The role of SSE actors with migrant women in socio-legal precariousness: gender issues of social integration in Île-de-France.
My research looks specifically at the challenges faced by women in irregular situations or asylum seekers on their arrival in France, and questions the gendered effects of existing reception facilities (or lack thereof)
Rethinking the conditions for welcoming migrants
This mobilization of social and solidarity economy players testifies to the growing role these organizations are being called upon to play in welcoming recently arrived populations, from food aid, to support with administrative procedures, via multiple initiatives aimed at facilitating the social integration of exiles. While the arrivals of summer 2015 have been recurrently described in the European media as a “migration crisis”, much research questions the notion of “crisis” by highlighting the limited number of these arrivals when compared to the total population, to other historical migrations, or even to the number of refugees in neighboring Middle Eastern countries.
Five years after what the media portrayed as a refugee crisis and associations as a reception crisis, conditions have further deteriorated for migrant people. In the summer of 2015, the camps were in Paris, scattered but visible, leading to a spiral of successive dismantling but also of associative and citizen solidarity. Five years on, the observations of associations are unanimous: exiled people are invisible, but reception conditions are even more difficult. Women are at the forefront of this situation: the lack of accommodation and resources to feed themselves makes them vulnerable, and this vulnerability includes the risk of sexual and gender-based violence, which is particularly acute for exiled women.
Fieldwork in the face of vulnerability
This article is based on fieldwork conducted between October 2019 and November 2020 with associative actors involved with exiled people in the Ile-de-France region. The survey includes 16 semi-directive interviews with associative actors, participant observations carried out over a 6-week period within an emergency shelter for migrants (CHUM), as well as 14 interviews with women housed in this center. The choice of a qualitative methodology was aimed at gathering the voices of the first people concerned, the exiled women, in order to gain a better understanding of the social determinants of gender violence. While there were no logistical difficulties specific to the field context, it was nevertheless a delicate piece of investigative work in that the women we met for this research were in situations presenting multiple forms of precariousness and vulnerability.
The role of SSE players in the care of migrant women
This research has shown that reducing the risk of sexual violence for exiled women requires a significant improvement in the conditions under which they are cared for, by creating accommodation places adapted to these women’s needs. Victims of violence, these women are also actors in their own lives, and a sympathetic ear from the institutional players in the asylum system, recognizing violence against women as political violence deserving of protection, constitutes the second major axis of potential improvement in the experiences of exiled women.
Actors in the social economy will play a decisive role in providing social, medical and legal support for new arrivals. These players share the observation that reception conditions have deteriorated significantly in recent years, with women increasingly exposed to street situations, even when pregnant or accompanied by young children. The multiplication of associative players in this field aims to respond to these challenges, with the creation of numerous new structures after 2015. However, these new organizations report funding difficulties, illustrating a lack of recognition of their role in reception policies.
Contribute to research on gender issues in the migration process
The aim of these questions is to shed light on an issue that has not yet been sufficiently researched: gender-based violence suffered during the migration process and on arrival in France, and how it is dealt with by SSE players. Indeed, the systematic nature of this violence, to which many of the associative players we met during the first phase of our research testified, is exacerbated by precarious access to accommodation and discontinuous, random access to healthcare. Such violence also causes psychological trauma, which can exacerbate the social precariousness of the individuals concerned, and make it all the more difficult for them to integrate into society.
Biography
Nina SAHRAOUI is currently leading the Marie Sklodowska-Curie CYBERGEN research project, at GTM-CRESPPA (CNRS). Nina was supported by the French Red Cross Foundation in 2020 for the project “Le rôle des acteurs de l’ESS auprès des femmes migrantes en situation de précarité socio-légale : les défis grés de l’insertion sociale en Ile-de-France”. Her research interests lie at the crossroads of the sociology of migration, gender and health. Her recent publications include Racialised Care Workers and European Older-Age Care (Palgrave, 2019) and Borders across Healthcare (Berghahn Books, 2020), as well as articles in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Society and Space and Social Policy and Society.
Photo credit: @Gerogiea-Trimspoti-IFRC