Gender, Violence and Precarity in Displacement

This paper focuses on gender, violence and precarity in various stages of the forced migration process. I argue that the historically contingent, stage-specific, jurisdiction-distinct, intersectional, institutional and interpersonal forms of patriarchal violence experienced by women and families fleeing from conflict and devastation interact with their context-specific forms of precarity in a matrix of mutually reinforcing processes. I draw upon and discuss the sexual enslavement and genocidal violence against Yazidi women and girls under the Islamic state in the Middle East; the predatory, and at the same time systemic, sexual assault and gender based violence by smugglers, traffickers, government actors, community members and fellow refugees against women and families “irregularly” crossing land and sea borders seeking “safe haven” in Europe; and the institutional and every day forms of violence faced by asylum seekers in a permanent “suspension”, in camps and at various stages of the asylum process in Greece and “Fortress Europe”.