« Nous sommes des battantes. » Expériences de femmes d’Afrique centrale et de l’Ouest à la frontière maroco-espagnole

• Main Author: Elsa Tyszler
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Genre, Sexualité et Société 2021-07-01
• Series: Genre, Sexualité et Société
• Subjects: migrations; borders; gender; women; resistances
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/gss/6548

This contribution analyses the experiences of women from Central and West Africa seeking to cross the Moroccan-Spanish border. Exploring embodied narratives collected in the field between 2015 and 2017 and based on the sociology of migration and gender relations, the article looks at both the power and domination relations that weigh on these illegalized women and their modes of agency and resistance. Paying attention to their experiences enables us to understand the plurality of the instances and processes of production of their vulnerabilities at the border; on the other hand, their narratives provide information on situations where women, despite the violence, perform their power to act, for themselves but also sometimes to support other women. The research shows the coexistence of different strategies to turn their real or supposed vulnerabilities into tools for trying to cross the border.