Project description
Gendered asylum journeys of women crossing borders
As border controls become increasingly restrictive, asylum-seekers face more dangerous and uncertain routes to safety. While women are disproportionately affected by strict border regimes, their specific experiences and vulnerabilities are often overlooked. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the Gendered_Borders project investigates the gendered lived experiences of migrant women crossing the English Channel by boat to seek asylum in the UK. It examines how these women navigate heightened risks, while also challenging common portrayals of them as passive victims by highlighting their agency and resistance. The project’s goal is to reveal in-depth insights into these experiences and inform more equitable asylum policies and reforms.
Objective
This project examines the gendered experiences of migrant women crossing the English Channel by boat to seek asylum in the UK. As global border control policies intensify, migrants face heightened obstacles in reaching sovereign territories to claim asylum. In the UK this has been exacerbated by intensified coastal border securitisation and policies designed to deter those arriving by boat. Traditional geopolitical frameworks have largely provided macro-level, state-centric analyses, neglecting the embodied, intimate and gendered dimensions of border politics. Yet these developments disproportionately affect women, who are increasingly attempting these dangerous journeys alone or with children. Women face intersecting vulnerabilities, often subjected to exploitation during journeys, while also facing challenges in the asylum process. To date, we know little about the lived experience of these crossings, particularly from a gendered perspective. This absence has led to policies and research that overlook the specific vulnerabilities faced by asylum-seeking women, as well as the broader geopolitical and historical factors making boat crossings a viable option. Furthermore, asylum-seeking women are pivotal in challenging oppressive bordering systems through everyday acts of solidarity and resistance, yet migration studies frequently frame them as passive victims of trafficking. The objectives are to explore the lived realities of boat crossings for women seeking asylum in the UK, to understand how intensifying border policies are uniquely encountered, embodied and contested by them, and to contribute to policy and advocacy by generating actionable insights and recommendations for asylum reform. This will be achieved through an interdisciplinary feminist methodology that combines in-depth qualitative research with participatory and creative approaches.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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3012 Bern
Switzerland
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