Gendered spatialities of power in 'borderland' Europe: an approach through mobile and immobilised bodies

Abstract

Influenced by critical border studies and feminist accounts of the body, this paper draws on the biographic experiences of Somali, Ethiopian and Eritrean women I met on the island of Malta, after they crossed North Africa and the Mediterranean. It describes the evolving embodied trajectories of migrant women and the various ways they are affected by EU border policies, from the path leading to Europe to what happens after having reached EU shores in Malta. It shows that the body is a crucial scale of analysis for the definition and perception of European border-making, through disciplinary mechanisms of immobilisation/displacement and the construction of gendered and racial boundaries.