Gender perspective in migration studies

Abstract

Research field of migration has been developing for a long time parallel to and outside mainstream institutional academic sociology and its theoretical foundation. In the last two decades, within the field of migration studies, one specific aspect of the phenomena came to the research focus: gender, as significant factor that influences on motivation for migration, shaping, at the same time, its characteristics and specific experiences. With decisive breakthrough of qualitative methods in social sciences and humanities, as well as with gradual development of postmodern philosophy and feminist theory, gender migration studies have been established as research sub-discipline, with its own theoretical and categorical scientific apparatus (as well as institutional-academic grounding), managing more or less successfully to explain and understand multidimensional character of migration processes. This text represents an attempt to make relatively concise overview of disciplines? historical, theoretical and research field development, as a first step in its broader affirmation within Serbian institutional sociology.