Rethinking Borders: Positionality, Power and Migrant Women’s Lived Experience

This thesis interrogates the border as both a political regime and an epistemic site. Drawing on feminist, decolonial and intersectional frameworks, it asks how borders are embodied and experienced in everyday life and how they shape who is allowed to move, speak and be recognized. Through two narrative encounters, the research reflects on how categories like “migrant woman” are constructed and contested through legal, racial and gendered processes. The study foregrounds relationality, positionality and epistemic humility as methodological tools. It argues that the border is not merely a geographical line, but a social space where unequal systems of power intersect and where alternative knowledges may emerge. By centering lived experiences, the thesis offers a decolonial contribution to the study of migration emphasizing the need to rethink borders as dynamic and contested zone of meaning-making.