Exploring Returnee Migrant Women, COVID-19 and Sustainability in Spain

Maria Luisa Di Martino
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Maria Luisa Di Martino: Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Dorsoduro 3199, 30123 Venice, Italy

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 17, 1-30

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has signified an historical change in human mobility. By transforming the patterns of people on the move, it has highlighted gender-based inequalities and women’s vulnerabilities. The link between COVID-19 and return migration shapes returnees’ readaptation process in their home countries, as returnees are embedded in a limbo between the pandemic’s pressure on the policy and socio-economic setting, on one hand, and their efforts for reintegration, on the other. Due to the pandemic, the gender-based imbalance has increased existing gender gaps both in migration and return, exacerbating women’s vulnerability. Thus, personal aspirations and professional expectations of highly educated women are caught in a system of socio-economic and geographical (im)mobility, which represents the principal outcome in their relocation and readaptation process. Based on a qualitative methodology through the analysis of ten life histories of highly educated returnee migrant women, this paper sheds light on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on their migratory trajectories, providing a typology of them. Findings stress the necessity for more sustainable measures and resources for life–work balance and gender-sensitive policies, to promote a better integration process into the local labour market; to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on returnee women, and to prevent the proliferation of mental health problems among returnee women.

Keywords: sustainability; gender; sustainable human mobility; inclusion; return migration; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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