“The strategy of making women invisible serves to legitimize a violent struggle against immigration”

They represent 52% of people who left their place of birth or residence to join France, according to the latest figures from the National Institute for Demographic Studies, based on the number of residence permits issued in 2019. Women are, however, very often absent from political discourse on immigration. Absent or even invisible, believes Elsa Tyszler, researcher at the Center for Sociological and Political Research in Paris, for whom this outlines a strategy favoring “the amalgamation between delinquent men and immigration, thus legitimizing a repressive policy”.

It is in particular this amalgam that the associations supporting the exiles wanted to denounce during a demonstration in front of the National Assembly on Tuesday, December 6, the date on which the asylum and immigration bill was debated without a vote at the Palais-Bourbon. Through this future text, the government intends in particular to grant residence permits to people occupying positions in “jobs in tension”the list of which remains to be established, but also to toughen up asylum applications and facilitate deportations.

If the government claims to seek a balance between firmness and humanism in this bill, not a word has been said for women, while their migratory journey can be marked by specific violence, itself invisible.

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In an interview at Monde, Elsa Tyszlerwhich studies migration issues from the prism of gender relations, analyzes the consequences of the security policies implemented at the borders, the invisibilization of migrant women and the depoliticization of the violence they experience.

In particular, you have studied the social gender relations that play out in immigration at the Franco-Italian and Moroccan-Spanish borders. What is the share of women among all migrants?

They may be numerically smaller depending on the location, but they are still present among the people who arrive at European borders in search of exile. However, we have a biased view of the number of women since they are often invisible and they also sometimes become invisible to protect themselves. At the borders, migrant women from Africa and the Middle East are made doubly vulnerable because they are subject to the racism of migration control practices and at the same time to sexism, at different levels.

In your opinion, how does their invisibilization manifest itself?

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