Interconnection of sexuality, gender and migration

Epistemic interest and research question:

The adoption of 'Western' gender and sexuality patterns is often demanded as an essential criterion for successful integration, especially by people who have experienced flight and/or those marked as Muslim. Not only since the incident on New Year's Eve in Cologne in 2015 have discussions on migration and integration particularly contained gendered and sexualized stereotyping.

In this context, not only political parties, media and legislators play a role in the regulation of sexual policies, but also practitioners in sexual education contexts. Sexual education work in the context of flight is embedded in a normatively and emotionally charged social discourse that produces powerful knowledge on gender, sexuality and flight – increasingly so since the so-called long summer of migration in 2015.

By means of qualitative interviews, the project investigates the perspective of sex education practitioners on the 'target group' of people who have experienced flight. One of the guiding questions of the study was what makes refugees a 'special' target group for sexual education work from the point of view of professionals in the field? What gendered notions do practitioners construct and what roles do they assign to themselves? How are tensions dealt with?

Taking into account feminist approaches from the postcolonial period, the project carries out a differentiated consideration of the interconnections between migration, sexuality and gender. Accordingly, the findings of the analysis can be viewed in terms of regulative, structuring, and classificatory mechanisms in the context of gender relations and associated othering processes.
 

Project design and method

The study is based on eight guided interviews with experts in the field of sexual education who have conducted and/or initiated sexual education programs for people who have experienced flight. The sample includes employees of welfare organizations and educational institutions such as “pro familia”, "AWO”, “Caritas”, “Aids-Hilfe” and municipalities.

The research project aims to gather the perspectives of the interviewed experts in order to identify patterns of interpretation in relation to refugees. The focus is on the interconnections with the categories of gender and sexuality. Relevant data was evaluated by content analyses methods and the patterns of interpretation were specified by means of detailed fine analyses.

Based on the findings, two further surveys were carried out in the 2020/2021 winter semester with students of the Master's degree program in Flight, Migration, Society at the KU as part of the student research project "Sexuality, Gender and Migration – Refugees as a Target Group for Sexual Education Work". Once again, the perspective of practitioners in the field of sexual education work was researched.

Specifically, the study projects shed light on how the categories of race and gender take effect in speaking about educational opportunities in the context of flight. Another focus is on different forms of knowledge regarding gender, sexuality, migration and flight from the perspective of practitioners. The role that practitioners assign to these forms of knowledge in relation to their own knowledge, that of participants, and socially virulent knowledge was examined. The evaluation was conducted using the documentary method and presented in final reports.
 

Publications

The findings from the two research projects resulted in a collaborative project with students from the Master's program in Flight, Migration, Society.

The blog post that also deals with the topic of intersectionality and sexual education work in Germany and sheds light on connected challenges, discourses, and perspectives is available in German on the blog of the German Network for Forced Migration Studies: https://blog.fluchtforschung.net/intersektionalitat-und-sexuelle-bildungsarbeit-in-deutschland-herausforderungen-diskurse-perspektiven/
 

Project duration:

2019 – 2021