Drowning Mothers in the Mediterranean
DIIS researcher Sine Plambech's article "Drowning Mothers" was selected by the Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties (CILD) as one of ten best reads on the price of borders and migration policies in the Mediterranean.
In the article Plambech argues against the representations of "economic migrants" as only “strong young men” arriving on the European shores, since increasingly there are also many minors, many women and pregnant women travelling on their own. These are in need of attention, because forced migration is also a matter of gender. Female migrants must risk sexual violence on the way to Europe to escape sexual violence at home, and as Sine Plambech’s writes in her article women are more likely to drown as they try to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
Why take a gender perspective on the tragic deaths in the Mediterranean? Any death in the Mediterranean is tragic. But, as Plambech argues, a gender perspective provides a window showing the details in the relationship between migrants’ deaths and restrictive border controls.
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