The Union of Equality? Success and shortcomings of EU’s gender mainstreaming in migration and asylum policy.

Since the 2015 refugee crisis, the whole issue of migration became pressing withing EU internal and external policies, due to the great public resonance of the topic and its high politicization, together with the increasing populistic and Euro-skeptical trends in European parties. The history of EU migration policy traces back to the foundational treaties, however, throughout time it has been frames more and more as a matter of security, both for Member States (MSs) and for the Union itself. This “securitized” approach focused on border management and limitation of irregular migration flows makes it quite problematic to insert a gender-sensitive perspective in the policies. In the EU, migration is seen both as a solution and as a problem. This entails some kind of superficiality, if not discrimination, when dealing with some groups of migrants – and this is where the gender discourse starts to play a role.

The EU is formally committed to gender equality, as it is considered one of the foundational principles of the European project, and one of the main tools employed according to achieve equality is gender mainstreaming (GM). The idea of gender mainstreaming consists in incorporating a gender-sensitive perspective in every policy field, in order to make gender a cross-cutting issue and not a topic that stands on its own. It was firstly formulated in the 1985 Third World Conference on Women in Nairobi, then further developed in the 1995 Fourth Conference in Beijing; the EU institutionalized gender mainstreaming as an official policy strategy with the 1998 Treaty of Amsterdam. Since then, researchers and scholars, especially those with a feminist approach, have analyzed and verified the concrete application of the gender mainstreaming notion in various EU policy fields, with it being more evident and effective in some and almost absent, or inadequate, in others.

The latter seems to be the case for migration and asylum policy: up until now, the EU rarely included a gender-sensitive and intersectional perspective to its approach to the field and considering that a woman refugee can be considered the “quintessential” of intersectionality, this suggests how insufficient the EU response can be when tackling these issues. Nonetheless, certain elements inserted in the policies and some recent developments may hint that something might be changing in the EU. Hence, this article presents a necessary summary of the intertwined history of gender mainstreaming and migration and asylum policy in the European context, and what should we expect in the future from this pressing and equally urgent matters.

One step back: the evolution of EU legal framework for migration and asylum

The conflicts in the Balkans and the Middle East during the 1990s and the consequent increase of refugees’ flows made evident how necessary it was to develop a common European response to migration matters. Hence, the 1992 Maastricht Treaty incorporated immigration and asylum in the EU legal framework as “matter of common interests”. However, they were included in the intergovernmental “pillar” – the third, meaning that the decisions were non-binding from a legal point of view and hence had no direct effect on national law.

This changed with the 1999 Amsterdam Treaty, with which visa, asylum and migration were added to the new supranational Title IV EC, and consequently created the legal framework for a common EU migration and asylum policy. This process was eventually finalized with the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, which ended the pillar structure and transferred immigration, asylum and all the topics contained in the third pillar in the new Title V TFEU – that is, the EU was given the necessary powers to establish the legislative bases with which to create a common system for managing migration and asylum. Afterwards, the 2011 Global Approach to Migration and Mobility and 2015 EU agenda on Migration were drafted precisely to define a comprehensive EU strategy to tackle migration matters.

Despite the constitutional efforts, it is problematic to argue for a “Europeanization” of migration policy: these fields are difficult to harmonize because they are cross-cutting issues, and they need horizontal coordination between the MSs. Also, the latter all have different national migration regimes influenced by culture and national identity’s conception.

Accordingly, EU asylum system is rooted in international law and it the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugee and its 1967 Protocol – it is compelling to note that these two fundamental documents lack any reference to gender, and scholars argue that the perception of refugees in them was strongly influenced by the patriarchal structure of Western societies, which is rooted in the division between public/male and female/private sphere. The Common European Asylum System (CEAS) comprises the 1990 Dublin Convention, the 1993 Maastricht and 1999 Amsterdam Treaties, the 1999 Tampere and the 2004 Hague Program, and the 2009 Lisbon Treaty. These and other agreements aim at harmonizing MSs asylum systems, but some of those – for instance, the EU-Turkey deal – contributed to create the idea of “Fortress Europe”, where the focus is mainly on reducing migration flows and border control.

The role of gender in EU discourses

The EU has proven to be a fruitful ground, though not perfect, to advance gender equality proposals, as well as ones that precisely target at protect migrant women. The first Gender equality strategies and action plans (AP) 1982-1985 proposed the principle for “equal treatment for migrant women” for the first time, then the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty extended the concept of discrimination from gender to more intersectional forms of issues.

Nevertheless, previous research has described EU comprehensive approach to gender as non-transformative – i.e., promoting women empowerment while maintaining the same socio-political structure causing their oppression intact. While the EU is usually considered a champion of equality, EU policies do not challenge gendered power structures and reinforces typical male/female roles, especially when it comes to the inclusion of women into the labor market. This is true both for EU internal politics and its external action: the literature underlined how the neoliberal foundation of the EU played a heavy role in diluting the potential of gender mainstreaming in EU relation with third countries, where the impression is that gender is used more as a rhetorical and functional tool to promote higher political objectives.

The general approach of the EU to gender has been defined one of “add women and stir”, focused on superficial and quantitative engagement instead of transformative, structural qualitative improvement. Accordingly, EU attitude towards gender reflects the common tendency in international relation to consider security and foreign policy issues as “masculine” events, in which “weak” subjects, regardless their gender of identification, are “feminized” either to justify their protection, or oppression. In these areas, since the experience of women is traditionally relegated to the “private” and intimate sphere, policy responses systematically fail to respond to gender issues. This is particularly true if we take into consideration how gender-based violence (GBS) is treated superficially and in a “gender-neutral” manner, despite the profound incidence of these practices in war zones and on migration routes – at any stage of the migrants’ journey: departure, transit, and arrival.

So, is gender really mainstreamed in EU migration and asylum policy?

It is possible to argue that the same perspective is applied by the EU to migration and asylum policy since, far from being gender blind, migration policies are profoundly gendered. This is evident if we look at mainly two types of migration: family migration and labor migration, where women are either considered solely in their role of mothers or in relation to domestic and care work. The fact that the 2011 Global approach mentions gender and women just one time, in relation to human trafficking, and only superficially, without a real elaboration or solution, and that the 2015 European Agenda do not mention gender at all is self-explanatory to this respect.

Throughout time, women migrants were acknowledged as a “particular social group” in the asylum system and gender-related issues, as assault and gender-based violence or sexual rights, were quoted and addressed more often in the legislative body dealing with asylum – an example of this is the 2003 Reception Conditions Directives then revised in 2013. Nonetheless, this does not entail a comprehensive application of gender mainstreaming, since in most fundamental policies disregards gender completely. Accordingly, The 2016-2020 GAP related to EU external action mentions migrant women’s issues only when related to their exploitation and generally advocates for women’s empowerment.

Overall, up until now the EU has applied a “liberal” conceptualization of gender, which is problematic on more aspects. Its non-specificity and alleged neutrality make it advocate for equality while not really taking into account the roots of gender discrimination and the fact that the equality standards to which the international community look up to are essentially shaped upon a male conception of the world. At the same time, it reflects the typical stereotypization of male-female roles, where women are essentially perceived as “victims” and “passive actors”, hence not actors of change, and men corresponds to either “violent perpetuators” or to active agents of change. Finally, it goes without saying that if women’s issues are not appropriately addressed, other equally endangered minorities, like those experienced by the LGBTQ+ community, are almost never taken into account.

On the other hand, it is also true that with time, gender-related issues are becoming more critical and hence more addressed, as testified by 2016 Parliamentary resolutions (2015/2325(INI)) and by the 2020-2025 Gender equality strategy. The European Asylum Support Office (EASO) now provide a training tool to educate its staff to use more intersectional perspectives. The most compelling example of this inversion of tendency is the 2021-2026 Gender Action Plan (GAP III) for EU external action: the EU is explicitly moving towards a transformative and openly intersectional approach. Indeed, the GAP III considers the specificities of experiences of women and other endangered subjectivities on several occasions, both as regards the problematization of issues, the causes of inequalities and the solutions proposed to overcome them.


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