Public Discourses about/by Women Migrants and Refugees from Central and Eastern Europe: (in)Visibility and (dis)Empowerment

Abstract The article, an extensive introduction to this issue’s special section on public discourses about/by women migrants from Central and Eastern Europe, outlines the current scholarly debates as well as the main theoretical and methodological approaches to gender in the context of transnational migration practices, with a focus on labour migration, forced migration and exile. It discusses the core aspects of an intersectionality-driven, social constructionist and postcolonial (adapted to the post-socialist space) approach to the analysis of gendered transnational practices and relations. Within this framework, it proposes to examine how public discourses and positionings construct and deconstruct gendered forms of identification and (dis)empower women migrants and refugees from this space through various modes of public (in)visibility, intersectional articulation of identities and (dis)engagement. The articles in the special section articulate theoretical concepts, such as intersectional “trap” and “displacement,” “agency-in-waiting,” “mediated proximity-distance relationship,” “precarious citizenship” or “microhistorical” media devices, and analytical tools from different areas in qualitative research and discourse studies – thematic analysis, multimodal critical discourse analysis, semio-pragmatics, non-fictional memoir analysis – in empirical work on the symbolic (self-)constructions of Ukrainian, Moldovan, Romanian and Azerbaijani women migrants. They invite both academic and non-academic readers to conversation and (self-)reflection across East-West gendered borders and boundaries.