Gendered Migration Strategies and Unauthorized Migrations: Senegalese Migration to Europe

Mao-Mei Liu, Brown University

In the last few decades, unauthorized migration has become more heterogeneous in terms of gender, age and how people enter (Donato and Armenta 2011, Passel and Cohn 2011). Nevertheless, scholarship - especially quantitative studies - has lagged in analyzing this diversity and its determinants. During the same period, scholars have consistently shown how household and societal norms are deeply gendered and how gender is essential for understanding migration behavior. Using the recent longitudinal MAFE-Senegal (2008) data, this paper seeks to understand what drives women to embark on unauthorized migration and authorized migrations projects, how these may be related to gendered household norms, and how these differ from the determinants of male migrations.