Drowning mothers
As refugees try to cross the Mediterranean Sea - women are more likely to drown.
Women’s increased risk of death is not only true for the Mediterranean journey. The same lethal pattern can be seen along other borders. A major quantitative study of “border-crossing deaths” by Sharon Pickering and Brandy Cochrane focuses on precisely “where, how and why women die crossing borders”. Using data from 2012, well before the current crisis, Pickering and Cochrane surveyed deaths among female migrants in three areas of the world: in the Mediterranean on the way to the EU, in the Mexican desert on the way to the United States, and in the South Pacific for migrants sailing from Indonesia toward Australia.
On the ships, women and children are often placed below deck by their male family members in order to protect them during the crossing. But this location can quickly become a trap, often with tragic consequences. Rescue teams coming to the aid of capsized ships often find women and children who have suffocated from toxic exhaust fumes or drowned by incoming waters. Women often have poorer swimming skills compared to men, and their attempts to save their children often also lead to their higher risk of drowning. When rescuers discover drowned women, they often find them with heavier clothing that pulled them under the water.
#femmes #genre #mourir_en_mer #morts_en_mer #mortalité #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Méditerranée #frontières
▻https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/sine-plambech/drowning-mothers
L’article scientifique auquel fait référence l’article publié sur Open Democracy :
Irregular border-crossing deaths and gender : Where, how and why women die crossing borders
In a global era of increased securitization of migration between the developed and developing world this article undertakes a gendered analysis of the ways women die irregularly crossing borders. Through an examination of datasets in Europe, the USA and Australia it finds women are more likely to die crossing borders at the harsh physical frontiers of nation-states rather than at increasingly policed ‘internal border’ sites. The reasons why women are dying are not clearly discernible from the data, yet based on the extant literature it is reasonable to conclude that gendered social practices within families, and within countries of origin and transit, as well as the practices of smuggling markets, are key contributing factors.
▻http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1362480612464510
#USA #Australie #Europe
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