City of Women – Euro Summit
‘It is
essential that Europe shed its image and representation as a continent whose
migration history is confined to the mass emigrations of the past. …
Immigrations from near and far have been and are an integral part of Europe.’
(Saskia Sassen)
What is Europe? A geopolitical region with shared
homogeneous values and a common cultural history based on a set of universal
ideas? Or is it a site of ongoing migration, mobility and cultural fusion? Who
belongs to Europe, who is considered a threatening outsider, a more or less
tolerated guest, or an authentic European? Where are its borders, where are the
centres, who defines them and who transgresses them?
A close examination of European history shows that Europe has always been
pluri-ethnical and trans-cultural. However, we currently witness a strong
effort to construct a narrative of a common, homogeneous European identity,
based on the assumption of common values and ethnic characteristics (such as
white, Christian, rational, not nomadic, not black, not Muslim—all categories
designed to define and distinguish those who belong from those who don’t). This
is best seen in the strengthening of the eastern and southern European external
borders and the tightening of immigration regulations across the New Europe.
Since measures to exclude ‘others’ go together with the construction of
cultural, religious or ‘racial’ otherness, racial minorities within the EU have
gradually become targets of this ‘othering’. Slovenia, one of the accession
countries, participates in these processes with its efforts to strengthen its
borders, its ongoing discourses on European identity, and its rising xenophobic
attitudes, which also easily find their way onto the pages and screens of the
mass media.
These processes are not gender-neutral. Questions of migration, of national and
cultural identity are often negotiated in gendered terms: for instance,
questions of immigration and multiculturalism in Germany or France escalate in
conflicts around Muslim women wearing the scarf; the ethnicised ‘Other’ in
media coverage is often constructed as a women; women play a growing,
economically important role in current cross-border circuits such as illegal
trafficking in people for the sex industry and for various types of formal and
informal labour markets. At the same time, women are rarely seen as active
subjects in political and cultural discourses on migration, identities,
cultural representation, but rather as victims—of male oppression, of
traffickers, of ‘traditional’ cultural beliefs.
To investigate and debate the links between gendered,
cultural and ethnic exclusion in the New Europe, the City of Women Festival –
in collaboration with the Peace Institute – has organised a City of Women - Euro Summit.
The invited experts are:
Saskia Sassen
(USA): European
Immigration Policies — Is This the Way to Go?
Saskia Sassen’s analysis of global transfers of money and power has earned her
a reputation as one of the world’s leading experts on globalisation. In one of
her recent publications, Guests and Aliens, she brings her impressive
interpretative skills to bear on the related issue of immigration, putting
current European diagnoses of ‘crisis’ into historical perspective. Guests and
Aliens shows the causes behind immigration that have historically led to
nations either welcoming in-comers as ‘guests’ or disparaging them as ‘aliens’.
Sassen describes the relative normality of the pursuit of work across borders
throughout the history of Europe. She deconstructs the current myth of ‘mass
invasion’, criticises the resulting policies of border-closure, and especially
stresses the usefulness of immigration for (Western) Europe’s economic growth,
both in the past and today.
In her keynote speech at the City of Women - Euro Summit, Sassen will present her
insightful geopolitical, economic, and gendered analysis of today’s migration
processes and policies in Europe and their re- and mis-representations in
politics, the media, and public opinion.
One of today’s most lucid, imaginative, and visionary social scientists, Sassen
is a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago. Her books include The
Global City, The Mobility of Labor and Capital, Loosing Control and
Globalization and its Discontents. She lectures, teaches and acts as consultant
for policy-makers worldwide. She received numerous awards and is distinguished
professor and guest lecturer at many universities.
Rutvica
Andrijasevic (Croatia / the Netherlands): The Difference Borders Make:
Sex-Trafficking of ‘Eastern’ European Women in Italy
‘Immigration crisis!’ and ‘Emergency immigration!’ are just two of many such
headlines that appeared in various European newspapers in recent years. Media
imagery of this sort stirs up fears of invasion and encourages the notion of
migration as a crisis in need of containment. Rutvica Andrijaševic will take a
closer look at the gendered aspect of the visual rendering of border-crossings
to show how migrant women, who tend to fall out of view, gain visibility when
portrayed as the victims of trafficking. By looking at the processes of
representation and how meanings are produced and allocated in the public discourse,
her analysis sheds light on various, often overlooked, aspects of
sex-trafficking. Her study, which is based on the biographical narratives of
trafficked women in Italy as well as on media imagery and policy discourses on
migration, exposes the gaps between official discourses, official policies, and
women’s narratives. She argues that ‘trafficking’ as such is an inadequate
category to account for the complexity of current social-political
transformations in Europe or women's experiences of international migration
Rutvica Andrijaševic is a Ph.D. candidate at the Netherlands Research School of
Women’s Studies at Utrecht University. Her interests and writings are located
in an interdisciplinary framework of sociology and cultural and women studies;
the key issues of gender, race, borders, and migration are common threads
throughout her work. After studying literature at Trieste and Bologna
University, she finished her second M.A. in gender studies at the Central
European University in Budapest. As the recipient of a grant from the Open
Society Institute, as well as an affiliate to the Zagreb Centre for Women’s
Studies, she is currently completing her doctoral degree at Utrecht University.
Her publications include Fortress Europe: Old Boundaries, New Borders; Europe
and Migration: The Myth of Invasion and the Danger of Historical Amnesia’,
Leggendaria, 23 (2000).
More at: http://www.let.uu.nl/~Rutvica.Andrijasevic/personal/
Tatjana Perić
(Serbia): At The
Doors of Fortress Europe: The Case of the Roma
The rise of racism and xenophobia and the lack of adequate mechanisms for
opposing them have resulted in new migration waves among Central and East
European Roma seeking refuge in western parts of the continent. Grim reality
shows, however, that for the Roma, the doors of Fortress Europe remain firmly
shut. West European states have failed to provide Roma access to real and
substantive asylum procedures, have discriminated against them in border
decisions and policies, and have carried out individual and collective
expulsions of Roma. As West European countries reject asylum-seekers and engage
in accelerating their return to their countries of origin, there seems to be
little if any regard for the difficult conditions Romani returnees encounter
upon their return. Once they are back, the plight of the Roma continues, and
they remain unwanted no matter where they go.
Tatjana Peric is a former researcher with the European Roma Rights Centre
(ERRC) and has published many works on the human rights situation of the Roma in
Southeastern Europe. She is a former Pew Fellow of the Religion, Religious
Freedom and Human Rights Program at Columbia University (New York) and a
graduate of the Bossey Graduate School in religion and peacemaking of the
Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches in Geneva. Originally
from Bosnia and Herzegovina and, as of recent, based in Novi Sad, Serbia, she
is currently an independent consultant affiliated with the ERRC, as well as a
number of local and international human rights and humanitarian organisations.
Nira Yuval-Davis (UK): Borders, Boundaries and the Gendered
Politics of Belonging
Nira Yuval-Davis is one of Europe’s leading theoreticians on the related issues
of nationalism, racism, gender, and citizenship. One of her main questions
concerning the New Europe and, especially, the enlargement process is: ‘What
will be the fate … of those social groupings that at present have secondary
access to state powers, such as ethnic minorities and women? There is a real
danger that, while some of Europe’s inhabitants would enjoy higher degrees of
freedom and mobility, others would be doubly discriminated against.’ Her work
seeks to contribute to the development of an adequate theory and politics of
citizenship for a multi-ethnic, gender-equal and civil society.
Yuval-Davis is a professor of gender and ethnic studies at the University of
Greenwich, London, and president of the Research Committee 05 (on Race, Ethnic
and Minority Relations) of the International Sociological Association. She has
also been a founding member of the London-based groups Women Against
Fundamentalisms and Women in Black. She has written extensively on the
theoretical and empirical aspects of women, nationalism, racism,
fundamentalism, and citizenship in Britain, Europe, Israel and other settler
societies. Among other things, she co-wrote and co-edited Women, Citizenship
& Difference (Zed Books, 1999), Citizenship: Pushing the Boundaries, a
special issue of The Feminist Review (1997), Cross Fires: Nationalism, Racism
and Gender in Europe (Pluto, 1995), The Gulf War and the New World Order (Zed
Books, 1992); and Racialized Boundaries (Routledge, 1992); and co-edited Woman
– Nation – State (Macmillan, 1989). One of her most popular publications,
Gender and Nation (Sage, 1997), has been translated into six languages.
Avtar
Brah (UK): Reconfiguring Europe: The Question of Gender, Culture and
Identity
The question of culture and identity is always at the heart of global economic
and political processes. It assumes even greater urgency since the events of
September 11. Avtar Brah’s contribution will explore how processes of culture
and identity are always gendered, how women figure in contemporary discourses
of the 'civilised world', and what role we, as women can play in rethinking the
issues involved and work towards a brighter future for us all.
Avtar Brah is a Reader in Sociology at Birkbeck College. Her research covers
areas such as feminist thought, diaspora studies, gendered labour markets, and
globalisation. She has just returned from Cornell University where she was a
Visiting Fellow of the Society for the Humanities. Publications include
'Cartigraphies of Diaspora, Contesting identities'; three co-edited
collections: Global Futures -- Migration, Environment and Globalization;
Thinking Identities -- Ethnicity, Racism and Culture; and, Hybridity and its
Diacontents -- Politics, Science culture. She is a member of the Feminist
Review Collective.
Moderator: Milica G. Antić
(Slovenia)
Milica G. Antic is assistant professor of sociology at the Ljubljana
University, visiting professor at the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis in
Ljubljana and at the Central European University in Budapest, and senior
research fellow at the Peace Institute in Ljubljana. Among her publications are
Slovene Political Parties and Their Influence on the Electoral Prospects of
Women (1999), Women in Politics in Slovenia’s new democracy; Why so few?
(2001), Women-Politics-Equality; Prospects for Gender Equality Politics in
Central and Eastern Europe (with Vlasta Jalušic, 2001).
14.00: opening statement
14.15: Saskia Sassen:
European Immigration Policies — Is This the Way to Go?
15.30: Rutvica
Andrijasevic: The Difference Borders Make: Sex-Trafficking of
‘Eastern’ European Women in Italy
16.15: Tatjana Peric:
At The Doors of Fortress Europe: The Case of the Roma
17.15: Nira
Yuval-Davis: Borders, Boundaries and the Gendered Politics of
Belonging
18.00: Avtar Brah:
Reconfiguring Europe: The Question of Gender, Culture and Identity
Organised by: Mirovni Inštitut / Peace Institute & Mesto žensk / City of
Women
in co-operation with: Cankarjev dom; Cultural Link Program (OSI-Budapest),
SCCA-Ljubljana, Zavod za sodobne umetnosti / Center for Contemporary Arts