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Vulnerability, Precarity and Intersectionality: A Critical Review of Three Key Concepts for Understanding Gender-Based Violence in Migration Contexts

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Gender-Based Violence in Migration

Abstract

This chapter examines three influential concepts in feminist and gender theorising—vulnerability, precarity and intersectionality. Each illuminates aspects of the complex operation of unequal power relations that produce gender-based violence in migration. Fineman’s vulnerability theory emphasises the human condition as one of ‘universal and continuous vulnerability’ but downplays difference. Precarity theory focuses on processes which transform precariousness into socially-constructed and differentially-experienced precarity. Intersectionality recognises that different women experience gender-based disadvantage or oppression differently. This chapter argues that an expanded, critical and heuristic vulnerability approach, which integrates key insights of ‘situated intersectionality’ along with a deep understanding of structural and discursively produced forms of oppression as revealed by the precarity approach, can enrich empirical research on and interpretative analysis of GBV in contexts of migration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Political Science and Sociology, National University of Ireland, Galway, Galway, Ireland

    Niamh Reilly

  2. Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies (NKVTS), Oslo, Norway

    Margunn Bjørnholt

  3. Department of Sociology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Margunn Bjørnholt

  4. Department of Sociology, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, NS, Canada

    Evangelia Tastsoglou

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  1. Niamh Reilly
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  2. Margunn Bjørnholt
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  3. Evangelia Tastsoglou
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Correspondence to Niamh Reilly .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Université Paris 8 and Paris Centre for Sociological and Political Research (CRESPPA), Paris, France

    Jane Freedman

  2. Paris Centre for Sociological and Political Research, CNRS, Paris, France

    Nina Sahraoui

  3. Department of Sociology, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, NS, Canada

    Evangelia Tastsoglou

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Reilly, N., Bjørnholt, M., Tastsoglou, E. (2022). Vulnerability, Precarity and Intersectionality: A Critical Review of Three Key Concepts for Understanding Gender-Based Violence in Migration Contexts. In: Freedman, J., Sahraoui, N., Tastsoglou, E. (eds) Gender-Based Violence in Migration. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07929-0_2

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