On 2 June 2016, the Global Migration Centre (GMC) organised a conference at the Graduate Institute to discuss the findings of their latest research, “Time to Look at Girls: Adolescent Girls Migration and Development”, coordinated by Dr Katarzyna Grabska and Professor Alessandro Monsutti. The conference also engaged in dialogue with policy actors, civil society and the academic community at large in order to shed light on the agentive nature of adolescent girls’ migration. Maria Mathew, PhD student in Anthropology and Sociology of Development, attended the event. In this reflection piece, she discusses the context, relevance, conclusions and policy recommendations of the research.
The Holy Grail for international development, the 2030 Agenda, sees international migration as a multifaceted reality that contributes to sustainable development and inclusive growth in countries of origin, transit and destination. “Time to Look at Girls” is a timely intervention that purports to understand the relationship between migration and development in order to shift the terms of policy debate surrounding adolescent girls on the move. In particular, the research responds to the insufficient discussions in academic as well as policy worlds regarding the category of adolescent girls who migrate. The dominant policy discourse tends to portray girls in a victim mode through the narrative of trafficking and sex-trade, and thereby fails to examine closely the experiences of the migrants. To address this research gap, an interdisciplinary, collaborative and policy-oriented research was carried out in three countries, namely, Bangladesh (Nicoletta Del Franco), Ethiopia (Marina de Regt) and Sudan (Katarzyna Grabska).
The research aimed to explore the dynamics of internal and international migration from the perspective of the lived experiences of women who migrated as young adults. These experiences were captured through qualitative methods such as interviews, focus group discussions, life histories and document analysis. The main highlight of the research was that it successfully demonstrated how adolescent girls exhibit decision-making capacity with respect to migration. In short, they exhibit agency and are not, contrary to what the international policy discourse would have it, victims implicated in regimes of global trafficking. While this is a research that puts forth a developing-country perspective, it is important to understand the drivers of migration, particularly in Europe, which is in the throes of a presumed migration crisis, made worse by the mediatised representations of migrants as being “desperate” to reach Europe. In throwing light on the decision-making strategies behind migration, the research formulates policy recommendations that intend to make migratory experiences safe as well as positive for young women.
As a student of Anthropology and Sociology of Development, I was struck by the fact that across the three countries, one of the motivating factors for young girls to migrate was the promise of a better life. In the words of the keynote speaker, Ms Nahida Sobhan, the Minister for Human Rights at the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh, people undertake migration because of a “universal aspiration for a better life”. However, even as a universal aspiration, what the phenomenon of migration shows is that this “better life” lies “somewhere else” – in another village, town, city or country –, a place that has to be reached through performing a movement, a dislocation probably. Is it worth the risk to burn the bridges of family, as was the case of some of the participants in the research, or cross dangerous waters, as is the case of migrants pouring into Europe, in the hope of a “better life”? The research does not have a definitive answer to this question, but claims that policy could play an important role in enabling migrants to live a better life.
Maria Ann Mathew
PhD candidate in Anthropology and Sociology of Development