Gender perspectives on citizenship rights and social protection for migrants

Abstract

Gender dynamics are central to migration and the degree of access of migrant populations to social, economic, political and cultural rights and to robust citizenship status. Informed by neoliberal and national populist logics, states selectively recruit and severely restrict access of migrants to settlement and citizenship. While high-skilled immigrant women have made some gains, implementation of gender equity more often results in harmonization downward with losses to citizens and men rather than gains to poorer female and other vulnerable migrants. The COVID-19 global pandemic has starkly exposed the neoliberal and illiberal dimensions of temporary migration policies. Here too the gendered experiences of racialized migrants and immigrants and their treatment by states, corporations and more privileged citizens are an important part of the story of diminished citizenship rights and growing exclusions encountered by migrants. Migrants are turning to transnational social protection strategies to address their deprivation of basic human and citizenship rights. © Marco Giugni and Maria Grasso 2021.