Women, Migration and Gendered Experiences

This open access book focuses on Albanian internal and international female migration and places gender at the heart of postsocialist transformation. It explores the vulnerabilities that arise for female citizens from the contradictory policies produced by the Albanian state. By illuminating the intersection of gender and migration, it shows how Albanian women are likely to embed themselves in complex social relations and migration trajectories. By focusing on various cases – internal, international, return, economic and student female migrants – the book underlines that migration does not follow any kind of evolutionary development, according to which women go from 'traditional’ to ‘modern' gender relations. By providing a compelling account on the complex negotiations and tactics women employ to deal with gender inequalities, this book leads to a better understanding of gender and migration entanglements. It is a useful read to students, academics in migration and gender studies as well as social scientists and policy-makers in European countries.

• Albanian female migration
• Gender relations and post-socialist transformations
• Internal and international female student migration
• Internal and international care chains
• Post-socialist migratory processes
• Tactics and strategies mobilised by women
• Informality and rudimentary welfare state
• Education as a platform for migration in Albania
• Invisibility of domestic care work sector in Albania
• Intersections of care, gender and migration regimes
• Gendered imaginaries of Albanian female migrants
• Albanian migrants filling the care gap in Italy and Greece
• Commercialization of care
• Social networks in post-socialist Albanian migration
• Open access

• Centro de Investigaçao e Estudos de Sociologia (CIES-Iscte), ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

  Ermira Danaj

Ermira Danaj, a feminist sociologist, holds a PhD in human and social sciences from the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland. In spring 2013, she was a Fulbright visiting scholar in gender and sociology at the Transregional Centre for Democratic Studies, The New School in New York, USA. Currently she is a visiting researcher at the CIES-Iscte (Centre for Sociological Studies), ISCTE, Lisbon, Portugal. She also works as a gender expert with various international organisations. Her main research interests cover feminist activism in post-communist countries, gender and migration, and violence against women.  Since 2002, she has authored and co-authored various research reports, books, articles and other contributions related to gender and feminist studies with a particular focus in Albania and the Balkans. Recently, she has published in the Gender & Development, and Gender, Place & Culture, A Journal of Feminist Geography.