The Europe we want? Feminist approaches to gender, migration, and democracy Erasmus Project

Project Title

The Europe we want? Feminist approaches to gender, migration, and democracy

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Gender equality / equal opportunities; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Migrants’ issues

Project Summary

“The Europe we want? Feminist approaches to gender, migration, and democracy” was an Erasmus+ project that brought together women´s rights organisations from five countries (Austria, Belgium, Poland, Spain and Sweden) in 2017 and 2018.

Guiding questions and objectives
To counteract racism and exclusion, we have been searching for progressive, gender-sensitive answers that can play a role in adult education.
Our guiding questions were: How do feminist human rights activists analyse the current migration discourses and politics at national and European level? How do human rights-based, gender-just answers to right wing populist movements across Europe look like? What are refugee and migrant women´s motives and perspectives? What are the needs and good practises in adult education to strengthen anti-racist and equality-oriented discourses and the social and political participation of refugee and migrant women in European societies?

Methods and activities
By organizing transnational meetings, workshops, discussions and a conference, we aimed at fostering the exchange and strengthen anti-racist feminist approaches in adult education, namely in the development education sector, and get into or deepen the dialogue with migrant women´s organisations. The methods we used were “study visits” to get to know innovative, successful initiatives in different countries and take home fresh ideas, and to organize workshops and public discussions in all of the participants´ countries. Thematically, we aimed at deepening the knowledge of multipliers about the linkages between gender, migration, neoliberal economics, and democracy, and critically analyze discourses linked to fear, racism and hatred. The project was very successful in bringing together different actors and learning from migrant women´s rights activists about their needs, challenges, and self-organisation to claim their rights.

Transnational partnership meetings
Four transnational partnership meetings were organized in the course of 2017-18. They took place in Madrid, Vienna, Brussels and Gothenburg, with the aim to exchange with and learn from local organizations who work either with refugee/migrant women and/or on gender equality. All transnational partnership meetings had an internal part, and a part that that was either a workshop, a discussion or a conference open for the broader public, mostly organised in cooperation with other – mainly migrant women´s – organisations. Each of the transnational meetings had a special focus within the broader theme “Feminist approaches to gender, migration and democracy”.

Thematic approach
The themes discussed in the meetings ranged from violence against human rights defenders and narrowing space for civil society, the externalisation of the European border regime, human rights violations of refugee and migrant women, security-oriented discourses that instigate fears and anti-Muslim racist discrimination, as well as efforts and innovative ways of working with and empowering refugee and migrant women, raising public awareness about gender and migration, and about democratic challenges related to migration and citizenship. Different innovative non-formal educational initiatives for the empowerment of migrant women and feminist analysis were presented and discussed.

Conference
The transnational partnership meeting in Brussels was combined with a conference that included a workshop and a panel session (side-event) at the European parliament, again with a focus on promoting and strengthening asylum seeker, refugee and migrant women´s rights. The events were organized by Le Monde selon les femmes and took place in cooperation with several migrant women´s organisations, WIDE+ and the GUE/NGL fraction in the European parliament in the context of a “Feminist Forum” on occasion of the International Women´s Day 2018. The conference made possible to reach out to a broader international audience.

Local workshops
The transnational partnership meetings served as a basis to carry out local workshops in the five countries of the project participants. Altogether, 14 local workshops/activities took place. The project partners involved local migrant women´s initiatives and initiated or deepened the dialogue with migrant women, reached out to multipliers, to policy makers and/or to non-organised refugee and migrant women. The conclusions from the local workshops were re-channelled into the latter transnational partnership meetings and inspired further discussions.

E-Publication
As a result of the transnational exchange meetings, especially of the conference in Brussels, a publication was produced. It includes some input from the local workshops and analysis on current challenges for women´s rights in the context of migration and inspiring approaches in adult education. The publication is available online: http://www.wide-netzwerk.at/images/publikationen/2018/TheEuropeWeWant-FeministApproaches-Migration.pdf

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 49847,75 Eur

Project Coordinator

WIDE Entwicklungspolitisches Netzwerk für Frauenrechte und feministische Perspektiven & Country: AT

Project Partners

• Stowarzyszenie Koalicja Karat
• Centro de Estudios e Investigación sobre Mujeres
• GADIP
• LE MONDE SELON LES FEMMES ASBL