SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND EXCLUSION OF IMMIGRANT WOMEN IN SWITZERLAND
SNF - NFP51 Geography in Bern UNIBE
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Integration und Ausschluss
Nationales Forschungsprogramm 51

 
  Last Update: 8.11.2006  

 

 

 

  
 

The research Problem

Women now make up the majority of immigrants entering Switzerland. Popular, political and academic discourses view immigrant women as poorly integrated, poorly educated and as victims of exploitation. We argue that migrant women are far more diverse and that their social integration involves a wide variety of situations. Both the discourses and the integration policies need to reflect this diversity and to support the creative efforts of migrant women to integrate. At the same time, the role of gender in migration and social integration merits greater attention.

  

 

  

 

   
 

The project aims

The aim of this project is to contribute to a differentiated understanding of migrant women and to the formulation of integration policies by:

  • investigating processes of social integration and social exclusion of different groups of migrant women, differentiated by citizenship, ethnicity and occupational skills
  • addressing the strategies that migrant women adopt to strive for social integration
  • examining the contents and effects of prevailing discourses and official policies regarding the social integration of migrant women.

The study focuses on two groups of skilled immigrant women differentiated by place of origin and by religious background. One group includes Latin American women of a primarily Christian background and the other includes women from Turkey, Kosovo and Arab countries who are primarily Muslim.

  
   

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Research Group Social and Political Geography and Gender Studies, Department of Geography, University of Berne, Hallerstrasse 12, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland