Infiltrators, illegals and undesirables : gender and forced migration in South Asia

It will be argued within this paper, that women’s experiences of displacement and exclusion need to be situated in the relationship between globalisation and neoliberalism. I argue that forced and economic migrations are closely related and are often interchangeable expressions of global inequality. Neo liberal globalisation diminishes all human pursuits into buying and selling. It is elites in the North who have implemented neo-liberal policies into both the North and South over the past twenty five years. These policies have resulted in the eradication of social safeguards which have led to massive gendered displacement. While globalisation may conjure up a vision of a borderless world, as a result of the free flow of goods, it is increasingly about borders which are both permeable and exclusionary. Under neo liberal globalisation borders are either enforced or ignored, according to the needs of neo liberalism. Within this paper I will argue that while women and children make up the majority of refugees and displaced people, women as refugees, are rendered invisible in many national policies which focus on asylum seekers as male. My paper will highlight the relationship between forced migrations and the concerns that nationstates have with their national security and border control.