By Aleksandra Kuśnierkiewicz, from the European Network of Migrant Women and RadicalGirlsss. This article was adapted from the speech Aleksandra gave at #FiLiA2021 during the Political Participation of Migrant Women Panel.

Migrant women have things to say. Through their experience of intersecting discriminations, migrant and refugee women could bring to the table a cross-cutting view of systemic change that is needed for true women’s liberation. Yet, women and particularly young migrant and refugee women continue to face exclusion in formal and informal political spaces at all European levels.

Their low participation is determined by many factors, from legal and financial barriers to the lack of awareness about the existing mechanisms. For young migrant women, this gap becomes even bigger as they face specific challenges and many of them grew up disconnected from the women’s rights frameworks that feminist advocates created. As a result, their interests are often poorly or not at all represented at the international level. This is a dangerous precedent because without their input, political processes risk being detached from the reality of women’s lives.

To meaningfully engage with the topic, the European Network of Migrant Women and RadicalGirlsss, its young women’s group, designed a feminist participatory action project research with Sciences Po. It aimed to identify, define, and analyse the major barriers impeding migrant and refugee women’s participation in European decision-making processes, with a specific focus on young women (16 to 25 years old), and come up with recommendations and a methodology on how to bridge them. We organised a series of workshops with young migrant women with the objective of providing them space to gain self-esteem, practice public speaking and get informed on legal tools designed to protect their rights such as CEDAW. The results are captured in the report which aims at disseminating knowledge on how to have a positive impact on young migrant women agency and allow them to meaningfully engage in political participation.

What hinders migrant women’s political participation?

The right to meaningfully participate in decision-making processes involves more than simply voting or standing for election. It encapsulates the freedom to speak out, share experiences, build support networks and through this raise awareness and influence political decisions as well as develop leadership skills in pursuit of particular goals. These are all vital for women to rightfully take space in the world.

Young migrant women’s political participation is an essential prerequisite for truly representative democratic systems. The continuing xenophobia and rising nativism in the European Union give States a decisive role in deciding who is allowed to participate in the public sphere. If migrant and refugee women are not meaningfully included in political life at all levels, their concerns remain invisible and their potential – limited. It is only with their participation that States will be able to uphold the global core values of justice, representation, and human rights.

But simply providing space for migrant women or inviting them to the table is not enough. Such tactics, if not merely tokenistic, fail to acknowledge the abuse and discrimination they have endured. This includes both physical and psychological violence which migrant women are disproportionally affected by. The endured trauma becomes a debilitating factor that hinders their ability to act with agency. Moreover, stereotyping based on sex, race, class, or nationality oftentimes becomes internalised meaning young women consider themselves unable to initiate projects or speak on their own behalf. Capacity-building and support networks serve as strategies to help women overcome this.

During our panel, we shared personal experiences of exclusion and internalised stereotyping in relation to our experience of migration. Women from the audience approached us afterwards and told us they felt represented. Discrimination of migrant women is systemic; questioning and sharing what we have been through allowed us to link personal to political and shed light upon existing structures of power. It proved the need for consciousness-raising as an essential part of building solidarity between women without which there is no women’s liberation movement.

Aleksandra Kuśnierkiewicz is a member of the European Network of Migrant Women and RadicalGirlsss, where she works towards advocacy and representation of young migrant women in European bodies. She has gained international experience in several NGOs and currently works in Poland as a freelance journalist writing mainly on human rights. In her work, she is concerned with issues of women’s liberation, migration and feminist foreign policy. She also writes poems, stories and plays concerned with women’s perspectives. She’s currently in the process of setting up the Warsaw Women’s Library.