Girls, women, migrants: gender-based violence as a constant in migration phenomena

Abstract

Migration is a source of opportunities. At the same time, the processes of transnational human mobility can involve challenges and risks to the safety of people who are induced to embark on a migration path. Compelled by diverse push and pull factors, women who opt to migrate also expose themselves to various forms of gender-based violence, some of which they are already fa-miliar with, and which continue to accompany the course of their lives – first as girls, then as women, and finally as migrants, especially if they find themselves alone in the latter circumstance. And, despite increasingly pronounced risks, increasingly re-strictive reception policies, and increasingly unworkable avenues of socio-economic integration in places of arrival, migration flows are on the rise. While exploring the conditions that distinguish the trajectories of migrant women, this paper aims to trace the contours of a male-dominated world – made up of communities, institutions and States – affecting as a such on female lives and migrations.