Women in refuge: the marginalization of refugee women in a hierarchized international system

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to analyze how refugee women from the Global South are treated by the International System and the International Refugee Regime. The hypothesis starts at the systemic level and concludes that refugee women are excluded politically, socially and economically from both spheres and this exclusion is also reflected in host societies. This marginalization occurs due to the colonial power relations that shape the globe in multiple hierarchies of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality and migratory status, which categorize women who seek refuge in the South as well as in the Global North as inferior beings. The article made a bibliographic review on the hierarchical and dichotomous construction of the International System based on the exploitation and inferiorization of the Global South; on the contradictions of the International Refugee Regime and the construction of “myths of difference” that portrayed and continue to represent refugee people as “threats” to national security and culture; on the categorization of women on the move as vulnerable, and; finally, on the need to incorporate an intersectional lense into the analysis of forced migration processes.