Connectingeurope: Gender, Diaspora, and Belonging

In recent decades, the migration of women to and within Europe has increased, doing so in specific ways – for instance, in connection with family reunion, arranged marriages, and care demands. While these women are often autonomous migrants, they are under-represented in the news or perceived as victims of the migration process, which is usually portrayed as violent and male-dominated.

However, new communication technologies not only help migrant women overcome isolation and bridge the distance from their home countries, but they also seem to provide them with novel tools for active participation and emancipation. This presentation analyzes if (and in what ways) digital technologies enhance European integration or foster segregation (cosmopolitanism versus encapsulation). It explores the preliminary insights of a large European project, ConnectingEurope, that analyzes the online activities of migrant women aged 18-40 from Somali, Turkish, and Romanian backgrounds, living in three of Europe’s main metropolitan and multicultural cities: London, Amsterdam, and Rome.

These three significant diasporas, studied from interdisciplinary, gendered, and comparative perspectives, represent different phases and modalities of European integration while enhancing cross-cultural hubs in Europe’s main cities and their multidirectional links to the sending countries and transnational networks. By focusing on the relationship of migrant women with their sending countries and cities, the study aims to show not only how bonding and transnational affectivity works, but also how Europe is experienced and imagined from outside, forging alternative imaginaries or resistance. Cosmopolitanism and urban globalization emerge as decentering the Eurocentric ideas of Europe’s centrality and self-contained identity.