The Women in Migration Network (WIMN), formerly the Women and Global Migration Working Group, is an advocacy organization formed to promote the rights of female refugees and migrants. ¹ WIMN pushes for various left-of-center policies involving migration and women’s issues. ¹ The group claims to recognize the “intersectionality of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, age, migration status, disability, and national origin.” ²

The Women in Migration Network advocates for women’s rights internationally, and is composed of migrant women’s organizations, trade unionists, and religious groups. ¹ The Women in Migration Network advocates for several issue areas, including: gender-sensitive workers’ rights including full and equal rights for women in their origin and destination countries; an end to criminalizing, detaining, and deporting migrants; full access to public healthcare including reproductive healthcare; ending discrimination against migrant women; demilitarizing borders; recognizing families, including LGBTQ families; and funding gender-specific migration policy. ²

Background

The Women in Migration Network is a left-progressive social-policy advocacy organization focused on female migrants. ¹ The organization claims to recognize the “intersectionality of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, age, migration status, disability, and national origin.” ² The Women in Migration Network advocates for women’s rights internationally, and is composed of migrant women’s organizations, trade unions, and religious groups. ²

At the organization’s inception, the organization released a statement detailing its belief in a left-progressive economic model. ² The Women in Migration Network wrote at its inception that the “neo-liberal” economic model of regulated international market-capitalism was harmful to workers. ² It claimed that the contemporary international economic model, rather than focusing on the rights of migrants, makes them “cogs in the globalized workplace” and denies them rights. ²

The Women in Migration network also claims that climate change is a factor in why people migrate. ² Therefore, it advocates for global economic policies that create jobs and do not force people to migrate. ²

Covid-19 Related Advocacy

The Women in Migration Network claims that women are facing increased risk of abuse amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The organization claims that without “bold” action, the crisis will serve to compound global injustice issues and marginalize women, people of color and migrants, as well as “other exploited groups.” ³ In light of the crisis, the organization is pushing for using the crisis as an opportunity to restructure healthcare, economic, and migration systems on left-feminist lines. ³

Issue Areas

The Women in Migration Network advocates for several issue areas, including: gender-sensitive workers’ rights including full and equal rights for women in their origin and destination countries; an end to criminalizing, detaining, and deporting migrants; full access to public healthcare including reproductive healthcare; ending discrimination against migrant women; demilitarizing borders; recognizing families, including LGBTQ families; and funding gender-specific migration policy. ² The Women in Migration Network also pushed for non-custodial and community alternatives to detaining children, as well as calling for the cessation of using detention to deter migration and asylum-seeking. ⁴

1. “About Us.” Women In Migration. Accessed May 28, 2020. http://womeninmigration.org/about-us/  
2. “About Us.” Women In Migration. Accessed May 28, 2020. http://womeninmigration.org/about-us/
3. WIMN’s Statement on the Covid Crisis (in English, Spanish, French). (n.d.). Retrieved June 28, 2020, from http://womeninmigration.org/2020/04/wimns-statement-on-the-covid-crisis/
4. Hennebry, Jenna L., and Allison J. Petrozziello. “Closing the Gap? Gender and the Global Compacts for Migration and Refugees,” October 14, 2019. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/imig.12640.