Gendered migration, sexualised vulnerability and embodied care among migrant women in Spain

Abstract

Migrant women's health is often analysed through access to services, legal entitlement and barriers to care. A wider literature has also examined migrant women's health with a focus on gender, violence, care and racialisation. These dimensions matter, but they do not fully explain how health is lived through separation from children, intimate violence, domestic and care work, racialisation, documentation insecurity, and the obligation to continue caring for others. Informed by a qualitative analysis of data from 22 in-depth interviews with migrant women living in Spain we identified the following themes: migration as a gendered escape and obligation; transnational motherhood and the embodied pain of separation; care work, racialisation and sexualised vulnerability; and rebuilding embodied care and dignity. The article develops the concept of embodied care within the context of gendered migration to show how migrant women's bodies both provide care and absorb the costs generated by caring, while other forms of embodied harm remain entangled with, rather than simply caused by, that care under unequal conditions. The paper contributes to debates about culture, health and sexuality by connecting sexuality in bodily dignity, sexualised vulnerability, harassment, intimate violence, racialised embodiment and autonomy.