Challenges of Migrant and Refugee Women in Local Integration Processes: Case of Venezuela And Colombia "Welcome All"

Abstract

This paper examines why local integration processes differ between men and women from a gender perspective. The challenges that migrant and refugee women face in accessing rights and benefits are different due to the prevalence of traditional gender norms and the discrimination of power structures. How gender is defined and conceived has shaped migration patterns, the conditions during the mobilisation and the later circumstances in the host countries. Women migrants and refugees assume burdens related to sexist notions and ideas about their role in the world, and they are excluded from most of the social, cultural, political and economic spheres necessary for the process of recovery, adaptation and integration in the new contexts. This study used qualitative and quantitative research based on a case study of refugee and migrant Venezuelan women in Colombia, where was applied regressions with linear and probabilistic methods to determine the relationships and causalities between selected variables of the essential conditions to achieve local integration. The results of the exercise evidenced that even when existing equality in legal guarantees for refugees and migrant populations, there is a gap between the processes of local integration between men and women. The empirical data concluded that refugees and migrant women faced more challenges and limited access to opportunities.