007, p.195. 55. Wood, “An Investigation into Exploitation of the Mexican Female Body” p.28. 56. Ursula Biemann. “Performing the Border: On Gender, Transnational Bodies, and Technology,” in Claudia Sadowsky-Smith, Globalization on the Line: Gender, Nation, and Capital at U.S. Borders, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, pp. 99–118. 57. Wood., “An Investigation into Exploitation of the Mexican Female Body” p.28. 58. Julia Estela Monárrez Fragoso, “Las diversas representaciones del feminicidio y los asesinatos de mujeres en Ciudad Juárez, 1993, 2005” in El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Sistema Socioeconomicoy Geo-referencial sobre la Violencia de Género en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua: Propuesta para su Prevencion, Ciudad Juárez: Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Vol. 2, 2006, p. 365. Translation of “los hombres […] tienen la tendencia a visualizar y pensar en las mujeres como parte de la adquisición de derechos masculinos sobre la sexualidad y la capacidad reproductiva de las mujeres.” 59. Ibid., p.365. 60. Ibid., p.376. 61. Luibhéid, Entry Denied 2002, p.130. 62. Mirjana Morokvasic, “Migration, Gender, Empowerment,” in Ilse Lenz, Charlotte Ullrich and Barbara Fersch, eds, Gender Orders Unbound. Globalization, Restructuring and Reciprocity, Farmington Hills:  Barbara Budrich Eds., 2007, pp. 69–97. 63. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, “New directions in gender and immigration research,” in Laura Oso and Natalia Ribas-Mateos, eds, International Handbook on Gender, Migration and Transnationalism:  Global and Development Perspectives, Cheltenham, GB: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013, p. 233.

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Women and Borders 64. M. Bianet Castellanos and Deborah A. Boehm, “Introduction: Engendering Mexican Migration: Articulating Gender, Regions, Circuits,” Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 35, No. 1, 2008, p. 8. 65. Lourdes Benería, Carmen Diana Deere and Naila Kabeer, “Gender and international migration: globalization, development and governance,” in Laura Oso and Natalia Ribas-Mateos, eds, International Handbook on Gender, Migration and Transnationalism:  Global and Development Perspectives, Cheltenham, GB: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013, p. 45. 66. Rodrigo Domínguez Villegas and Victoria Rietig, “Migrants Deported from the United States and Mexico to the Northern Triangle:  A  Statistical and Socioeconomic Profile,” Migration Policy Institute. http://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/migrants-deported-united-states-and-mexico-northerntriangle-statistical-and-socioeconomic (accessed on 23 September 2016). 67. Hondagneu-Sotelo, “New directions,” 2013, p. 238. 68. Nicanor Madueño Haon, “El impacto de la variable de género en la migración Honduras-Mexico: el caso de las Hondureñas en Frontera Comalapa,” Estudios Sociales y Humanísticos, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2010, p.166. 69. Oscar Martinez, The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail, Verso Books, 2013. 70. González-López, “Nunca he dejado de tener terror” 2007, p.199. 71. Among others, see: Joyce Outshoorn, “The Political Debates on Prostitution and Trafficking of Women,” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, Vol. 12, No. 12, Spring 2005, p.141–55. 72. Aragón, Migrations clandestines 2014, pp.123–4. Translation by the author: Original text: “Et si la sexualité allait être une dimension de la réalité de la route clandestine, peut-être allait-il être nécessaire de lui donner une valeur utilitaire (…) Erlinda consentait à une relation amoureuse en échange d’expérience migratoire et de protection.” 73. Ibid., p.124. Translation by the author. Original text: “Myriam, comme Erlinda, savait que son corps de femme pouvait être à la fois un handicap et un atout sur la route clandestine. Elle ne se faisait pas d’illusions quant aux relations de pouvoir qui régissaient l’espace de passage, et c’est pour cela qu’elle allait tenter de les instrumentaliser.” 74. Ibid., pp.123–4 75. Mirjana Morokvasic, “Le genre est au cœur des migrations,” in Jules Falquet et al., eds, Le sexe de la mondialisation: Genre, classe, race et nouvelle division du travail,” Paris: Presses de Science Po, 2010, p.166. 76. See Laura Agustin, Sex at the Margins:  Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry, Zed Books, 2007. 77. Hondagneu-Sotelo, “New directions,” 2013, p. 238. 78. W. Wright, “Protests to Politics” 2004, p. 380.

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Migration, Border Crossing and Women 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

91. 92.

93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99.

100. 101.

Ibid. p. 380. Ibid., pp. 381–2. González-López, “Nunca he dejado de tener terror” 2007, pp. 224–46. González-López, Erotic Journeys 2005, p. 98. González-López, “Nunca he dejado de tener terror” 2007, p. 228. Ibid., p. 231 Ibid. pp. 232–3 González-López, Erotic Journeys 2005, p. 188. Ruiz, “Women, Migration, and Sexual Violence,” 2009, p. 35. González-López, Erotic Journeys 2005, p. 17. González-López, “Nunca he dejado de tener terror” 2007, p. 233. Elizabeth Maier, “The Unsettling, Gendered Consequences of Migration for Mexican Indigenous Women,” in Doreen J. Mattingly and Ellen R. Hansen, eds, Women and Change at the U.S.-Mexico Border: Mobility, Labor, and Activism, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 2008, pp. 31–2. Ibid., pp. 26, 28, 33. Frieda Molina, “The Social Impact of the Maquiladora Industry on Mexican Border Towns,” Berkeley Planning Journal, Vol 2, No.1,1985, pp. 35–6. See also: Benería, Deere and Kabeer, “Gender and International Migration” 2013, pp. 45–68. Ibid., p. 36 W. Wright, “The Dialectics of Still Life,” 2007, pp. 184–202. Maier, “The Unsettling, Gendered Consequences of Migration” 2008, pp. 19–35. Biemann, “Performing the Border” 2002, pp. 99–118. Castellanos and Boehm, “Engendering Mexican Migration,” 2008, p. 10. González-López, 2005, p. 187. Leo Chavez, The Latino Threat:  Constructing Immigrants, Citizens and the Nation, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008. As cited in Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2013, p. 241. “The bodies of immigrant women – namely poor immigrant women, women of colour and especially Mexican women – were seen as a threat to the US. Perceived as prolific breeders, they were also construed as racial threats to demographic homogeneity, social welfare drains on public schools and hospitals and as the culprits responsible for the social reproduction of immigration children and entire communities.” Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2013, p. 238. Castellanos and Boehm, “Engendering Mexican Migration,” 2008, p. 11.

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8 Gendered Everyday Bordering: An Ethnographic Case Study on the Border Between Finland and Russia Olga Davydova-Minguet and Pirjo Pöllänen

What, Where and Why? Although it is said that the world is getting smaller and that borders are becoming increasingly transparent and unrecognizable, for the NiiralaVärtsilä border area between Finland and Russia, this is not the case. The Finnish-Russian border was contested and redrawn during World War II, and since that time it has been highly controlled. During the Soviet era it acted as a border between states and their economic-political blocs, and is even now considered as a “border between continents” or at least the two different border regimes of the European Union (EU) and Eurasian Union. The influences of recent developments between the EU and Russia (namely the sanctions and counter-sanctions resulting from the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, and a decrease in tourism from Russia to Finland), and the agreement reached between Finland and Russia to tighten the border-crossing regime for third-country nationals are also tangible in the Niirala-Värtsilä border area. It can be said, that after a period of opening up the Iron Curtain 175

Women and Borders in the global area of Niirala-Värtsilä, the border has since become more controlled and has tightened once again. Thus, the period of de-bordering which took place in the 1990s and the 2000s has changed to become a period of re-bordering in mid-2010. During the de-bordering era, the relative openness of the border has led to transnational areas emerging on both sides of the border, and within these areas, the interpenetration of people, transnational families, ideas, material goods, cultural activities and administrative contacts have been highly visible. Typical of this area has been the gendered character of migration, and the majority of Russian migrants in the region of North Karelia on the Finnish side are women who have migrated to Finland through marriage with Finnish men from nearby Russian areas. In an opposite trend, those who are engaged in border crossings from Finland to Russia, are predominantly men who take the role of fuel-byers, officials, businessmen, cultural entrepreneurs etc.1 Our chapter concentrates on an analysis of bordering processes in the areas of North Karelia (in Finland) and the Republic of Karelia (in Russia), in a period characterized by a transition from de-bordering to re-bordering. Specifically, we ask how gender is presented and constructed in these processes. Theoretically, we look at the everyday bordering processes through the prism of precarization. We claim that in the border areas, the precarization of life has led to some ethicized and gendered features emerging, which in our case are represented in transnational care and national celebrations. This chapter is based on our long-term ethnographic research on the border area between Finland and Russia.2 Our research area consists of the eastern-most Finnish region, North Karelia. The region has 302 kilometers of common border with the Republic of Karelia of the Russian Federation, and the crossing point of Niirala-Värtsilä is the fourth busiest checkpoint between Finland and Russia. Our research field also crosses to the Republic of Karelia on the Russian side of the border. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain at the beginning of the 1990s, interactions between local people living on both sides of the border have undergone consistent growth. On an everyday level, this can be seen in the amounts of intercultural marriages between Finnish men and Russian women, and also in the migrants from Russia 176

Gendered Everyday Bordering who form the biggest foreign-born population group both in North Karelia and in Finland as a whole. On a daily basis, these migrants and members of their families, cross the border between Finland and Russia with different purposes: women often have care responsibilities on the Russian side, migrants also visit the border area on the Russian side of the border to buy groceries, tobacco and fuel, and to maintain social networks. Despite the familiarity of crossing the border, it has to be taken into account that many obstacles to cross-border interaction still exist. For example, crossing the border requires a valid visa, and sending money (e.g. remittances) from Finland to Russia or vice versa is an expensive and complicated process.3

Everyday Bordering in Transnational and Precarious Conditions The study is theoretically informed by the intersections of studies of gender, transnational care and memory politics in the context of precarization and border studies. The overall conceptualization of this chapter is informed by the theoretical understanding of the processes of the precarization of societies.4 Precarity can be understood in two ways: either as a hollowingout of the labor market, or as a hollowing-out of the whole society. Here, our theoretical thinking follows the latter and wider conceptualization of precarization. As Berlant puts it: Precarity has taken shape as many things: a realist term, denoting a condition of instability created by changes in the compact between capital and the state; an affective term, describing the historical present; and an ideological term, a rallying cry for a new world of interdependency and care that takes the public good as the apriori whose energies do not exist for the benefit of private wealth and which should be protected by the political class.5

It is obvious that contemporary capitalist societies are changing their character. The forms of work, education, family life, sociality and leisure, civic society and politics, and also their international relations are shifting from life-time, stable endeavors towards temporary, unstable, uncertain projects and phenomena. In labor market research, these processes have 177

Women and Borders been defined as the feminization of work, and are addressed in research considering theories relating to the precarization of work.6 Because of these processes, many populations (especially women and migrants) have to face uncertain circumstances not only from an economic point of view, but also as a result of the emotional and functional frames that shape their lives. As an additional consideration, the global geopolitical order has become even more unstable and militant, and is now vulnerable to conflicts which develop not only in the ‘traditional’ locations of the unstable Middle East, but also in post-Soviet areas. This instability creates feelings of precariousness, especially among groups of a population that have had some personal connection to the territories where such conflicts arise. Borders are also seen as precarious places, especially where the borders represent a collision of different border regimes, or they experience the effects of international conflicts. Bordering involves the border as a physical place, but as a theoretical concept, bordering addresses processes of the production of borders in much broader contexts than the border itself and these involve many different administrative, material and symbolic practices. The most unequivocal influence on bordering is that exerted by international conflict, and especially on the border, international conflict is felt even before it has fully developed. In the globalized world, the effects of international conflicts expand beyond concrete borders and territories. For example, the recent Russian-Ukrainian and Russian-EU conflicts have inevitably influenced all Russian and Ukrainian speakers in Finland, and elsewhere. In our case, we analyze the everyday and symbolic bordering processes that take place in the proximity of the border between nation states. In our view, this influences the border population in two ways. Firstly, for the inhabitants of North Karelia and the Republic of Karelia, the border is part of their everyday lives. Secondly, it constantly reminds them of the national meanings and symbolisms the border holds in today’s precarious geopolitical situation. When borders are seen not as fixed lines, but more as processes, practices, discourses, symbols, institutions or networks through which power works, then discussions of bordering take on a contemporary meaning.7 In opposition to post-modern conceptions of a brave new borderless world with neutral lines, borders can be perceived as collations of emotions, fears 178

Gendered Everyday Bordering and memories that can affect differently those who cross them, or those who stay on one side or the other.8 Bordering inevitably involves agency: it is not only an activity involving the classification of people and the delimitation of territory, but also one which highlights a struggle over representation and identity. Bordering is a political process that allows certain representations of identity and memory to exist, while denying others.9 Borders and bordering are employed in creating collectivities or divisions, social boundaries and frontiers. Bordering can develop in different directions depending on increases or decreases in the perceived influence of the dividing function of the border. These are addressed as processes of de-bordering or re-bordering. On a symbolic level, and also on the level of everyday interactions – bordering appears as a gendered process. On the symbolic level, bordering reflects a complex mix of national feelings, experiences, stories and affiliations, and is rich in gendered symbols.10 In border areas, bordering also becomes a part of everyday life, especially when crossing the border. On the Finnish-Russian border, the position of Russian immigrant women is different compared to that of native Finnish women, or to that of Russian women who live in Russia. Crossing the physical national border can have various notable effects: female bodies can become both sexualized and ethnicized, and the feeling that the border evokes is always uncertain and somehow frightening. The border represents a masculine dominance: both border guards and border-crossers are predominantly men, and the border itself can be considered as existing because of war, and which is guarded and maintained by the exertion of the power of the bordering states. As border crossers, women find themselves in an uncertain position: as objects of men’s gaze, as those whose bodies have become marked in terms of nationality and ethnicity, and as those whose “womanly” function as carers is made difficult to exercise when the movements of border-crossers are strongly prescribed.11 As an example of everyday bordering practices, we have used practices of transnational care and national celebrations. Care is an obvious example of everyday transnationalism that takes place in border settings, and in addition to work, care is seen as the most explicit site of precarization. Be it willingly or not, as humans we are all subject to care. In the globalized 179

Women and Borders world, precarious conditions have changed the conditions in which care is implemented, but care is also visible as an element of bordering processes, although it may go unrecognized. Bordering and everyday transnational practices are carried out by humans who have obligations towards each other. When defining care, it is important to understand that care firstly is bodily work, where one human body is caring for another human body literally or figuratively. Secondly, in many cultures care is seen as female work, and this has significance in the border context. In caring matters there is always the question: who is responsible for taking care of somebody?12 Celebration of a national day or national act of commemoration has to do with both the construction of meaningful memory, and also the concept of nation. National days represent an official self-understanding of nationstates, so their celebrations are strongly orchestrated and controlled. These days form a repetitive “religious service” in the civic religion of nationalism. The main function of national days is to remember the nation, and through remembrance of a foundational event of the nation’s past, to remind citizens of their national membership, and also the approved ways of being a part of a national community. National days accommodate “ecstatic,” emotionally engaging nationalism.13 National day celebration is a repetitive, highly formalized and prescriptive ritual. Its performance forms public emotions and virtues, and within it hegemonic authority is conveyed and naturalized. National day rituals often refer to or present a foundational historical event of the nation, and involve a model by which it is remembered. Ritual in and of itself is a transmission of its own discipline of memory and of its intrinsic temporality.14 From this point of view, it is interesting to think about the foundational events of the bordering nations, their ways of remembering, and how these celebrations include or exclude those who have become members of local communities, yet originate from the nation “behind the border.” Additionally, it is interesting to consider how present day national celebrations contribute to the feeling of precariousness. In this study we use theories of transnationalism as our viewpoint on the processes of bordering. The theories of transnationalism underline the multiplicity of networks and connections that go beyond the borders and boundaries of the nation state. In the same time, transnational thinking draws attention to the unequal power relations within these connections.15 180

Gendered Everyday Bordering The transnational approach paradoxically steers attention to the construction of borders and boundaries within the transnationally acting phenomena. Khagram and Levitt propose to switch this research perspective: In contrast to traditional perspectives, which see transnational phenomena and dynamics as a subset of those occurring somewhere between the national and the global, TS [Transnational Studies] includes another, in some cases, more productive option. What are assumed to be bounded social units are understood as transnationally constituted, embedded and influenced social arenas that interact with one another. From this perspective, the world consists of multiple sets of dynamically overlapping and interacting transnational social fields that create and shape seemingly bordered and bounded structures, actors and processes…. By transnational, we propose an optics or gaze that begins with a world without borders, empirically examines the boundaries and borders that emerge at particular historical moments, and explores their relationship to unbounded arenas and processes.16

Although we do not discuss transnational theories in an explicit way in this chapter, it is part of the wider theoretical framework of our study, namely, to identify the interconnection between bordering and everyday transnationalism.17 Our methodology is based on the tradition of the ethnography of everyday life.18 Everyday ethnography refers to a holistic way of doing research and an interest in knowledge rather than, for example, a way of collecting data. We are specifically interested in the gendered everyday practices taking place in the context of bordering and precarization.We have been developing the conceptualization of intersection of bordering and gender in our previous articles19 and this chapter exists on this on-going continuum. Our case study comprises several data-sets, namely. (1) ethnographic interviews, (2) ethnographic observations of the border crossings in Niirala-Värtsilä checkpoint (2007–16), and (3) ethnographical observations of national celebrations in Joensuu (Finland) and Sortavala and Petrozavodsk (Russia) (2013–16). 181

Women and Borders The interview data consists of ethnographic interviews with Russianand Finnish-speaking inhabitants of the border municipality of Tohmajärvi (2016, N=35). Most of the interviewees were women, but the spouses of the Russian-speaking women featured in the study were also interviewed. In addition, the data includes interviews with Russian wife-migrants20 (2003–4, N=16) and group discussions with Russian immigrant women (2009, N=10). During the group conversations, women discussed their working careers, family connections, their relation with public authorities, transnational relationships, leisure time, and the peculiarities of life in North Karelia.

Everyday Transnational Care and Gender The most obvious task where bordering process is connected to everyday gendered practices is transnational care. Care is a feature of human interaction, and among Russian migrant women who live a transnational everyday life, care is a distinctive issue. Russian migrant women living in Finland have care obligations towards their relatives who still live in Russia. In practice this means that women living their everyday lives in Finland cross the border between Finland and Russia regularly to take care of their relatives’ welfare on the Russian side of the border. Care can take place in the public sphere (e.g. in nursing homes for the elderly or kindergartens), or in the private sphere (at home). Commonly, public refers to the masculine sphere of life, whereas private refers to the feminine sphere of life – public is for an autonomous and rational man and private is for the dependent and caring woman.21 In addition, this implies that care is a female duty. Care is also a universal need. Fisher and Tronto argue “human existence requires care from others and such caring is an important part of life.”22 Even if care is a universal need and an element of a good quality of life, it is often defined as the work of a woman. Fisher and Tronto continue that women tend to care in the female sphere which is seen to include private matters, family affairs, unpaid labor and personal relationships.23 This therefore affects the nature of the care they provide, which in terms of duty and work, is often invisible and low paid. Ways of organizing care are culture-related, and definitions for good care and care 182

Gendered Everyday Bordering routines are also culturally constructed phenomena. Questions of how to organize care for elderly people or how to organize childcare are not issues of universal understanding, and in different cultures, different welfare state systems and different times, these issues are often seen differently. Also the division between public and private obligations is dependent on historical and political contexts. The caring systems of each society may be understood as being culturally organized systems. From the socio-political perspective, mainstream research has for a long time concentrated on the study of care systems within the public sphere. The hollowing-out of the welfare state and the precarization of societies have influenced the ways of organizing care in both private and public spheres. In the same way that state socio-political systems differ from one another, the way of organizing care in private life varies from one country to the next. In the sphere of private life, the concept of care inevitably refers to the family and family relations. It is taken that in many countries, the main unit of care is the family. However, there are different ways of organizing care within the family and the concept of family differs from one country to another. For example, the concept of family in Finland is based on the ideal of a nuclear or elementary family, whereas the concept of family in Russia follows either the extended family model or the extended motherhood model.24 The precarization and hollowing-out of welfare states emphasizes the importance of the family as the main unit of care in both Finland and Russia. In the case of the transnational family however, the inflamed geopolitical situation makes them even more vulnerable, and their everyday life and care even more precarious. As pointed out, care is a female duty both privately and publicly. Transnational care in Russian women’s lives means that they have care duties towards their family members living on the Russian side of the border. In practice, most of the women we talked with during our fieldwork in North Karelia were involved in providing transnational care for some of their close relatives on the Russian side of the border. In the most extreme cases, some women were the main carers for their parents who lived on the other side of the border. This meant that women needed to travel to Russia every weekend, in order to care for and look after matters concerning their 183

Women and Borders parents. Once we know that taking care of a sick, elderly person requires bodily care and an everyday presence, we realize that providing that care changes considerably when the carer lives at a distance. As such, the intensity of care tends to decrease in a transnational setting. Border crossing is always unpredictable. One never knows if there are queues at the border or how long the crossing may take, or whether there are new protocols, requirements or limitations. In regard to providing care, this creates both a paradoxical and precarious situation. Because care needs are unpredictable and may also require a physical presence, an individual may never know when your elderly relative who lives on the Russian side may suffer a medical emergency, or whether you are able to immediately respond. The interdependency between border regime/geopolitical crisis, border-crossing and transnational care came to the fore in the story of one of our informants, who told us about her feelings during Russian putsch (19.8.1991) when the border was closed for several days. For a woman of Russian origin living in Finland and her parents who stayed in Russia, the situation seemed unbearable, when the only daughter of elderly parents found herself on the Finnish side. Her situation felt chaotic and insecure, being cut off from her family by the closed border, and having no way of knowing how this situation would resolve.25 The same feelings of insecurity and uncertainty were described by our informants during our most recent field work in border areas in the summer 2016. The most recent conflict between Russia and Ukraine has created similar situations and feelings, for example some women with Ukrainian citizenship who live close to the border, have stopped their visits to Russia. The present day Russian-Ukrainian conflict intertwines with the complicated post-Soviet situation, when people moved from one post-Soviet state to another, and some members of these families also moved to Finland. Especially, if those who moved to Finland have care responsibilities towards a Ukrainian citizen living in the Russian Federation, then the border becomes an unbridgeable obstacle for providing everyday care, even if the caregiver would ideally like to move their relative to Finland for a limited time. The Ukrainian citizen living in Russia cannot get a visa to go to Finland (an EU state), and they would have to go to Kiev, which for a person who is old or in poor health is an unrealistic task. On the other 184

Gendered Everyday Bordering hand, the Finnish family reunification policy is based on the nuclear family ideology and does not consider elderly parents and their adult children as members of the same family. In this light, the Finnish immigration and family reunification policy is a bordering practice that affects transnational families’ everyday lives in a fundamental way. In our data there were cases where the woman of Russian origin did not have elderly relatives in Russia or Ukraine, or she was not the main carer, if such relatives existed. In such cases, women could distance themselves from the international conflict, although everybody, Russian- and Ukranian-speakers, felt it very personally. The care obligations towards somebody living across the border makes border and possibility to cross it the most significant part of organizing transnational everyday life. If the care responsibility towards elderly relatives was fulfilled by some other member of a transnational family, who still lives in Russia or Ukraine, the woman living in Finland could position herself as an observer of this geopolitical situation, but not as one who feels involved in it personally through her whole body. In such cases, traveling to Russia is not experienced as an everyday necessity, although it can be pleasant and important. The ways of organizing care vary from one country to another and depend on the welfare state system of the country. As the state (public policy) provides less welfare services and income transfers for its inhabitants, the meaning of family as a provider and organizer of care becomes more important. The trend in providing welfare in both the bordering states of Finland and Russia have run parallel: from universal generous welfare towards liberal and minimal systems.26 This means that in the future, (transnational) families will likely have to take on even more responsibilities in organizing and producing welfare for their members.

National Celebrations as Everyday Bordering From an everyday ethnographic point of view, celebrations and rituals are part of mundane, everyday life. In this part of the chapter we consider how national celebrations also cause (gendered) feelings of precariousness in the border context. In both Finland and Russia, present national days refer to World War II. In principle, the war and its 185

Women and Borders representations always bring to the fore masculine functions and symbolism.27 Finnish Independence day is celebrated on December 6 and Russian Victory Day on May 9. The Finnish date does not refer to World War II itself, but rather to the date of gaining its independence from Russia in 1917. Still, the celebration concentrates on remembering the defense of the independence of Finland during the wars with the Soviet Union in 1939–44. In Finnish North Karelia, the celebration of Independence Day is felt even more reverently than in the inner regions of Finland, because of its closeness to the border and the visible traces of battles and the defense fortifications that are well-maintained in some of the border municipalities. Historically, the present border in North Karelia is relatively new. Here, the border between Finland and Russia was established as a result of the so-called Winter War of 1939–40 (the term used in Finland – in Russia it is known as the Finnish War). At the conclusion of hostilities, Finland lost about 24,700 square kilometers of land, which accounted for approximately a tenth of its entire territory. The lost Karelian territories were regained by Finland during the so-called Continuation War (1941–4), which in Russia is perceived as part of the Great Patriotic War, which in Russian historical canon spans from 1941 to 1945. This territory was then regained by the Soviet Union in 1944, and part of this territory (namely Ladoga Karelia) was incorporated into the Soviet Karelia (up to 1990), which nowadays is called the Republic of Karelia of the Russian Federation. After the defeat of Finland in the Winter War in 1940, the entire population of Finnish Karelia (the Ladoga region and Karelian Isthmus), more than 400,000 people were evacuated to Finland. When the territory was returned during the summer of 1941, almost all of the evacuees returned to their homes. When Finland withdrew from the war against the Soviet Union in 1944 and Ladoga Karelia again passed to the Soviet Union, the entire population was once again evacuated to Finland. The loss of Ladoga Karelia (and other Karelian territories), the sufferings of war and evacuation, and experiences of a painful integration in new places make-up an extremely important set of the national collective memory of Finland, and also the personal and family memory of the original evacuees and their descendants. This memory is very well articulated and institutionalized, 186

Gendered Everyday Bordering and there are a huge number of works of art on the subject, together with large bodies of research,28 and civil society organizations including still active fraternities of former residents of the lost Finnish Karelian locales. The present day Russian population of the former Finnish Karelia was formed by many migratory flows. The first settlers moved to the area in 1940, were then evacuated, and subsequently returned to Karelia after the end of hostilities.29 During the Soviet time, the most important national celebration in Russia was devoted to the anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution and was celebrated on November 7. With the change of ideological regime, the former ‘main’ celebration was abolished. The victory over fascist Germany has been virtually the only event from the Soviet time that Russians have evaluated as doubtlessly positive. Now, due to both international and internal developments in memory-politics, this event has gained meaning as a celebration of a foundational event of the present-day Russian nation. Today, there is no common interpretation of the wars which took place between Finland and Russia. In Russia, an interpretation of the war has developed as a result of events which occurred in the processes of identity creation for the Post-Soviet states (e.g. the Baltic states and those of Eastern Central Europe), which started to interpret the post-war period as a Soviet occupation. In the 1990s, open discussion on the role of the Soviet Union in the war flourished, but in the 2000s, Russia returned to the Brezhnev era myth of a “great victory.” Russia’s official memory-politics now promote a view of Russia as an inheritor of a Soviet victory over fascism, and exploits this image in contemporary propaganda. For example, in reporting the events in Kiev in 2013–14 and the war in Eastern Ukraine in Russian official media, pro-Ukrainian forces were presented as fascists and proRussians as those who are defending the heritage of the Great Patriotic War and therefore representative of forces for good. In Finland, after a short period of establishing reconciliation with Russia in the 1990s, the public interpretation of the Winter and Continuation wars become narrowed to an existential fight against Russia for the survival of the Finnish nation.30 At the same time, different Finnish Karelian organizations in the former Finnish territories, authorities, and private individuals became involved in 187

Women and Borders different kinds of cooperation with local inhabitants, in order to make their histories and memories part of the landscape. Etkind proposes that the historical memory of societies should be thought of as a profoundly mediated phenomenon.31 In analyzing the mediation of appropriated events worthy of remembrance and the ways of doing so, he proposes to differentiate “memory hardware” (the monuments, artifacts and buildings that refer to such events and persons), and “memory software” (different texts, including literature, historical narratives etc.). Memory hardware is situated in the landscape and makes the masculine representations of history (wars) which it refers to, visible and present in people’s everyday life. War memorials are the most numerous of all public monuments throughout Europe, and have many of common features. They are probably the most ‘European’ in terms of symbolic culture, are easily translatable, and also define the topography and iconography of a historical period. When moving on the bordering areas, one can notice that they are full of different kinds of war memorials. For example, in the capital of North Karelia Joensuu, two of its three publicly funded museums exhibit war artefacts. The territory of the former Finnish Karelia has many Russian war monuments that were erected at different times, and symbolize different periods in the understanding of the war. The monuments erected in 1950–60 represent a typical Soviet style, being realistic, made from cheap materials, and showing mourning soldiers and sometimes mothers. The monuments of 1970–80 use the same symbolism, but their style is more symbolic. In the 1990s and early 2000s, memory activities involved larger circles of people, and included officials and activists. An example of an attempt to create common understanding of the war can be found about hundred kilometers from the border on the crossroads of the roads to Pitkäranta and Suojärvi. At the site of bloody clashes, authorities and organizations from both Russian and Finnish sides built a cross, formed by two female figures, leaning towards each other. These figures symbolize Finnish and Russian mothers (nations) who are mourning their fallen sons. In the 2010s, Russian authorities and civic activists turned once more to the traditional style of war monuments, many of which were renovated and reconstructed. Typically, the reconstructions included fixing the decayed 188

Gendered Everyday Bordering monuments and their surroundings, and also adding orthodox crosses to them. Additionally, wartime military equipment is often used in newlyerected monuments, acting as symbols of masculine triumph and power. The popular historical narratives (memory software) are not so visible and tangible as monuments and museums (memory hardware). They become explicit through the social interactions, lived experiences and are emphasized during the celebrations of national days and commemorations connected with them. For example, in Finland on Independence day the movie Unknown Soldier based on the novel of Väinö Linna, is always presented by the National broadcast company, Yle. This movie has been reshot twice. Also in present-day Russia, the television program always includes old Soviet-time war movies which evoke particular emotions in the viewers. Our informant told us, that on Victory day she is always watching Russian television, especially these movies. One of the most popular movies, The Dawns Here are Quiet was shot in Ladoga Karelia in 1972 and reshot in 2015. Now place of the shooting of this movie which is situated near Finnish-Russian border on the Russian side, is an unquestionable sightseeing place for Russian tourists traveling in Karelia. In the Republic of Karelia, from 2010 the celebration of Victory day and other national celebrations returned to the Soviet pattern, and were revitalized by the understanding of a victory as being ‘holy’ – not only as a sacrifice made by the whole nation, but also as being led by divine providence. Representatives of the Orthodox church take an active part in all celebrations, so producing the image of an Orthodox nation. In today’s Russia, the church is firmly involved in the production of a conservative ideology which in turn is promoted by the State as traditional Russian values. In Ladoga Karelia however, the national celebrations (traditional Russian Victory Day and the Day of Liberation of Karelia from the Fascist Occupation) are ambiguous. They follow an official scheme and present these territories as liberated from fascists, which sharply contradicts the factual history of these places. The celebration of Victory Day is usually organized as a rally in the main square of the particular city (e.g. Sortavala). It is characterized by the speeches of authority representatives which reiterate Soviet-era clichés about victory over the fascists, a march of citizens to the grave of fallen soldiers and the main monument that is erected there, 189

Women and Borders a memorial service by the grave and the laying of wreaths. Also so-called search parties, which involve school pupils, are presenting their activities. These activities involve searching and digging for the remains of fallen Soviet soldiers on former battlefields and identifying them. Search parties also collect the weapons and other equipment that can be found in the woods of Russian Karelia, and exhibit them in school museums.32 This celebration creates a feeling of belonging to the contemporary Russian nation, but the position of Finns and those who have personal connections with Finns places individuals in a contentious and ambivalent position. On the everyday level, this can be emphasized in the lives of transnational families. We can only imagine how precarious the position of a Russian woman, who has common children with her Finnish spouse, is in such a celebration. The meaning of the celebration, victory over the fascists, positions the defeated Finns in the role of enemies again and again, although the actual history of the territory is well-known. The celebration presupposes an interpretation of World War II that represents Finland as an ally of Germany, and therefore fascist and guilty of starting the war. Such a narrow understanding of history is however common in younger groups who have not lived through the experience of war, and have grown up in a post-Soviet Russia. On the Finnish side of the border, during the 1990s and 2000s, the creation of war monuments followed the line of a reconstruction of defense lines and marking the places of particular conflicts. Heroism and clever fighting was emphasized, which served to strengthen the masculine image of a Finnish nation.33 Also, the image of civilian suffering was presented in different museums and art exhibitions in North Karelia. The theme of a lost Ladoga Karelia is often present (for example in the Museum of North Karelia), and cherishing the lost cultural and historic heritage of Karelia is one of the central objectives of this museum. At the same time however, only a few years ago, a play presented by the Joensuu municipal theatre entitled, the Winter War, ended with a strong appeal to let the history of the Winter War rest in peace. The image of the Winter War as an event which reunited the Finnish nation in the face of a common enemy is commonly used in Finland when there is a need to emphasize national unity. On the everyday level, appeals to the “Winter War spirit” are found to produce the ground for racist bullying in the schools of North Karelia 190

Gendered Everyday Bordering where pupils of Finnish and Russian origin are studying together.34 The play presented by the Joensuu Theater was however a strong statement in the context of the Finnish conversation on historical memory, and called for new bases for national solidarity to be established. In Finland, the celebration of Independence Day follows the established scheme and involves religious church services, laying wreaths on the graves of fallen soldiers in cemeteries, and civic celebration where representatives of the municipal government, intellectuals and artists give speeches on the theme of independence. The celebration is usually serious, formal and fervent. Although speeches mostly address the memory of the war, the need to cherish it, and expressions of gratitude towards the veterans, some of the speeches reflect the changed character of Finland’s present-day state and population. The form and tone of these celebrations usually exclude immigrants, especially those from Russia. The television programming also repeats old movies and documentaries that use the vocabulary of the war, and legitimize terms of abuse about Russians that are considered inappropriate in present-day language. Independence Day is especially difficult for Russian immigrants in Finland, mainly because it recreates an image of Russia as posing an everlasting danger, and of Russians as the despicable racialized ‘other’ that was typical of Finnish wartime propaganda. Based on our ethnographic data analyses, the nationalized landscape is marked by war memorials and national celebrations that remind their participants of the approved collective memory, yet create a feeling of precariousness for those who live transnational lives. Also, to other dwellers in the border territories, these signs of national memory bring feelings of uncertainty and fear, especially against the backdrop of escalating geopolitical conflicts that have characterized recent years. In particular, they make an especially explicit turn from the de-bordering which was seen in the 1990s and 2000s, to a process of re-bordering which has been evident since 2010.

Discussion In this article the theory of precarization is used in a loose way and detached from its traditional context, namely, that of the welfare state and the labor 191

Women and Borders market. We see precarization as a useful theoretical and methodological tool, which broadens our understanding of bordering and everyday life in transnational border societies. If precarization presupposes the hollowingout of stable institutional and everyday structures, then it is a usable concept with which to analyze the present-day situation of the re-escalation of international conflicts and their effects on the lives of transnationally developing communities. As Eeva Jokinen et al.35 point out, precarization forms a user-interface for our time, and in the transnational context, it becomes even more evident. According to our analysis, in a transnational setting, precariousness can be seen as a clearly gendered phenomenon in such everyday practices as transnational care, and in national celebrations. As a typical everyday activity in bordering societies, transnational care is a familiar but somewhat precarious undertaking for immigrant women, and full of uncertainty. Yet in the face of international conflict, the practice of care becomes even more precarious and renders them to be more vulnerable. The actions of bordering fall upon women directly or indirectly, through a combination of issues that link to migration, citizenship and border crossing regimes. Nationalized memory landscapes and national celebrations laud men as those who protect the intactness and purity of the nation, which is typical of the nationalist imagination. In the territories of ‘lost Karelia,’ this historical conflict between states still exists on a symbolic level, and has escalated due to the ongoing Russian-EU conflict. The atmosphere of a nationalized landscape, and national celebrations that are infiltrated by the nationalistic memory of the war have an impact on all of those dwelling in bordering societies, but for women (and especially those who live transnational lives) it creates an especially precarious feeling, as it places women as objects or even abjects in these activities. In these border areas, the processes and impacts of bordering involve all of the areas’ inhabitants, and not only those who cross the border. From the point of view of transnational and cross-border living, which became possible in formerly divided territories during the post-Soviet period, the creation of regional cross-border identity would be a functional development. During the de-bordering period of the 1990s and 2000s, many forms of regional cooperation were developed, and even some 192

Gendered Everyday Bordering common administrative bodies and cooperation forums such as Euregio Karelia. In North Karelia, until 2013 the preparations to launch a visa-free regime with Russia were taken seriously. In the spheres of culture, trade and tourism, many concrete routines have been established, which help in the everyday interaction between citizens of bordering territories. However, the shift in the geopolitical situation has led to a drastic change in these developments, and even the international checkpoint of Niirala-Värtsilä is planned to change from being open round-the-clock to restricted opening. This plan enhances feelings of insecurity, vulnerability and precarity on the Finnish-Russian border.

Notes 1. Olga Davydova and Pirjo Pöllänen, “Gender on the Finnish-Russian Border: National, Ethnosexual and Bodily Perspective,” in Joni Virkkunen, Pirjo Uimonen and Olga Davydova, eds, Ethnosexual Processes: Realities, Stereotypes and Narratives, Helsinki: Kikimora Publications, 2010, pp. 18–35; Olga Davydova and Pirjo Pöllänen, “Border Crossing from the Ethnosexual Perspective: A Case Study of the Finnish – Russian Border,” Eurasia Border Review, No. 2:1, 2011, pp. 73–87; Pirjo Pöllänen, Hoivanrajat. Venäläiset maahanmuuttajanaiset ja ylirajainen perhehoiva, Helsinki: Väestöliitto, 2013. 2. E.g. Olga Davydova, Suomalaisena, venäläisenä ja kolmantena. Etnisyysdiskursseja transnationaalissa tilassa, Joensuu: Joensuun yliopistopaino, 2009; Davydova and Pöllänen, “Border Crossing from the Ethnosexual Perspective” 2011; Pöllänen, Hoivanrajat 2013; Olga Davydova-Minguet, “Voitonpäivänjuhla Sortavalassa. Juhlinnan ja muistin politiikkaa rajakaupungissa,” Elore, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2015. http://www.elore.fi/arkisto/2_15/davydova-minguet.pdf (accessed on March 15, 2016). 3. Davydova and Pöllänen, “Gender on the Finnish-Russian Border” 2011; Pöllänen, Hoivanrajat 2013. 4. See Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011; Paolo Virno, Väen kielioppi: ehdotus analyysiksi nykypäivän muodoista, Helsinki: Tutkijaliitto, 2006. 5. Lauren Berlant, “Austerity, Precarity, Awkwardness,” 2011, p. 2. https://supervalentthought.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/berlant-aaa-2011final.pdf (accessed on August 5, 2016). 6. See, e.g. Eeva Jokinen, Aikuisten arki, Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2005; Eeva Jokinen, Jukka Könönen, Juhana Venäläinen & Jussi Vähämäki, eds, “Yrittäkää edes!” Prekarisaatio Pohjois-Karjalassa, Helsinki:  Tutkijaliitto, 2011; Jussi Vähämäki,

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7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

Kuhnurien kerho – vanhan työn paheista uuden hyveiksi, Helsinki: Tutkijaliitto, 1999; Jussi Vähämäki, “Tehdasasetusten palauttaminen,” in Eeva Jokinen, Jukka Könönen, Juhana Venäläinen & Jussi Vähämäki, eds, “Yrittäkää edes!” Prekarisaatio Pohjois-Karjalassa, Helsinki: Tutkijaliitto, 2011, pp. 163–89. Corey Johnson, Reece Jones, Anssi Paasi, Louise Amoore, Alison Mountz, Mark Salter and Chris Rumford, “Interventions on rethinking ‘the border’ in border studies,” Political Geography, No. 30, 2011, pp. 61–9. http://www2. hawaii.edu/~reecej/Johnson%20et%20al%202011%20Political%20Geography. pdf (accessed on August 5, 2016). See Ilkka Liikanen, “From Post-Modern Visions to Multi-Scale Study of Bordering: Recent Trends in European Study of Borders and Border Areas,” Eurasia Border Review, Vol.1, No. 1, 2010, pp. 17–28; Anssi Paasi, “A Border Theory:  An unattainable dream or a realistic aim for border scholars?” in Doris Wastl-Walter, ed, The Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies, London: Ashgate, 2011, pp. 11–31. See Johnson et al., “Interventions on rethinking ‘the border’” 2011. Sylvia Walby, “Woman and Nation,” in Gopal Balakrishnan, ed, Mapping the Nation, New York: Verso, 1996, pp. 235–55; Nira Yuval-Davies, Gender and Nation, London: Sage, 1997; Tuula Gordon, Katri Komulainen and Kirsti Lempiäinen, eds, Suomineitonen hei! Kansallisuuden sukupuoli, Tampere: Vastapaino, 2002. See Davydova and Pöllänen, “Gender on the Finnish-Russian Border” 2010; “Border Crossing from the Ethnosexual Perspective,” Davydova and Pöllänen 2011. See Silva Tedre, Hoivan sanattomat sopimukset: tutkimus vanhusten kotipalvelutyöstä, Joensuu: Joensuun yliopisto, 1999; See also Pirjo Pöllänen, “Arjen käytännöt ja perhesuhteet venäläis-suomalaisissa perheissä” in Eija Sevón and Marianne Notko, eds, Perhesuhteet puntarissa, Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2008, pp. 153–65. John Bodnar, “Public Memory in an American City: Commemoration in Cleveland,” in John R. Gillis, ed, Commemorations. The Politics of National Identity, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 74–89; David McCrone, and Gayle McPherson, “Introduction,” in David McCrone and Gayle McPherson, eds, National Days: Constructing and Mobilising National Identity, Palgrave Macmillian, 2012, pp. 1–9; Michael Skey, “‘We Wanna Show ‘em Who We are’. National Events in England,” in David McCrone and Gayle McPherson, eds, National Days: Constructing and Mobilising National Identity, Palgrave MacMillan, 2012, pp. 41–56. Stephan Feuchtwang, “Ritual and Memory,” in Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwarz, eds, Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates, New York: Fordham University Press, 2010, p. 298. Deborah Bryceson and Ulla Vuorela, eds, The Transnational Family: New European Frontiers and Global Networks, Oxford: Berg, 2002; Inderpal Grewal,

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16.

17. 18.

19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24.

25.

Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Sanjeev Khagram and Peggy Levitt, “Constructing Transnational Studies: An Overview,” in Sanjeev Khagram and Peggy Levitt, eds, The Transnational Studies Reader: Intersections and Innovations. London: Routledge, 2008, p. 5. See, e.g., Davydova, Suomalaisena, venäläisenä ja kolmantena 2009; Pöllänen, Hoivanrajat, 2013. See Pablo Vila (ed.), Ethnography at the border, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2003; Jokinen, Aikuisten arki, 2005; Luisa Passerini, Dawn Lyon, Enrica Capussotti and Ioanna Lalioutoueds, Women Migrants from East to West. Gender, mobility and belonging in contemporary Europe, New York & Oxford: Bergham Books, 2007; Juraj Buzalka and Vladimír Benč, “EU Border Monitoring: Slovak – Ukrainian Border VyšnéNemecké/Uzhgorod and Vel’kéSlemence/Mali Selmenci,” Bratislava and Prešov: The Slovak Foreign Policy Association, 2007; see also Tedre 1999; Johanna Uotinen, Merkillinenkone. Informaatioteknologia, kokemus ja kertomus, Joensuu: Joensuun yliopiston humanistisia julkaisujua, 2005. Davydova and Pöllänen, “Gender on the Finnish-Russian Border” 2010. A wife-migrant is a person who has immigrated to Finland through marriage with a Finnish man. This term is commonly used in the Finnish-language literature on gendered migration from Russia to Finland. See also Bernice Fisher and Joan Tronto, “Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring,” in Emily, K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson, eds, Circles of Care: Work and Identity in Women’s Lives, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990, pp. 35–62. Fisher and Tronto, “Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring,” 1990, p. 35. Ibid, p. 36. See e.g. Riitta Jallinoja, Perheenaika, Keuruu: Otava, 2000; Anna Rotkirch, The Man Question: Loves and Lives in Late 20th Century Russia, Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Department of Social Policy, 2000; Katja Yesilova, Ydinperheenpolitiikka, Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2009; Elena Zdravomyslova, “Problems of Becoming a Housewife,” in Anna Rotkirch and Elina HaavioMannila, eds, Women’s Voices in Russia Today, Dartmouth: Aldershot, 1996, pp. 33–48. I was the only citizen of the USSR who managed to cross the border that day from Karelia to Finland. It was so, that only Finns were allowed to go to Finland, and Russians to Russia. And when I crossed the border with these two trucks, laden with timber, and we were met by our director, I burst into tears, and I couldn’t stop. It seemed that I managed to jump out through the last crack, and the border slammed behind me forever, and I would never see my parents, no one.

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9 Gendered Geographical Edges: Border, Contestation and Women in Kashmir Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra

Over the decades there are perceptible changes in the functions that borders perform across the globe. While many of them are becoming permeable, many others are becoming rigid, and a few others remain static. Depending on the history, geography and social-cultural dynamics, borders provide a unique case study to draw interesting pieces of analysis. For this research the case study is Indo-Pak border in Kashmir. The current land border between India and Pakistan is about 3,323 kilometers, of which about one-third (1,225 kilometers) runs through Kashmir. Out of 1,225 kilometers, 210 kilometers is International Border (IB), about 150 kilometers is Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL) and the rest (about 788 kilometers) is Line of Control (LoC). India and Pakistan mainly share two types of border in Kashmir: recognized and unrecognized. The IB is recognized, while the LoC is unrecognized and instigated multiple divisions of Kashmir. The LoC follows an undefined geographical route, cutting across villages and even houses and has always been the bone of contention between India and Pakistan. This temporary border drawn and redrawn through wars and agreements is “identifiable by traces of blood, bullets, watchtowers, and ghost settlements.” The international border is recognized and well-defined but it too has witnessed bloodshed 197

Women and Borders and hostility. The borderland in Kashmir until recently witnessed a hostile border characterized by unfavorable conditions, including wars, intermittent cross-border firing and shelling with varying intensity, a profusion of mines in and around habitations, permanent presence of security forces and rigid controls; making the lives of the borderlands extremely difficult. The partial opening of the border in 2005 generated hope with some positive outcomes, including a reunion of divided families scattered all along the contested LoC. Yet, there are gendered nuances, which are mostly overlooked. This chapter scrutinizes the lives, situation and location of the border women in Kashmir. It engages the gendered experiences at the border by locating women as part of the larger group of the borderlanders to probe: what are the ordeals that these women confront? How do they negotiate survival in a contested space? Has the flexibility at the border impacted their lives? The chapter challenges the state-centric focus on the contested border by prioritizing gender in order to widen the border discourse and rescue the geographic space that has alienated and tormented the nearby residents, including women. The chapter argues for an urgency to reverse the state-oriented approach to the Kashmir conflict by positioning people at the center of the analysis. For this, it is necessary to document the ordeals the borderlanders have undergone for more than six decades. A prioritization of borderlanders and their ordeal will rescue the contested geographic space from a state-centric encumbrance. It may also recast the theoretical and policy debate on contested borders and help engender enabling policies. This urgency to prioritize the borderlanders and the goal to recast the theoretical and policy debate have guided my writings on the border. While select borders in the world such as the US-Mexico and the United Kingdom-Ireland have drawn significant attention from scholars across disciplines, the borders in Kashmir has remained under-researched. Despite the persistence of violence at this border with short-term and long-term implications for the borderlanders, there is scarce literature focusing on this part of South Asia. Wilson and Donnan argue “the idea of the border as an image for cultural juxtaposition has entered wider … discourse,” which “underplays the material consequences of state actions on local populations.”1 198

Gendered Geographical Edges Borders fascinate me in multiple ways. Each time I visit these geographical edges, I get new insights, come across new encounters and information. My sustained interest in understanding this contested border is a direct outcome of my fascination with its uniqueness, which transcends the physical nature of the border and permeates almost into every aspect of adjoining life. There is so much to explore and document in the contested borderland of Kashmir, I wonder how there is so little research on these areas. Perhaps, the very nature of the border, being a contested one, and the distance from the mainland, makes this borderland a pariah for all – the mainlanders, the scholars, the policy makers, and the media. This chapter is the product of multiple surveys conducted in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir over a decade – from 2005 to 2015. The visits to various border areas helped fathom deep into a situation, hitherto less explored. Through qualitative methods of semi-structured interview, informal interaction and personal observation, my surveys and writings have attempted to draw attention to the contested Kashmir border. During my surveys, I have interviewed and interacted more with the border residents, the common people, than with the leaders, administrators or experts. By spending days and nights in the border villages, wherever permitted by the state authority, I observed life along state edges. Starting from the border areas of Jammu region, where villages are in the plains and one does not actually need permission to visit them, to the villages in the mountains and, at times, difficult terrains, of the Ladakh region, where one needs permission to visit, the narratives on border life share many commonalities. Border life is not normal, as it is on the mainland. It is more so when people are living along an actively contested border. Admittedly, the focus of many of my field surveys and writings has not been gender, except the survey in mid-2007 in the Ladakh region, when I was a co-investigator for a study of border women and their ordeals. However, while exploring life along the borders, information on the intersection of gender and borders becomes a natural derivative. Women are the center of households in traditional societies, across religious considerations, including Kashmir. Seldom one would come across women in living rooms where guests frequent. They would occasionally enter 199

Women and Borders the room with tea and snacks. One may come across border women when they are working in the fields, or washing utensils and clothes outside of their homes and in the market. My interactions with border women should be partly credited to Seema, my wife and first editor of this compilation, with whom I conducted many of the field studies. Her research focus being on gender and mine being on conflict and border, we often conducted field surveys together looking for the information that we needed for our individual as well as joint projects. Through her, I had relatively easy access to the interiors of the border houses. Also, I spent a lot of time in the border areas of Kashmir in the years 2014 and 2015 and was invited on many occasions to spend days and nights at the houses of the borderlanders, with the opportunity to be part of family dinners. While in some places I was served food with the male members of the family, there were others houses where I was treated as a family member, having access to the interiors. As I encountered myriad border life related narratives, many of them coming from women, I felt an urge to focus on the gendered nature of the border. Through an assortment narratives, I provide here an insight into the uniqueness of gendered life along the contested border in Kashmir.

Border in Kashmir Johnson and Graybill argue, “National borders represent the territorial embodiment of a bundle of ideas that modern states have propagated and enforced. They tell us that all of the humanity is divided up among discrete nation-states; that these nations have sovereign powers over particular territory to the exclusion of other nations; and that, collectively, nations exercise this sovereignty over all the earth.”2 The borders that demarcate state boundaries also separate the borderlanders who may share integrated identity and culture. When border conflicts occur, citizens of the participating countries suffer, yet the communities living along the border suffer more. The borderlander-centric approach has emerged as a crucial component of border discourse in recent times. Scholars have interrogated the traditional  notion of security, which 200

Gendered Geographical Edges considers borders sacrosanct and points out the asymmetry of attention to the states at the cost of the people in border and security discourse. 3 The focus on people is essential to making the concept of security inclusive and relevant to existing realities.4 In consonance with this emerging global discourse, while focusing on the gendered lives of Kashmiri border women, I argue that border and human security cannot remain mutually exclusive. India and Pakistan are locked in a bitter rivalry over Kashmir that led to the creation of a rigid and tense border. Kashmir enjoyed an integrated life for centuries before its partition in the late 1940s. The Indo-Pak wars led to the drawing and redrawing of borders in Kashmir, which continue to remain contested. The international border, extending from Kathua to Akhnoor, is recognized and the LoC, extending from Akhnoor to the Siachen Glacier, is a de facto border. The border remains tense not only during wars or war-scares but also during times of relative peace. This border is never quiet; violence continues, only the intensity varies.5 India and Pakistan continue to address security from a traditional state-sovereignty perspective, perhaps because the more a state is able to control its territory, more powerful it is considered. Van Schendel notes, “The state’s pursuit of territoriality – its strategy to exert complete authority and control over social life in its territory – produces borders and makes them into crucial markers of the success and limitations of that strategy.”6 The all-pervasive security apparatus in terms of observation towers, strict border surveillance, landmines, electrified fencing and intermittent firing and shelling is a testament to the tense border. The secessionist movement that surfaced in the late 1980s on the Indian side of Kashmir led to the swelling in the number of security forces along the border and permanent laying of mines and electrified fencing to check the cross-border infiltration. Two factors contributed to the partial softening of the border in Kashmir after decades. Arguably, international developments such as post-Cold War globalization and softening of borders in other parts of the world impacted the bordering practices in Kashmir. In 2003, a ceasefire on the border was announced by India and Pakistan. For the first time, the two states agreed to completely halt hostilities on the border, including a cessation of firing and shelling. Though the ceasefire 201

Women and Borders helped reduce cross-border violence, it could not completely end it. The contested borderland continued to witness ceasefire violations and consequently, borderlanders continue to suffer. In 2005 the border in Kashmir partially opened for restricted movement. In 2006 another intra-Kashmir route was opened. Yet, the cross-border exchanges are not smooth due to procedural delays, official apathy, corruption and financial constraints.7

Life Along the Border The borderlanders in Kashmir do not lead a “normal” life.8 They have to negotiate survival every day amidst landmines, cross-border firing and shelling, and permanent presence of the security forces. The temporary but recurrent displacement from their homes along the border, due to augmented firing and shelling, is a reality that these people have experienced more than six times since the 1940s. Borderlanders further suffer from the trauma of separation from family members since the first division of Kashmir in the late 1940s. When the border was drawn after the Indo-Pak war, men and women who happened to be on either side of the border were forced to remain there without any recourse to return to their families and native places. Families were split – wives lost their husbands, mothers lost their children, and sisters and brothers were separated from each other almost permanently. Reunion became a possibility for many with the partial opening of the border but only temporarily. All these issues notwithstanding, a considerable demography in Kashmir lives along these contested edges. The borders are not sparsely populated, a major reason that the border was drawn amidst habitation suddenly, overnight. There were no deliberations, no plan, and no information regarding the possibility of drawing a border. An arbitrarily state-drawn physical demarcation divided the mainland to make those living along the newly-drawn line borderlanders. “This was our ancestral home. Where could we go? Everything changed overnight. From mainlanders we became borderlanders. This was not our choice. But, we had nowhere else to go so we continue to juggle with our identity and fate of being borderlanders,” told a border woman in the Kargil region in May 2007.9 202

Gendered Geographical Edges The Kashmir borderland was an alienated one until the mid-2000s.10 An alienated borderland is a populated land near a border with rigidity, control and militarization being major characteristics, argues Oscar Martinez. There is no cross-border exchange. The borderland in Kashmir, carved in a hostile environment, emerged as a circumscribed and alienated habitation characterized by “extremely unfavourable conditions” including “warfare, political disputes, intense nationalism, ideological animosity, religious enmity” and “militarization and establishment of rigid controls”11 As states attempt to exert total authority and complete control over their side of the border in pursuit of territoriality,12 the consequences are borne by those residing close to these markers of state sovereignty. Martinez argues: “As the peripheries of nations, borderlands are subject to frontier forces and international influences that mold the unique way of life of borderlanders, prompting them to confront myriad challenges stemming from the paradoxical nature of the setting in which they live.”13 Borderlanders confront multiple problems continually as a tension-filled climate seriously interferes with the efforts to lead normal lives.14 The crystallization of uncertainty along the border severely impacts adjoining life.15 Life at the border is wretched for all those who reside along these formidable physical markers of state power and sovereignty. Women suffer in multiple ways, with some of the sufferings shared with the larger group and others being specific to their gender. The military presence is part of the fortification process and some “sensitive” border areas resemble military cantonments. Heavy militarization ensures that traces of normalcy are minimal. The mobility of people is restricted and at many places the residents are under strict surveillance. The permanent presence of the security forces for the protection of the border curtails mobility of border women. The greater the security at the border the greater the human insecurity along these geographical edges. Human security of demographies along the border remains highly undervalued as power and national interest dominate the scenario. However, as I have argued elsewhere, One crucial point that needs emphasis … is that the suffering of border people does not remain static despite the sacrosanct nature of the border, as the very border becomes

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Women and Borders subject to the dynamics of interstate relations between India and Pakistan. Hence, one may witness a relatively tranquil border at the time of dialogue and a trembled border during tense atmosphere.16

One may, hence, come across a range of narratives arising out of a curious mixture of present as well as past developments at the border. Narratives may change but they are not bereft of the abnormality which is a permanent feature of border life, at least in the context of contested borders. The presence of women in public places is restricted in traditional societies. And this becomes further stringent along the heavily guarded border, where the presence of the “strangers (security forces) with power” is all pervasive. While the nationalist sentiment is pervasive in most parts of the border habitations, it is difficult to gauge if this sentiment is imposed or it comes from within. What is not difficult to assess is that nationalism cannot completely overshadow the problems that people confront due to the presence of the security forces. “The security forces are our own people. They are deployed here to protect the country from external aggression. But, it is a fact that they are strangers, they are not known to us. They have the power that comes from a gun. Our mobility is highly restricted. We are not allowed to venture outside our homes in the evening. Even during the day, we go with a male member of our family. My mother is scared as there is a security camp near our school. She would always send my younger brother with me to school. He always gets late for his school since first he has to accompany me to my school. While coming back from his school he waits for more than one hour outside my school so that we can go home together. On the days when my brother is not home, I do not go to school,” said a young girl studying in a government high school in the Akhnoor area near the border in Jammu.17 The uneasiness that accompanies the sight of gun-wielding security forces is all pervasive especially when one talks to women. “We take a long detour to our field, to avoid the security personnel camp. They do not say anything but we feel awkward. Some of them may be roaming shirtless, others may be sleeping on the ground and on the trees their undergarments will be hung for drying. They may be laughing with each other or singing songs in chorus, but we feel awkward. They are not known to us and they are not even from our village. They may 204

Gendered Geographical Edges be good people but after all they are men and we are women. We cannot feel comfortable when strangers are all around and too with guns,” told a respondent from a Poonch village.18 “I know they are doing their duty but after all they are men and at times the way they see us while we are passing through is really embarrassing. And, once in a while a person in combat dress may pass a comment on a girl,” informed another respondent from a village in Kargil in 2012.19 I remember an episode when a friend of mine heard some lewd comments from an on-duty security officer. Her brother who was accompanying her confronted the person. The security personnel then hit her brother with the butt of a gun. Her brother suffered injuries. Following the protests, the man responsible for causing the injury was suspended. We don’t know what happened to him after that but my friend stopped going to school since that day. Within a month she was married though she was not even eighteen years, (the official age of marriage for a girl in India). I have not seen her since then. Her paternal family also moved to the mainland.20

The general refrain that “men will be men” or “boys have fun” plays a psychological role in influencing women to be apprehensive of the motives of men, particularly strangers. The security forces represents a state and their behavior at the border contributes to the image of the state. Though this consciousness may deter the security forces to indulge in criminal activities along the border, it is not that the forces have not indulged in such activities any time, adding to the gendered vulnerability along the geographical edges. The fortification along the Kashmir border not only involves heavy militarization. The electrified fencing and mining further rigidify the border and contribute to the alienation of the borderlanders. The violence at the border is considered normal by the states as well as mainlanders. It rarely becomes part of major public discourse, though the borderlanders continue to lose life, get maimed, and incur economic loss. Landmines have been planted around houses, schools, and land and pastures, to check illegal movement from across the border. Earlier, during wars, such as in 1965 and 1971, or during war-scares, mines were planted, but with the increase in militant infiltration from the Pakistan side of the border, the mines have become a permanent feature of the border fortification. The mines not only curtail the mobility of the people but kill and maim people and cattle 205

Women and Borders and other animals. The mines, along with electrified and barbed fencing erected all along border add to the losses of the borderlanders. The fence, erected much inside (at a range of about three to five kilometers) instead of at the edge of the border, make it difficult for people to cultivate their fertile land that falls beyond the fencing. “Mines are near our houses, in our farms and pastures. They are everywhere. So you can well imagine our situation and loss,” said a borderlander in May 2007.21 Usually, the end of hostilities lead to the removal of landmines from residential areas, but many mines remain undetected. I was shown a visible top of a can buried in mud in a border village in Kargil in 2007 and informed that this is a landmine which was planted in 1971. Mines may change their place due to rain or the movement of rodents and hence remain undetected. The assessment of the extent of loss in tangible terms due to landmines is not feasible due to the nonavailability of data. But, one can come across landmine-injured people in most border villages. Here, the gender-specificity is notable, bearing in mind the fact that women, while engaging with the border, simultaneously engage with patriarchy. Patriarchy accompanies border women everywhere. I met a 15-year-old girl in 2012 who was injured by a landmine blast while playing. She was nine years-old when the accident occurred, losing one leg. “Her life is ruined. No one will marry her now. We will take care of her until we are alive. But who will look after her when we are gone? We are tense every day thinking about her future. A man despite all problems gets a girl for marriage, but a woman does not enjoy the same privilege in our society. God knows what will happen,” sighed the father, with the girl sitting silent and her mother weeping.22 The borderlanders, living within the distance of 5–7 km of LoC, confront frequent firing and shelling from across the border. A small trigger, for instance, a statement from a political leader may turn the border violent, with firing and shelling from both sides of the border. Many times, even without an apparent reason, exchange of fire takes place. “It is regular. It can happen anytime— morning, afternoon or night, any day of the week and with any intensity—heavy or light,” informed a borderlander in August 2012.23 The cross-border firing and shelling take place indiscriminately; the target is not only the security personnel but also houses, schools, people and cattle. There is no available data as to how many people have been 206

Gendered Geographical Edges killed and injured due to cross-border firing and shelling but the traces of destruction and stories of death and injuries are common along the contested border. I came across a woman who had a bullet in her head from the cross-border firing. The woman was middle-aged and married. She, however, lived alone with her 19-year-old son who worked as a daylaborer. The bullet from across the border hit her while she was doing daily chores in front of her house. Her husband took her to a government hospital and a local NGO took her to a private doctor. The doctor announced that the bullet could not be taken out. She is now leading a life, which is less mobile and more painful. “I have a headache all the time. I cannot stand for a long time. At times my hands and legs become numb, and I am not able to speak. In short, I am useless now and that is why my husband remarried. On my request, though, he did not divorce me. Officially, I am married but I have no help from my husband. Life is always easy for a man. If my husband would have suffered this problem, I could have never thought of leaving him. But, if a woman is unable to work she is of no use. A bullet changed my life forever; it brought not only unbearable physical pain but also psychological trauma.”24 The borderlands are regions of scarcity, inaccessibility and fear. All these have gendered implications that are not too difficult to comprehend. The simultaneous negotiation with a volatile and hostile border and discriminatory social set-up add to the vulnerability of women. Economic development at the contested geographical edges is minimal. With territorial security being a priority, development and basic amenities are undermined. Education, health services and other essential facilities like communication and transport are not easily available. Under these circumstances, women, already being a vulnerable demography owing to a patriarchal social setup, confront more problems than men. “If there is a shortage of water or food, who gets less? It is women. If school is expensive then sons will be sent to school, if schools are far and transport is an issue then daughters will suffer. If health services are expensive or far away, women will suffer more. This happens everywhere and border regions are no exception,” lamented a women respondent.25 Scarcity which is a characteristic feature of most borderlands becomes further acute when the border residents are forced to move to the mainland 207

Women and Borders on a temporary basis to escape increased border hostility. Hence, genderspecific suffering is not only confined to the border but continues even in the displaced camps. Displacement is a common feature of border life in Kashmir. Wars, war-scares, heavy firing, shelling and the mobilization of security forces on the border lead to displacement. The borderlanders have decamped many times; in 1947–48, 1965, 1971, 1987, 1999, 2001, 2014, 2015 and 2016. The displacement continues for days, sometimes for months and at times, for years. Hence, border displacement can be termed temporary but recurring. Displacement is a global reality and the life of the displaced is well documented. In Kashmir, the temporary relocation saves the lives of the border residents but they confront another set of problems. Once they reach the mainland they have to constantly struggle for survival. Herded together with minimal access to shelter and other basic amenities, survival is ensured primarily through government aid, which more than often is insufficient and irregular.26 Problems caused by border displacement range from deprivation of traditional livelihood sources to a decrease in income; from an adverse impact on socio-cultural life to an increase in health problems; from lack of educational facilities to that of essential services like communication and transport. Border women bear the specific consequences of living in make-shift camps. The minimal facilities meant for all camp-dwellers irrespective of gender, such as common toilets and living spaces with no privacy, are particularly problematic for them. And, when they return to their native places along the contested border, another set of problems await them. The division of families, due to border creation in Kashmir, has specifically impacted border women.27 Kashmir witnessed a fully-fledged IndiaPakistan war in the late 1940s. The fierce war eventually ended following a United Nations negotiated ceasefire. The ceasefire led to the division of Kashmir between India and Pakistan. The line of division passed not only through valleys and mountains but also through villages and even houses; the consequence being the division of the families along with the division of Kashmir. There are no reliable statistics regarding how many families were divided following the division of Kashmir. The pangs of separation are however scattered across the dividing lines, suggesting that the number could be running into the thousands. The impromptu creation 208

Gendered Geographical Edges of the border and consequent separation brought immense hardships for women. The division of families resulted in wide-ranging sufferings for women, ranging from social and cultural to economic and emotional. This is more specifically applicable to those who became separated from their husbands. Separation from one’s husband in a patriarchal society has economic, social and emotional implications. Separation pushed these women into a vulnerable position in the dominant patriarchal setup. Women, who had never before considered working, had to do odd jobs to look after their children. Some separated women remained in contact with their husbands through occasional letters while others were unaware of their whereabouts. Many of them continue to consider themselves ‘married’ without seeing their husbands in decades. Their hope to reunite with their husbands did not die. These separated women are enmeshed in a single trap of forced separation from their beloved, merely as a result of the drawing of a border through war and violence. Women who raised their children as single mothers or as the wives of another man reveal stories of endurance. They may lack the capability to put forward their stories in a sophisticated manner but their lives are examples of commendable courage and patience. Most separated husbands remarried but not all separated wives did. Some women accepted divorce and remarried after waiting for a reunion for a period that ranged from ten to fifteen years. For many divorced women their second marriage was represented a compromise for economic and social security and for their children. “There was no option. Once I realized my husband would not be here again, I had no choice. He divorced me through a letter and suggested to marry his younger brother for the sake of our three children. My brother-in-law was a married man and I am his second wife. My children have a roof over their head and I have a place to stay until I die. A woman cannot live alone in our society,” told a respondent.28 Many of the divorced women somehow got accustomed to the reality of remarriage; others like Habiba Khatoon refused a divorce. She died in November 2007 waiting for her husband. She had been married for four years and was a mother of two children when Kashmir became partitioned. Her husband was stranded in Kharmang on the other side of the LoC. Her 209

Women and Borders husband proposed divorce after ten years but Habiba did not agree to it. Instead, she built a window in her house overlooking the Kargil-Skardu road. She spent most of her free time looking at this road, waiting for the day her husband would return. For many border women, the pain of separation runs so deep it is difficult to discuss it without becoming overwhelmed with emotion. In many cases, these women are unable to bear the trauma, which has affected their health and consequently, lifespan. Some separated wives died prematurely, being unable to bear the trauma. “My mother died early. She was only 35 and I was then only 15. She could not bear the pangs of separation. It was too much for her. I saw her dying day and night. My maternal family took care of me. She cried all the time. I am not sure if my father is still alive but I do hope that they meet again in heaven,” told a respondent.29 “My mother lost her mental balance as soon as she realized that she may not be able to meet her husband and son again. They both have gone to market in Skardu for monthly shopping. They could not come back due to the war. We are since then Indians and they are Pakistanis. We tried to contact them but have no information if they are even alive. My mother is now confined to one room. She just keeps repeating the names of my father and brother. She does not recognize anyone now, not even her daughter,” told another respondent.30 I then went to the room where the respondents’ mother had been locked in for decades. A dark and stinky room with traces of sunlight from a small covered window has been her abode for decades. She looked at me but did not say anything. She began talking to herself, often murmuring two names Javed and Rahman. Hasina’s father had gone to visit his ailing sister at Brachel and found himself stuck once the border was drawn. “My mother died pining for him but my father could not return even after she died, although before the partition he made that journey by foot,” she narrated.31 It is difficult for Rubina to forget the fate of her mother. “I never saw my mother smiling … She performed all her duties but internally she was completely ravaged … Even after death, her eyes were open probably looking for her husband.” she lamented.32 Some women have no confirmed news about their husbands. Sakina’s husband had gone to Skardu to buy some essential items and was stranded 210

Gendered Geographical Edges when the war broke out in 1965. He remarried there after about ten years. Sakina did not remarry. In 2004, she received unconfirmed news of her husband’s death. To quote her, “Since the news is not confirmed, I do not know whether I should mourn or long for a reunion. If the news is correct, look at my fate. I have not even mourned the death of my husband for whom I have been waiting so long. Though I am leading the life of a half-widow but somewhere in my heart for all these years, I had hoped for reunion… This news has left me shattered. I am collecting money to send my son to Pakistan to verify the news. The information, whether good or bad, is very crucial for me. If he is no more, at least I would mourn. If he is alive, my hopes of meeting him will get rejuvenated. You must have heard the song, which is my favorite and aptly define our tragedy: panchhi nadiyaan pawan ke jhoke, koi sarhad na inhe roke. Sarhad insaanon ke liye hai, socho tumne aur maine kya paya insaan hoke (No border stops birds, rivers and air. Borders are for humans. What have you and I achieved by being humans).”33 The trauma of losing loved ones impacted the borderlanders cutting across gendered divisions. People innovated several strategies to reunite, through illegally crossing the border, or to meet at least through temporarily through applying for a visa and going through circuitous routes to reach their destinations or meeting in a third country. Women experience several gendered hurdles in this context. Low social status, illiteracy and lack of economic resources, are some of the factors that adversely impacted prospects of reunion or even temporary meeting. Also, above all, getting the permission from the husband or extended family is difficult. The flexibility at the border, initiated in 2005, facilitated reunification of some of the divided families, though on a temporary basis. Family reunion, however, had been largely an all-male affair. Due to the patriarchal nature of society and also due to financial restraints, women are at the receiving end. They are not able to meet their separated relatives even temporarily. Bano was excited when she heard about the opening of trans-LoC routes. She was separated from her paternal family when the village in which they were residing was designated a part of Pakistan. Her husband, an ex-service man of the Indian army, did not allow her to remain in contact with her 211

Women and Borders relatives. The rolling of the Poonch-Rawalakote bus in 2006 reignited her hope of reunion with her parents and siblings. Some relatives who visited her from across the LoC brought a DVD that her brothers had made for her. Through DVD she received the news of the death of her parents. The DVD provided her information about her siblings. She could also see photographs of the relatives whom she had never met; sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law and their children. While playing the DVD for me, Bano even began conversing with her brothers and sisters, as if they could hear her. Repeatedly she kissed the screen with tears constantly streaming. Bano desperately wished to see her family, but could not get ‘permission’ from her husband. Her husband revealed that such kind of contacts can raise suspicion as he is a retired security person. Bano asked him a moot question while he was explaining his point: “What if your family members were there?” Her husband did not answer and Bano said, “This is the price I have to pay for being a woman. Had I been a man I could have boarded the first bus. I will take this anguish to my grave.”34

Conclusion The ordeal of border women needs to be prioritized in the discourse on border and borderlands. Unlike men, women are not only the victims of their proximity to the geographical edges, their ordeal is further exacerbated due to their very location in a society in which everything, including their existence, is viewed through a patriarchal prism. Gendered narratives are not part of the local discourse in Kashmir. The centrality of gender needs to be emphasized, to make the discourse inclusive and gender-sensitive. The intersection of the border and women also makes a strong case for human security to be accorded due significance in any discourse on border, security and state. Human security needs to be prioritized over the stubborn politics of territory and state security, guided by the realist theory according to which national interest and power are supreme state goals. The traditional notion of borders as means of control needs to be squarely interrogated, and the border needs to be transformed into lines of contact, commerce and cooperation. They must become sites 212

Gendered Geographical Edges states not only meet, but also where people engage in productive relations. The potential for peace in these interactions can be ignored at a huge cost. The initiatives along the border such as opening the cross-border roads for travel and trade, for allowing the divided families to meet through these roads, can pave the way towards ameliorating sufferings of the border people, including women. These measures can also help defuse bilateral tensions and ultimately transform the conflict. It may help transform the LoC, which remains mostly rigid, into a flexible line that allows states and people to co-mingle and co-share, for a future in which both are equal stakeholders. Such a development will further soften the rigid positions of the parties involved and turn their gaze to the issue, not from a hardcore realism and state security perspective but from the perspective of human security in which people, including women, matter. The borderland transformation will have its implications for the states, which, touched by the transformation, may not be motivated by the concern of securing the border at the cost of jeopardizing the lives of the borderlanders, but may recast its policies in which the gendered aspects of the border are accorded due place.

Notes 1. Thomas M.  Wilson and Hastings Donnan, “Nation, State and Identity at International Borders,” in Thomas M. Wilson and Hastings Donnan, eds, Border Identities:  Nation and State at International Frontiers, Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 1–30. 2. Benjamin H. Johnson and Andrew R. Graybill, eds, Bridging national borders in North America:  Transnational and comparative histories, Durham:  Duke University Press, 2010, p. 2. 3. Thomas M.  Wilson and Hastings Donnan, eds, Borderlands:  Ethnographic approaches to security, power, and identity, Lanham:  University Press of America, 2010; T. Lunden, On the boundary: about humans at the end of territory, Stockholm: Sodertorns Hogskola, 2004. 4. Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear:  An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992. 5. R Aggarwal, Beyond lines of control:  Performance and politics on the disputed borders of Ladakh, India, Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.

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Women and Borders 6. Willem Van Schendel, The Bengal Borderland:  Beyond State and Nation in South Asia, London: Anthem Press, 2005, p. 3. 7. For details see, Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra, Making Kashmir Borderless, New Delhi and Colombo: Manohar and RCSS, 2013. 8. Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra, “Negotiating Space in the Conflict Zone of Kashmir: The Borderlanders’ Perspective,” in Martin Sokefeld, ed., Spaces of Conflict in Everyday Life: Perspectives across Asia, Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript, 2015, pp. 163–85. 9. Personal interview, May 4, 2007. 10. Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra, “From Alienation to Co-existence and Beyond:  Examining the Evolution of the Borderland in Kashmir,” Journal of Borderland Studies, published online October 17, 2016 (Print forthcoming). http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08865655.2016.1238316 (accessed on October 20, 2016). 11. Oscar J. Martinez, Border People: Life and Society in the US–Mexico Borderlands, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994, p. 2. 12. Schendel, The Bengal Borderland 2005, p. 3. 13. Martinez, Border People 1994, p. 25. 14. Ibid., p. 6. 15. A. Kabir, “Cartographic irresolution and the Line of Control,” Social Text, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2009, pp. 45–66. 16. Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra, “Positioning of People in the Contested Borders of Kashmir,” Working Paper 21, CIBR, Queen’s University Belfast, 2011, p. 7. 17. Informal interaction, January 12, 2006. 18. Informal interaction, October 26, 2015. 19. Informal interaction, August 14, 2012. 20. Ibid. 21. Personal interview, May 4, 2007. 22. Informal interaction, August 10, 2012. 23. Personal interview, August 14, 2012. 24. Informal interview, January 23, 2007. 25. Personal interview, May 6, 2007. 26. For details, see, Seema Shekhawat, Conflict and Displacement in Jammu and Kashmir: The Gender Dimension, Jammu: Saksham Books International, 2006; Seema Shekhawat and Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra, “Kargil Displaced of Akhnoor in Jammu and Kashmir: Enduring Ordeal and Bleak Future,” Geneva: Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2006. 27. For details see Seema Shekhawat and Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra, Contested border and division of families in Kashmir: Contextualizing the ordeal of the Kargil women, New Delhi: WISCOMP, 2009.

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Gendered Geographical Edges 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

Personal interview, 16 August 2012. Personal interview, May 8, 2007. Personal interview, May 6, 2007. Personal interview, May 14, 2007. Informal interview, August 16, 2007. Personal interview, May 11, 2007. Personal interview, April 22, 2007.

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10 Kakching Gardens: Experiments in Normalcy in Manipur Duncan McDuie-Ra

Introduction Kakching sits in the southern end of the Imphal valley, Manipur, just a few kilometers off National Highway 39 – also known as Asian Highway 1 – which continues to the international border with Myanmar at Moreh. As the highway passes through the southern extreme of the Imphal valley, the flat land narrows and hills rise up from either side of the road making the passage a kind of “choke point”; vulnerable and valuable to state, non-state, and quasi-state actors operating in this part of the borderland. While Kakching appears booming from cross-border traffic, trade, and a cluster of schools, colleges and academies, this is by any reckoning a militarized landscape. On the short stretch of road between Asian Highway 1 and Kakching town is an enormous Assam Rifles barracks complete with school and hospital behind gigantic walls. On the Kakching side of the highway vast tracts of land have been appropriated for military housing built in rows of multi-storey apartments surrounded by rice fields. Checkpoints are numerous and pedestrians, cyclists, and vehicles are subject to constant inspection by armed forces personnel. Banks and other public buildings sit

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Women and Borders behind bunkers staffed by members of various Indian paramilitary. And on the hilltops surrounding this narrow stretch are yet more barracks and bases for various paramilitary forces monitoring all movement in and out of the settlements. Yet there is one hilltop that is an exception: Uyok Ching. At the top of Uyok Ching are Kakching Gardens, a relatively recent development funded by a local public-private partnership. Along the hilltop are beautifully manicured gardens of flowers, trees, mandops (pavilions), satras, laishang, and other sacred microsites. Kakching Gardens draws crowds of women, men and children daily to take in the scenery, enjoy tea and snacks in the recently opened Uyok Hotel, and pose for a staggering number of photographs taken on mobile phones with “selfie sticks,” and by the professional photographers that ply the hilltop. Kakching Gardens is a rare space in a militarized landscape. This chapter uses spatial ethnography contrasting Kakching Gardens to the militarized landscape surrounding it to explore alternative ways of thinking about gender, conflict and borderlands. Research on these themes in Manipur tends to slip into a focus on a narrow cast of actors – Meira Paibis and Irom Sharmila, and only partially conceptualizes gender – the focus is usually on women and in most cases women from a single ethnic community involved in a small collection of organizations in Imphal – the state capital. Furthermore, scholars tend to rely heavily on media accounts of protests and/or interviews with key members of these same organizations to repeat a familiar narrative of violence, protest, and resistance. While much of this research is worthy, the path is well-trodden and bypasses some of the more intricate experiences of borders, conflict and gender in everyday life in different parts of the state. This chapter takes as its starting point the everyday act of spending time in Kakching Gardens as an entry point into these intricacies. In doing so, I make two points that both urge for greater attention to agency and landscape. Firstly, everyday acts that challenge the militarization of life in the borderland come in many forms, in the case of Kakching Gardens these come in the seemingly mundane act of occupying public space away from the gaze of the armed forces to express femininity, masculinity, and hetero-normative procreation. This is not as seductive or easy to categorize as bold protests in Imphal but reveals a different kind of agency – one that is more accessible to more people, based on an overlooked use of bodies in 218

Kakching Gardens a militarized environment. Secondly, borders are not simply materialized at the designated site – at zero-point – but manifest across the landscape in barracks, checkpoints, and a raft of spatial controls and interdependencies between the armed forces and civilians. All of which have deeply gendered implications for the lives of women and men living in this landscape and moving through it. Despite the imaginary of connectivity, the borderland still remains a militarized frontier and spaces like Kakching Gardens are rare – and important – exceptions. Evident too is the juxtaposition between a relative lack of development, often articulated as a chaotic built environment and dysfunctional infrastructure, in civilian space and the orderliness, technology, and functional infrastructure of military space occupying adjacent tracts of land in and around Kakching. These arguments are explored through four sections. The first introduces Manipur and Kakching in the context of conflict, militarism, and extraordinary laws. Using the concept of “sensitive space” developed by Dunn and Cons, Kakching is proposed as a space where people are subject to multiple ‘interwoven projects, logics, goals and anxieties of rule operating at once.’1 The second section situates Kakching Gardens in the surrounding landscape and contrasts the intention to create a landmark of social and cultural importance with the militarization of life all around. I argue that one of the drivers to further develop Kakching Gardens into an ordered space is the common lament at Manipur’s lack of development, a lament usually referring to deficiencies in infrastructure and the lack of ‘sites’ where tourism revenue can be generated. Yet the relative underdevelopment and unevenness of civilian space when compared to military space is also apparent and reveals the ways sensitive space can manifest in material form. The third section focuses on the use of the gardens themselves by women and men, mostly young, for enacting and challenging proscribed gender roles. These everyday acts of socializing, posing, and recording time spent in the gardens alter conventional portrayals of suffering, victimhood, and death. The final section offers concluding thoughts on landscape, agency, and gender under conditions of aleatory sovereignty. Research for this paper was undertaken using walking ethnography of space in Kakching in 2015–16. It is also informed by several years (2011–14) 219

Women and Borders of ethnographic work in nearby Imphal Manipur’s state capital.2 Walking ethnography seeks to capture the flows of everyday life as experienced by urban dwellers; residents, sojourners and itinerants. And to identify the spaces, objects, and built landscapes that produce and reflect everyday life. As Edensor argues, walking reveals rhythms, rhythms that intersect, “adding to the complex polyrhythmy of place.”3 A mobile sense of place can be produced (and identified) “through longer immersion by the walking body across a more extended space.”4 In their introduction to a collection on walking ethnography, Ingold and Vergunst argue, “It is along the ground, and not in some ethereal realm of discursively constructed significance, over and above the material world, that lives are paced out in their mutual relations.”5 As Yi’En notes, the practice of walking itself is a “mobile and embodied practice” and “inherently a rhythmic experience and potentially offer[s] insights to the multiple splices of time-space narratives.”6 Thus walking brings relational moments of ethnographic practice to the fore in ways that are difficult to obtain using other forms of mobility  – such as driving in vehicles to interviews with pre-identified respondents; a common approach to work on militarisation in Manipur. Yi’En stresses the importance of objects encountered and discovered during walking and their power to “disrupt the rhythm of walking, their power to affect our spatial orientations, as well as capture our attentiveness to their weighty existence.”7 For this chapter, walking ethnography also involved walking within Kakching Gardens encountering visitors, attendants, and staff moving through the space. Sharing space with others in the gardens helped to create a sense of what the place means to visitors and how they utilize it. I took photographs, posed for photographs, and spent time sitting, drinking, eating and talking to visitors. I also visited with friends from the surrounding district and took part in their interactions with one another and with other visitors. Walking is also important in placing Kakching Gardens in the town and district. Walking between the gardens and other spaces; the bazar, neighborhoods, and the peri-urban fringe – particularly small businesses and settlements along the highway and the nearby town of Pallel are all acts that help to situate the gardens and Kakching within a broader landscape; a militarized landscape. Walking ethnography is emerging as a growing approach to fieldwork in various landscapes, yet it remains an 220

Kakching Gardens approach open to experimentation. It will not produce the same material as conventional situated ethnography or interview based research and readers should bear this in mind in the sections that follow.

Manipur; Sensitive Space Manipur is part of the subnational region known as Northeast India, an administrative term of the Indian Government applied to diverse geographic region consisting of eight federal states: Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura as well as a number of autonomous territories. With the exception of Sikkim all of these states have had at least some of their territory declared a “disturbed area” in the last six decades. A disturbed area is any designated territory within the current (though disputed) borders of India where extraordinary laws can be enacted. Only the Ministry of Home Affairs or the Governor of the respective state can declare an area disturbed. Designating an area “disturbed” must be reviewed every six months – yet there is no limit on the renewal of disturbed status, and some areas of the borderland have been declared disturbed continuously for decades. Once declared, the designation is not open to judicial review and state and local governments can do little to challenge its imposition. Disturbed status produces a disturbing reality. It enables the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958 (AFSPA) to operate. The AFSPA permits any member of the Indian Armed Forces and Paramilitary (armed forces hereafter) to fire “even to the causing of death” upon individuals acting in contravention of any law or order, carrying weapons (or anything capable of being used as a weapon) or assembling in a group of five or more people. Under the AFSPA, suspected persons can be detained for 24 hours, with unlimited extensions/renewals, and members of the armed forces are permitted to enter any premises without a warrant; collapsing the distinction between public and private space. Most significantly, the AFSPA provides legal protection (in the form of both de facto and de jure impunity) for members of the armed forces operating in a disturbed area.8 Parts of Manipur have been declared disturbed since 1958 (and earlier under various colonial ordinances). Thoubal, the district where Kakching 221

Women and Borders was located until 2016, has been declared disturbed since 1980.9 Yet Kakching’s proximity to the nearby hills – the choke point – mean that even prior to being declared disturbed there has been a presence of armed forces personnel moving through the landscape and occupying parts of it with headquarters and housing. Further, displaced persons fleeing conflict have settled in the town and surrounds for decades, bringing the trauma of disturbed status to the area before the official designation. Disturbed status was lifted from the Imphal valley, including Imphal city, in 2004 following mass protests after the rape and murder of a Manipuri woman, Thangjam Manorama Devi, by members of the Assam Rifles paramilitary, including a bold nude protest by members of the Meira Paibis women’s association.10 This received a great deal of attention at the time, Kakching’s disturbed status remains in place. Further, although the Manipur Government has its own police forces that are not legally bound by the AFSPA they operate within the same culture of impunity and are responsible for much of the contemporary violence in Manipur. As an indication of the scale of rights abuses under AFSPA, 1528 cases of “fake encounter,” the term used for the murder of a civilian by the military that is then justified by branding the deceased an insurgent, were currently awaiting hearing in the Supreme Court as of June 2015.11 A staggering number for a population of 2.6 million and keeping in mind that this figure represents only fake encounters, not rape, murder without fake encounter, and disappearances. This number only represents the incidents that have been filed as cases. Many relatives of those killed do not take cases forward over fear that they will face retribution, that other family members will be investigated, or because they simply have no faith that it will do any good. The activities of various underground groups operating in Manipur further produce the disturbing reality of everyday life. Some groups are organized armed groups fighting for secession from India, for changes to existing federal state boundaries, for territorial autonomy within Manipur, and for changes to ethnically determined affirmative action categories. Many of these groups have “above ground” political parties, media outlets, and affiliated NGOs that engage with the government and the military on various issues – usually outside formal politics. Some are distant offshoots or loose affiliates of these organized groups or have no relationship 222

Kakching Gardens to them. Some are closer to organized crime networks that engage in illegal activities like smuggling, trafficking, kidnapping, and extortion but also in the murky world of infrastructure development, contracting, racketeering, and, increasingly, social services. The territorial politics of the three main ethnic groups in Manipur, vestiges of colonial anthropology and systems of rule: the valley-dwelling Meitei and hill-dwelling Naga and Kuki tribal communities exacerbate tensions. Violent encounters between Naga and Kuki communities ruptured life in the hill areas through the 1990s leading many of those affected, or simply scared, to flee to the valley including in and around Kakching. In the 2000s tensions between the Meitei community and both hill communities heightened the hostility of interethnic tensions, culminating in epochal moments of crisis in 2001, 2010 and 2011.12 Disturbed status and its attendant extraordinary laws raise the question of how such conditions can exist in the world’s largest democracy. Agamben’s “state of exception”13 has proved very attractive to scholars seeking to understand the existence and persistence of extraordinary laws in Manipur and other parts of the borderland.14 Authors utilizing Agamben to frame politics in Manipur and the rest of the Northeast – even in passing – argue that extraordinary laws have been able to function in the region for so long because the region itself is an exceptional zone, disloyal, unstable, and violent; where the exception to the law initially created under conditions of crisis has become the norm.15 This appears to perfectly describe disturbed areas and the persistence of AFSPA. For example, writing specifically about life under AFSPA, Vajpeyi urges us to think of Manipur as “a zone of exception, but [also] as a contradiction so extreme that it undoes the totality in which it is embedded, and breaks it down into distinct and mutually opposed regimes: a democracy and a non-democracy; two nations: India and not-India.”16 She goes on to argue “if the AFSPA is the ban under which the sovereign power of the Indian state has placed all of the Northeast, then the exception to the rule of law that is spatialized in the Northeast should be thought of as a camp.” The camp being what Agamben calls “the fundamental bio-political paradigm of the West,” and where subject populations are stripped of their rights and agency.17 Agamben’s concept of “bare life” is also used to refer to people living under AFSPA; 223

Women and Borders a population in a permanent state of exception without political or legal rights, or even subjectivity, at the whim of sovereign power. While seductive and certainly evocative, the popularity of Agamben for understanding the borderland, particularly Manipur, is not only becoming formulaic, it is redirecting scholarly enquiry away from the multiple forms of sovereign power that operate, the agency of different actors and individuals in the region, and the complex and ambiguous nature of citizenship in the borderland. Manipur is not a camp. This is not to say sovereign power cannot take away life with little or no consequences; this is true. And while evoking exceptionalism marks the gravity of abuses of sovereign power by state and quasi-state actors, their power is not absolute, they are highly sensitive of how they are portrayed, and they are engaged in contentious struggles to control the borderland – some struggles they end up losing. As Baishya argues with regard to the burgeoning use of Agamben in works on the Northeast borderland: By privileging the postcolonial state as the singular topos of sovereignty, and correspondingly, the overarching entity that spatialises the state of exception, commentators … often downplay the fractured nature with which governmentality is wielded and its effects experienced or endured in the region … [and] leads to a restricted vocabulary for understanding modes of sovereign governmentality, states of dispossession and its aftermaths.18

The state of exception gives an interesting starting point but reveals little of what constitutes social and political life within borderland. Given the power of state, quasi-state, and non-state actors in controlling space in Manipur it is crucial to move beyond its limitations. It is here that the concept of “sensitive space” developed by Dunn and Cons serves as a useful starting point for understanding power in Manipur. Sensitive spaces are notable “for the multiple forms of power that abound, compete and overlap there and the forms of anxiety that they provoke for both those who are governed and those who seek to govern.”19 Anxiety is certainly characteristic of Kakching, where the desire for control by certain actors is often more identifiable than actual control of space. 224

Kakching Gardens The concept identifies multiple forms of power in contested spaces and the ways people navigate and challenge these in their everyday lives.20 And in doing so people are are forced to navigate among multiple forms of power, and as they are constantly forced to transgress the bounds of projects, they erode specific sovereign projects – the techniques of sovereign power – and the claims to sovereign authority that they mark.21

This constant erosion produces anxiety for actors seeking to govern sensitive space as it exposes their tenuous hold on territories they claim. Thus, agency is not just about resistance, or even about simply getting by, but the ways agency (in various forms and with various intentions) can expose the limits of control; especially when control emanates from multiple, often overlapping and/or competing sources. This in turn leads to newer attempts to control. In this kind of space ruled by chance, aleatory sovereignty, typifies power in a constantly shifting landscape. This chapter asks, what of other acts? What of acts by those who do not have the voice or volition to directly challenge state power, underground groups, or AFSPA? I am concerned with the ways in which everyday acts, in this case spending time in Kakching Gardens, can be read as a way of eroding the sovereign project of securing India’s unruly eastern frontier. This is not always, and likely rarely, a conscious act of rebellion against AFSPA, the armed forces, or underground groups. By focusing on everyday acts, simply living “ordinary life” as it were, in Kakching Gardens, I am not advocating a position that “everything is resistance,” rather I urge for attention to the intricate forms agency takes in conditions of aleatory sovereignty; conditions that also shape the landscape upon which Kakching Gardens is built.

Kakching Gardens: Beautifying the Militarized Landscape Kakching is closely associated with the Loi community. Lois are considered “low-caste” among the Vaishnavite Hindu Meitei community which 225

Women and Borders dominates the settlements of the Imphal valley discussed already. The town also draws members of tribal communities from surrounding areas, as well as Pangal Muslims, making for an openly cosmopolitan town where the inter-ethnic politics of Imphal are toned down and many of the mores that punctuate inter-ethnic tensions are transgressed with ease and frequency. The hills-plains divide that preoccupies popular and scholarly accounts of Manipur22 is far less divisive in Kakching; or at least are narrated as such by residents. Like many towns along or close to this route, Kakching appears to be booming from cross-border traffic of licit and illicit goods. Shops teem with plastic goods, textiles, garments, shoes, electronics, and building materials from across the border, delivered on heavily laden-vehicles that traverse the highway. The flow of goods, people, and capital does not just come from across the international border but from mainland India as well: outward connectivity to other parts of Asia and inward connectivity to the rest of India. The Indian state has increased its presence in the borderland for the last five decades. The presence of the military and paramilitary, facilitated by categories like disturbed is the most prominent example. There are others too; federal state units and attendant bureaucracies – made up of persons indigenous to the borderland and migrants from other parts of India, national political parties, and objects that mark the landscape as Indian territory – statues of Gandhi, State Bank of India branches, Assam Oil and Bharat Petroleum fuel pumps, and distance markers from the Border Roads Association. In recent years, new layers of “India” have been added to the landscape of the borderland; though this is not the “old” India of the military and the bureaucracy, but the “new” India of the market; telecommunications providers, local outlets of national retail chains, private banks, etc. The arrival of new India is even more fascinating in Manipur where “old” India never took hold and has been strongly resisted for decades. Despite the seductive imaginary of a new future fuelled by transnational connectivity, this is by any definition a highly militarized landscape. It remains a sensitive space. On the Kakching side of the highway vast tracts of land have been appropriated for military housing built in rows of multi-storey apartments surrounded by rice fields. Checkpoints are numerous and pedestrians, cyclists, and vehicles are subject to constant 226

Kakching Gardens inspection by armed forces personnel. Banks and other public buildings sit behind bunkers staffed by members of various Indian paramilitary. Even some of the ATM in the area are inside barracks forcing customers to enter the masculine and militarized spaces (from within which friends and relatives have often experienced extreme violence and in some cases never returned) just to access cash. This landscape shapes mobility for women and men in different ways. It presents challenges for everyday life, yet it also reveals interdependencies between the military and civilian populations that are difficult to unravel. For instance, the armed forces provide housing materials for newer settlements displaced by violence in the hills and these villages often sport matching roofing materials with the initial of the relevant paramilitary stamped conspicuously on the surface. And on the hilltops surrounding this narrow stretch are yet more barracks and bases for various paramilitary forces monitoring all movement in and out of the settlements. Yet there is one hilltop that is an exception: Uyok Ching. At the top of Uyok Ching are Kakching Gardens, a relatively recent development funded by a local public-private partnership and contributions from local associations (2007–11). Prior to the development of Kakching Gardens in its present form, there was an existing garden and recreation area on the hilltop with a temple and mandop (pavilion). The site was already place for pilgrimage, especially during Sajibu Cheiraoba, the lunar New Year celebration of the indigenous Sanamahi faith, also celebrated across faith communities. Uyok Ching is also steeped in legend and folklore. It is alleged as the birthplace of the crow, the site of where the legendary Haoreibi Shampubi – a local woman from the hills turned tortured spirit – was killed while arranging to meet her lover, and is regarded as an incarnation of Panthoibi, the goddess of death, and as a bringer of fertility.23 The construction of the gardens was also aligned with a number of other projects taking place to re-order Kakching as modern and clean, including the so-called “model town” initiative to develop tourist sites and a beautification drive led by emigrants from the town living in Europe and Korea – the latter consisting of hanging flower pots in the main market area. The beautification drive intended to bring “a positive attitude on the mindset of Manipuris disturbed by conflicts, stress and killings.”24 There is 227

Women and Borders a clear equation of beautification, peace, and modernity as a counter to violence and militarism. As the President of European Manipuri Association Okram Bishorjit noted at the flowerpot hanging, “We, the sons of this soil living in European countries, have experienced the comforts of developed countries. However, we can’t spend our life comfortably there while our people in Manipur are living amidst dust.”25 Lamenting a lack of development, usually imagined as infrastructure, and Manipur’s fractured modernity is a common preoccupation in public life and particularly of those who have moved away from the state and return periodically to witness its poverty and dysfunction. Yet there is also deep irony in this lament. While it can be easy to decry the condition of everyday life in Manipur, military infrastructure, housing, technology, surveillance, and weaponry provides a hyper-modern contrast to civilian life. It is not only bases and barracks that provide this contrast, rows of military housing in tall apartment blocks occupies land between Kakching and the highway. The neat and ordered multi-storey blocks are a stark contrast to housing in towns and cities in Manipur, including Kakching, many of which have steel rods shooting towards the sky at all four corners in the hope of adding yet another floor when finances, permits, or favors allow, evoking Forty’s description of the “near-permanent state of incompletion”26 common in settlements affected by poverty and rapid urban growth – growth exacerbated by displacement from armed conflict and migration to towns and cities for work and (relative) safety. As Herscher has written in the context of Kosovo, culture and violence is inscribed in architecture, its destruction and construction.27 In other words, violence is not only evident in what has been lost, broken, or bulldozed, but in what is built in its place. In a borderland characterized by aleatory sovereignty where various actors take on state like quality and agency, the urban landscape reflects these shifting – and overlapping – nodes of power. Corruption and illicit activity enrich a segment of the population, who plough their wealth almost exclusively into enormous houses and large cars. Dual connectivity is also useful for conceptualizing the flows of resources into Kakching and other towns; from the west come the vast transfers of funds from the Indian Government as part of their twin development and counter-insurgency strategy along with remittances from Manipuris working outside 228

Kakching Gardens the state, and from the east the wealth gained through smuggling, taxing, and trafficking of goods from across the border. The houses of those successful in these ways of making-do, stand out starkly in their respective neighborhoods but also contribute to the patchwork and unfinished nature of the built environment, a telling contrast to the military housing which seems more “developed” and resembles the diagrams of idealized housing complexes for sale in Guwahati and other cities marketed on billboards in Kakching, Imphal and other parts of the state. The ease with which this military modernity is excluded from accounts of development in Manipur is testament to the separate spheres of life spatialized in military and civilian territories. Though these overlap from time to time the overlap is uneven – the military enters civilian space but rarely does the reverse take place, except in the performance of certain daily tasks such as visiting ATMs. Kakching Gardens can be considered as the counterpoint to the militarized landscape, a development project that seeks to alleviate lived insecurity by simply providing public space amongst barracks, bases, and check posts. Along the hilltop at Uyok Ching are beautifully manicured gardens of flowers, trees, mandops, satras, laishang, and other sacred sites. Kakching Gardens draws crowds of women, men and children daily to take in the scenery, enjoy tea and snacks in the recently opened Uyok Hotel, and pose for a staggering number of photographs taken on mobile phones, with “selfie sticks,” and by the professional photographers that ply the hilltop. Kakching Gardens is a rare space in the militarized landscape around it. Utilized in different ways by different visitors, what is striking and perhaps most challenging to the ways in which gender and borderlands are often conceived, is the use of the gardens as sites to express femininity, masculinity, and successful procreation.

Women, Men, Selfies For women in particular, the everyday realities of life lived amidst violence and impunity are immensely challenging. The impact on women have been horrific. Murder, rape, and torture by the armed forces and by militant groups impute a deep sense of fear and insecurity in everyday life. Goswami 229

Women and Borders et al. identify six “categories” of women affected by life in militarized environments: women relatives of armed activists, women relatives of state armed forces, women militants or combatants, women as shelter providers, women as victims of sexual and physical abuse, woman as peace negotiators, women as rights activists.28 It is also conceivable that many women fulfill multiple categories in their varied roles inside and outside the household. While these categories are certainly valid and evident empirically, if we return to the concept of sensitive space we are able to explore further the everyday transgressions of sovereign rule in seemingly mundane acts. For women in Kakching and throughout the borderland, everyday decisions about mobility – when to venture out of the house, with whom, and which route to take to avoid encounters with armed personnel (state or non-state), trust, friendships and relationships, care, for self and family, and work, related to the same questions of mobility and risk, are bound-up in insecurity and the constant threat of violence experienced personally or by a family member. The capacity to contend with these limitations varies dramatically and appears to be both socio-economic and temporal. For instance, access to a private vehicle, especially a car, may make mobility through the militarized landscape easier than walking on foot or traveling on a motorcycle or rickshaw/auto-rickshaw, yet if there is a blockade of the highway or a heightened security alert, even traveling in a car produces risks and anxieties. All of this curtails opportunities to socialize, consume, earn a living, and to express and project desire. For many women in the area (and beyond), Kakching Gardens is a place where they can dress-up, wear make-up, and occupy public space without being under the constant gaze of the military, paramilitary and state police. It is a place to socialize, roam around, flirt, and display new outfits, makeup, and express individual and gendered identities away from the charged sites of ethno-nationalist politics; a common arena for the mobilization of women throughout Manipur.29 It is also an important place to capture these moments in photographs to be shared with friends and on social media. During good weather, women can be seen standing in groups or alone, especially young women and teenage girls, posing for photographs. The “selfie” now easily spotted with the use of the “selfie stick” is a common way of capturing an image using an extendable “arm” that allows for 230

Kakching Gardens more distance between the camera, usually on a mobile phone, and the subject of the photograph, usually also the photographer. It also has the additional benefit of allowing the subject of the photograph to also capture it, meaning time can be taken to look into the reflected image and ensure the pose, light, and look is perfect before taking the picture. Even if the first is not right, the second, third, or fifteenth might be. Like “selfie” artisans everywhere, the photographer/subject can be found scrolling through the captured images, showing friends physically present at the gardens leading to laughter, chatter, and sometimes the decision to take more photos, and also, if the telecommunications winds are favorable, posting the pictures to social media. For men too the gardens provide a place to be free, albeit for a relatively short period of time, from harassment and suspicion. Research on masculinity in militarized environments, including borderlands, tends to focus on the role of men in armed conflict as members of either the armed forces or underground groups; as bodies in uniform or dead bodies laid out for media capture. Indeed, research on gender in borderlands has tended to give men and masculinity a wide berth, missing out on opportunities to explore the complex and contradictory ways of ‘being a man’ in a militarized environment; in sensitive space. Young men are racially profiled as insurgents by the military and are the targets of recruitment by insurgents. Movement, employment, education, and social networks are all jeopardized in this environment. Young men who move in groups attract high levels of suspicion and harassment, yet young men who move around on their own are far more vulnerable. The psychological impact militarization has on young men is rarely examined beyond being a catalyst to join militant groups or the armed forces. Attention is mostly given to combatants, with little attention given to the impacts of militarization on noncombatants, particularly the long-term psychological impact of living in this environment. Rehabilitation of former militants is almost entirely focused on vocational training and cash incentives, with no resources or consideration of psychological support. This has a major impact on men of different ages and backgrounds. Narcotic use is very high in the Northeast and particularly high in Manipur. As Kermode et al. have shown, introduction to intravenous drug use is often framed as a rite of passage among young men 231

Women and Borders in the region; proof of their masculinity. As they argue, “young men engage in drug use in order to fill a social vacuum created by limited opportunities to meaningfully engage in adult roles within the community.”30 At Kakching Gardens men socialize, pose, preen, and seek the attention of women. Some of the men clearly go to great pains with their appearance. They stand looking at their reflection, adjusting their jeans, asking their friends to help fix their hair. Some brush dust off their sneakers to keep them looking clean and new. Others play music from their mobile phones and stand against railings watching the other visitors pass. Dress has long been central to etic and emic constructions of masculinity in the borderland, of both tradition and modernity, and remains a crucial signifier of difference between men in the region and other communities in India, and, most crucially in the everyday encounters in the borderland, between men in uniform and men wearing plain clothes. In recent years, men from Manipur and the rest of the Northeast have gained a reputation for fashion and style, especially as their presence in metropolitan India has grown.31 Grooming has integrated more and more influences from outside the region and, crucially, outside India. Of note is the influence of popular fashion from East Asia, especially Korea, and counter cultural styles influenced by heavy metal music, hip-hop, and sports. However, formal dress based almost entirely on mid-twentieth century British fashion remains the dress style of choice for those involved in formal politics, state employment, and religious or community organizations, and men, mostly older, dressed in this way can also be found at Kakching, though they are more likely to be found talking to one another on benches in the shade or taking tea in the Hotel rather than strutting along the pathways. The groups of young men posing in Kakching Gardens next to flowers, hedges, and scenic views of nearby hills provides a stark contrast to images of the violent or dead male from Manipur common in the press. The gardens witness a lot of new introductions, courting, and flirting – usually under the watchful eye of older locals who frequent the gardens throughout the day, chatting under the shelter of the mandops or in the Uyok Hotel, and engaging in some casual moral policing. The gardens are also a place to bring children. One of the more dramatic transformations to childhood in Manipur has been the reduction in children’s mobility and 232

Kakching Gardens autonomy driven by concerns over safety, the lack of public space, and the shift away from local schooling.32 By contrast, children are also actively involved in protests around political issues, from demands for the instatement of the Inner Line Permit system to territorial demands. The involvement of children in protests, often in school uniform, raises questions about agency, childhood, and is at the fore of debates about manipulation versus ways of knowing politics unique to children.33 However, sustained treatment of these questions is beyond the scope of the present chapter. At the gardens children play along the pathways, weave in and out of trees, and stand in the viewing area pointing out landmarks in the distance – often over a Limca drink or plate of bora. Parents frantically usher boys and girls in their best clothes into poses to be photographed. Families pose together for photographs that are found in living rooms and in glass-fronted cabinets all over the state. Not everyone at Kakching Gardens has a device to capture photographs. Some visitors approach strangers asking them to take a photograph for them and send it on with their phones or emails. On some days there is a professional photographer (or two) who approach visitors asking if they would like a portrait; these are then printed and sold. When displayed these photographs include the unmistakable landscape of Kakching Gardens visible in the background, giving the landscape a different meaning to the militarization that is otherwise so striking. A trip to Kakching gardens needs to be memorialized. It is a landmark: a “place” to be and to have been and to circulate the imagery online and in material form.

Conclusion Kakching Gardens exhibits many of the elements of “place.” In sensitive space, competing nodes of sovereign power provide little of the social fabric necessary for everyday life, places like Kakching Gardens are where people come together and “the daily rituals of life are performed.”34 This may seem trivial, yet with so much focus on the overt political acts that stand out in borderlands, the lived experience of militarization tends to get lost. So too do small acts; acts that are about claiming normalcy rather than spectacle; acts that can, returning to Dunn and Cons, expose the limits of control by state, non-state, and quasi-state actors. As Oinam discusses in 233

Women and Borders her study of the writings of Manipuri poet Thangjam Ibopishak, subjectivities and identities in Manipur are diffuse, and people live lives between different sovereign forces; army, paramilitary, state, underground groups. She writes, “The question, therefore, is how to develop new theories in order to understand subjectivities caught in such situations.”35 Grappling with life in this environment takes multiple forms: protest, faith, associational life, migration, humor and, in this case, getting dressed-up in your best clothes and posing for photos in a garden on a hilltop in a landscape marked by military infrastructure spanning out in all directions below. And these acts are gendered in that they are ways of expressing gendered subjectivities (predominantly heteronormative) and challenging the ways in which militarization impacts men and women in different and similar ways. And like other sites in the borderland, such as Loktak Lake to the west, entering the gardens requires passage through military checkpoints. It is fortified. Yet this is not Agamben’s camp. These are not bodies without agency, though agency is harder to see and its impacts harder to register in singular responses or in brief lapses of time. Kakching Gardens is an experiment in normalcy. It is an enabler of everyday life, of place, of belonging. It is a place to dress-up, socialize, and record the moment despite the violence surrounding it. Yet it is not simply the existence of the space itself that brings people; it is the aesthetics on display. Kakching Gardens is a place to experience development as beautification; paved pathways, open space, manicured lawns and flora. It seeks to bring visitors in contact with the modern, the natural, and the sacral: a scenic spot of cultural authority but one that resonates with the public nonetheless.36 The order of the gardens is juxtaposed with the disorder of urban life in the borderland, while the peace and tranquillity is juxtaposed with the militarized landscape all around. It reflects aspirations to live and visit a pretty place, a developed place, a place to be proud of, a place that defies the dominant imagery of Manipur as violent and unruly. It is a place to produce images of self and body that alter conventional portrayals of suffering, victimhood, and death. And this place sits above a militarized landscape marked with the trappings of the adjacent infrastructure and accelerated development trajectory of the military, making it an exceptional space of a different sort, a patch of normalcy in a terrain of violence and dysfunction. 234

Kakching Gardens

Notes 1. Elizabeth Cullen Dunn and Jason Cons, “Aleatory Sovereignty and the Rule of Sensitive Spaces,” Antipode, Vol. 46, No. 1, 2014, p. 102. 2. Duncan McDuie-Ra, Borderland City in New India:  Frontier to Gateway, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016. 3. Tim Edensor, “Walking in Rhythms: Place, Regulation, Style and the Flow of Experience,” Visual Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2010, p. 69. 4. Ibid., 70. 5. Tim Ingold and Jo Lee Vergunst, “Introduction,” in Tim Ingold and Jo Lee Vergunst, eds, Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot, Abingdon: Routledge, 2008, 3. 6. Cheng Yi’En, “Telling Stories of the City:  Walking Ethnography, Affective Materialities, and Mobile Encounters,” Space and Culture, Vol.17, No. 3, 2014, p. 212. 7. Ibid., 214. 8. Shubh Mathur, “Life and Death in the Borderlands:  Indian Sovereignty and Military Impunity,” Race & Class, Vol. 54, No. 1, 2012, pp. 33–49. 9. The new Kakching District was created in December 2016 out of Thoubal. Kakching is now a district headquarters. 10. Deepti Misri, “‘Are You a Man?’: Performing Naked Protest in India,” Signs, Vol. 36, No. 3, 2011, pp. 603–25. 11. Imphal Free Press, “Apex Court to Start Final Hearing on Fake Encounters within 4 Months,” Imphal Free Press, May 5, 2014. 12. Nehginpao Kipgen, “Politics of Ethnic Conflict in Manipur,” South Asia Research, Vol. 33, No. 1, 2013, pp. 21–38; Pradip Phanjoubam, “The Homeland and the State: The Meiteis and the Nagas in Manipur,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 45, No. 26/7, 2010, pp. 10–13. 13. Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005. 14. Paromita Chakravarti, “Reading Women’s Protest in Manipur: A Different Voice?,” Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, Vol. 5, No. 3, 2010, pp. 47–60; Namrata Gaikwad, “Revolting Bodies, Hysterical State: Women Protesting the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1958),” Contemporary South Asia, Vol. 17, No. 3, 2009, pp. 299– 311; Jogendro Kshetrimayum, “Shooting the Sun: A Study of Death and Protest in Manipur,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 44, No. 40, 2009, pp. 48–54. 15. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1998, p. 166. 16. Ananya Vajpeyi, “Resenting the Indian State: For a New Political Practice in the Northeast,” in Sanjib Baruah, ed., Beyond Counterinsurgency: Breaking the Impasse in Northeast India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 36. 17. Agemben, State of Exception, 2005, p. 181.

235

Women and Borders 18. Amit Baishya, “The Act of Watching with One’s Own Eyes:  ‘Strange Recognitions’ in an Outline of the Republic,” Interventions, Vol. 17, No. 4, 2015, pp. 606–607. 19. Dunn and Cons, “Aleatory Sovereignty” 2014, p. 95. 20. Ibid., pp. 100–1. 21. Ibid., p.102. 22. Cf. Yengkhom Jilangamba, “Beyond the Ethno–Territorial Binary: Evidencing the Hill and Valley Peoples in Manipur,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 38, No. 2, 2015, pp. 276–89. 23. The legends around Haoreima Sambubi are numerous. I  am grateful to Thingnam Anjulika for explaining some of these to me. 24. Sangai Express, “Green, Beautification Drive Reaches Kakching Keithel,” July 23, 2013. 25. Ibid. 26. Adrian Forty, Concrete and Culture:  A  Material History, London:  Reaktion Books, 2013, p. 29. 27. Andrew Herscher, Violence Taking Place: The Architecture of the Kosovo Conflict, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010, p. 4. 28. Roshmi Goswami et al., Women in Armed Conflict Situations, Guwahati: North East Network, 2005, p. 19. 29. Cf. Duncan McDuie-Ra, “Borders, Territory, and Ethnicity: Women and the Naga Peace Process,” in Nancy Naples and Jennifer Bickham Mendez, eds, Border Politics: Social Movements, Collective Identities, and Globalization, New York: NYU Press, 2014. 30. Michelle Kermode et al., “Killing Time with Enjoyment: A Qualitative Study of Initiation into Injecting Drug use in North-East India,” Substance use & Misuse, Vol. 44, No. 8, 2009, p. 1085. 31. Duncan McDuie-Ra, Northeast Migrants in Delhi:  Race, Refuge and Retail, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012. 32. McDuie-Ra, Borderland City in New India, 2016, pp.163–73. 33. Duncan McDuie-Ra, “Children and Civil Society in South Asia: Subject, Participants and Political Agents,” in Bina D’Costa, Children and Violence: Politics of Conflict in South Asia, ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 34. John Friedmann, “Reflections on Place and Place‐making in the Cities of China,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2007, p. 272. 35. Loiya Leima Oinam, “Expressions of a Manipuri Identity: Militarisation and Victim Subjectivities in the Poetry of Thangjam Ibopishak,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 39, No. 2, 2016, p. 476. 36. Cf. Pal Nyirí, Scenic Spots. Chinese Tourism, the State, and Cultural Authority, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006.

236

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Select Bibliography Buchanan, A.  and M.  Moore, States, Nations and Borders:  The Ethics of Making Boundaries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Buzan, Barry, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992. Chavez, Leo, The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens and the Nation, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008. D’Costa, Bina, ed., Children and Violence: Politics of Conflict in South Asia, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2016. Del Re, E. C. and R. R. Laremont, Pursuing Stability and a Shared Development: Euro-Mediterranean Migrations, Rome: Aracne, 2017. Diener, Alexander C. and Joshua Hagen, Borderlines and Borderlands: Political Oddities at the Edge of the Nation-State, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2010. Donnan, H.  and T.  Wilson, eds, Borderlands:  Ethnographic Approaches to Security, Power, and Identity, Lanham:  University Press of America, 2010. Eskelinen, H., I.  Liikanene and J.  Oksa, eds, Curtains of Iron and Gold: Reconstructing Borders and Scales of Interaction. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999. Farley, M., ed, Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress, Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press, 2003. Fregoso, Rosa-Linda and Cynthia Bejarano, eds, Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Forty, Adrian, Concrete and Culture: A Material History, London: Reaktion Books, 2013. Giles, Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and  Schizophrenia (Translated by B. Massumi) London: Continuum, 1987. Gillis, John R., ed, Commemorations. The Politics of National Identity, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. González-López, Gloria, Erotic Journeys: Mexican Immigrants and their Sex Lives, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005. Gordon, Tuula, Katri Komulainen and Kirsti Lempiäinen, eds, Suomineitonen hei! Kansallisuuden sukupuoli, Tampere: Vastapaino, 2002. 238

Select Bibliography Gregory, D., Geographical Imaginations, Blackwell Publisher, Oxford and Basil, 1994. Grewal, Inderpal, Transnational America:  Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Hakamies, Pekka, ed., Moving in the USSR: Western anomalies and Northern Wilderness, Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2005. Herscher, Andrew, Violence Taking Place:  The Architecture of the Kosovo Conflict, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. Hudson, Leila, Transforming Damascus: Space and Modernity in an Islamic City, London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2005. Hudson, V. and A. M. Den Boer, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004. Ingold, Tim and Jo Lee Vergunst, eds, Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot, Abingdon: Routledge, 2008. Johnson, Benjamin H.  and Andrew R.  Graybill, eds, Bridging National Borders in North America:  Transnational and Comparative Histories, Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Jones, R., Border Walls: Security and the War on Terror in the United States, India and Israel, New York: Zed Books, 2012. ———, Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move, Brooklyn: Verso, 2016. Kattago, Shobian, ed., The Ashgate Research Companion to Memory Studies, Burlington: Ashgate, 2015. Khagram, Sanjeev and Peggy Levitt, eds, The Transnational Studies Reader: Intersections and Innovations, London: Routledge, 2008. Kilot, Nurit and David Newman, eds, Geopolitics at the End of the Twentieth Century: The Changing World Political Map, London: Frank Cass, 2000. Kofman, E. et al., Gender and International Migration in Europe: Employment, Welfare and Politics, London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Kumar-Rajaram, P.  and C.  Grundy-Warr, eds, Borderscapes:  Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory’s Edge, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Lenz, Ilse, Charlotte Ullrich and Barbara Fersch, eds, Gender Orders Unbound. Globalization, Restructuring and Reciprocity, Farmington Hills: Barbara Budrich, 2007. 239

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243

Index Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL), 197 Aegean Sea, 43, 50, 51, 54 Afghanistan, 10, 28, 52 Africa, 13–14, 26, 28, 32–3, 36–7, 55, 58, 66–7, 72, 75–6, 78, 81–2, 108, 114, 118–19, 120–21, 125, 129, 136 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 119 African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, 119 African Union Women’s Rights Framework, 119 Amnesty International, 10, 27, 37, 84, 152, 166 Andalusia, 66, 69, 75 asylum, 10, 24, 31–5, 38, 40, 43, 49, 52, 54, 56–7, 61, 67–71, 75–6, 83–4, 95, 121, 128, 240 Athens, 19, 57, 69, 76, 241 Austria, 23–4, 26, 33, 36, 38, 54, 57 Balkans, 23, 33, 35, 63 Berlin Wall, 3 Bethlehem, 31 Boko Haram, 114 Border Hunters, 33, 38

borderless world, 4–5, 15–16, 19, 132, 142, 178, 240 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 33, 110 Bulgaria, 33 Central America, 61, 120, 152, 158, 160–1, 163–5 Centre for the Temporary Stay of Immigrants (CETI), 76, 68, 74 Ceuta, 66–7, 75, 82, 84 Chihuahua, 157–8, 171 Cold War, 2–3, 19–20, 201, 213, 237 Collateral Repair Project (CRP), 90, 99, 100–3, 105–7 Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), 91, 93, 110 Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, 119 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 91, 119 Council of Europe, 10, 31, 35, 38, 115, 124 Croatia, 33, 37, 54, 110 Cyprus, 33 Daily Mail, 23 Damascus, 44, 46, 60, 238 Dawns Here are Quiet, The, 189

245

Index human security, 3, 7, 201, 212–13 humanitarian corridors, 25 humanitarian relief, 75 Hungary, 23, 32–3, 38, 53 hyper-patriarchal, 6

Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (DEVAW), 91, 111 diaspora, 26, 36, 194, 238 displacement, 10, 20, 60, 87–90, 106–8, 202, 208, 214, 228, 240 Domiz camp, 23, 37 El Salvador, 160, 166, 170 Europe, 5, 9–10, 16, 19–20, 27, 29–30, 40, 42–3, 49–50, 54–8, 61, 63–6, 69–72, 75–6, 78–85, 114– 25, 127–9, 136, 139, 175, 187–8, 194–5, 227–8, 237, 239–40 Europe’s Gate monument, 72 European Commissioner for Human Rights, 114 European Union (EU), 12, 22–7, 29–30, 32–5, 37–8, 54, 63–6, 70–1, 76, 80–3, 175, 178, 184, 192, 195 Finland, 16, 175–8, 181–191, 195–6 Fourth World Conference on Women, 92, 111 gender based violence (GBV), 87–90, 96–8, 100, 102–5, 108–9 Ghana, 26 Greece, 10, 12, 23, 27, 33, 35, 50, 52–4, 64, 69–71, 76–7, 80, 83–4 Guatemala, 154, 160, 166, 168, 170 Guwahati, 229, 236 Hashemi Shamali, 12, 98 Honduras, 160–1, 166, 170, 172

Idomeni camp, 54, 56 immigration, 33, 38, 64, 133, 156–7, 160, 162, 165, 167, 171, 173, 185 Imphal, 217–18, 220, 222, 226, 229, 235 India, 14–15, 17, 20, 110, 131–4, 137–41, 144–50, 197, 199, 201, 204–5, 208, 210–11, 213, 218, 221–3, 225–8, 232, 235–7, 239, 241 Interagency Standing Committee (IASC), 33, 38, 64, 133, 156–7, 160, 162, 165, 167, 171, 173, 185 international border, 11, 14, 46, 80, 87–8, 131–3, 135–7, 142, 197, 201, 217, 226 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), 92, 111 International Organization for Migration (IOM), 116–17, 121, 123, 125, 128, 161 Iraq, 10, 13, 23, 25, 27–8, 37, 44, 55, 62, 99, 102–3 Ireland, 33, 82, 198 Istanbul Convention, 31 Italy, 12–14, 27, 32, 33, 36, 38, 64, 72, 81, 84, 113–25, 127–30

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Index Ministry of Equal Opportunities, 124 misogynistic, 6 mobilization, 50, 102, 208, 230

Jordan, 10–13, 27–8, 60, 90, 98, 102, 105, 108, 112 Kakching Gardens, 17–18, 217–21, 223, 225, 227, 229–35 Korea, 227, 232 Kosovo, 33, 228, 236, 238

National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, 157, 170 necropolitics, 51 neoliberalization, 46 Nepal, 14–15, 131–4, 137–50 NGO(s), 54–56, 65, 68, 69, 70–1, 75, 89–90, 99, 117, 121–4, 127–8, 207, 222 Nigeria, 13–14, 24, 78–9, 113–23, 125–9 Niirala-Värtsilä, 16, 175–6, 181, 193

Ladakh, 199, 213, 237 Lampedusa, 27, 33, 37, 66, 72–4, 77–81, 85, 113 Lebanon, 30, 37, 39, 43–4, 46–9, 60, 62, 108–9 Lesvos, 54, 57, 70, 80 Libya, 27, 32, 52, 72, 78, 116–17, 120, 125, 213 Line of Control (LoC), 197–8, 201, 206, 209, 211–13 Macedonia, 33, 53–4 Madrid, 67 Manipur, 17, 217–18, 230–4, 236 Maputo Protocol, 119 Mediterranean, 10, 13–14, 22, 26–33, 35–7, 50, 60, 63, 66, 72, 79, 113–14, 125, 129, 238 Melilla, 66–8, 74–5, 80–2, 84 Merkel, 25, 36 Mexico, 5, 8, 20, 31, 35, 61, 110, 152–5, 158–60, 163–73, 198, 214, 239, 240–1 Middle East, 37, 40, 50, 62, 108, 178 militarization, 5–6, 11, 17–18, 81, 155, 203, 205, 218–19, 231, 233–4

objectification/objectified, 15, 142, 151, 155–6, 159, 190 Orthodox church, 189 Pakistan, 17, 55, 138, 197, 201, 204–5, 208, 210–11 Palermo Protocol, 119 patriarchy, 7, 17, 31, 40, 206 Piemonte, 124 Polykastro, 53–4 Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Rights of Women, 119 Realist school, 2 Red Cross, 68, 75, 108, 110

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Index refugees, 3, 5–7, 9–10, 12, 22, 24–8, 30–7, 40–1, 43, 46, 48, 50, 52–6, 58–60, 70, 71, 74, 77, 87, 88–90, 98–103, 106–8, 112, 114, 136 Republic of Karelia, 16, 176, 178, 186, 189 Romania, 33 Russia, 16, 175–9, 182–93, 195–6 Salzburg, 24 Schengen Agreement, 32, 38 Siachen Glacier, 201 Sicily, 72–3, 121, 124, 128 Sonoran desert, 50 Spain, 12, 32, 64, 66–8, 82 Spanish Ministry of Employment, 67 state security, 3–4, 134, 148, 212–13 Syria, 10–12, 21, 23–5, 27–9, 34–6, 40–52, 55–8, 60–2, 69, 99, 102–3, 108, 112 Trafficking in Persons Protocol, 115 Turkey, 10, 25, 27, 29, 33, 35, 48–9, 52, 55, 60, 70–1, 76, 81, 83 Ukraine, 184–5, 187 United Nations, 20, 90–1, 96, 111, 114–15, 124, 135–6, 138, 149–50, 208, 240

United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), 14, 114, 128 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 115–16, 128–9, 149 United States, 5, 20, 31, 50, 61, 108, 152, 154–6, 160, 163–4, 167, 172, 239 Uyok Ching, 18, 218, 227, 229 violence, 1, 3, 5–10, 12–15, 17–18, 24, 27, 31, 34, 38, 43, 46, 50, 60, 61, 64–5, 77–81, 83, 87, 89–102, 104, 106–14, 117–18, 122, 125–6, 132, 134, 142, 144, 151–4, 156, 158–9, 162, 164–8, 170–1, 198, 201–2, 205, 209, 218, 222, 227–30, 234, 236, 238, 240–1 vulnerability, 10–11, 20, 22, 24–5, 27–9, 35, 76–7, 79, 126, 128, 137–8, 148, 193, 205, 207, 240 Winter War, 186, 190 Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF), 118 Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC), 88 World Health Organization, 153, 167 Za’atari Refugee Camp, 12, 98

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