Passport, bag, neck shawl, and waiting for a plane to take off from Paris, Sydney, New York, or elsewhere . Or maybe a dilapidated boat overflows with humans and the sea is in the dark. It does not matter how, but what is important is to get out of this or that country and reach new countries that represent the dream of every person wishing to emigrate. This is not a case of men, which is an older and more acute phenomenon, but of women, who have been less interested in emigrating and looking for new prospects for living in countries with greater welfare.
After we Arabs lived the ” season of migration to the north “in the famous novel by Tayeb Saleh, today we are living the” seasons of migration to the north ” with the rest of the people suffering from social and economic disadvantage in their countries of origin. The North is attracting increasing numbers of people coming especially from the countries of the south and on the continents of Africa, Asia and some poor countries in southern Europe. Women have come to the forefront of migrants, both by regular and legal means and by irregular and illegal methods…
Having to emigrate:
Some statistics show that 130 million women lived outside their countries of origin in 2019. In that year alone, disease, natural disasters, violence, and poverty forced tens of millions of them to migrate inside or outside. Millions of women migrate across the world every year in search of a new life, driven by fear, hope, or despair.
Women make up about half of the migrants internationally and within their country’s borders. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), in 2019, 272 million people – 130 million of them women-lived in land other than their birth country. More than 60 percent of these migrants live in Asia and Europe. However, most international migrations are regional and are more frequent between the countries of the Middle East, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa.
In recent decades, women have been migrating to rich countries to become breadwinners themselves and not just to join their family members. They hold jobs in childcare, the elderly, and domestic work, as well as industry and agriculture, a shift described as the “feminization of migration”. Migrant women living abroad are more likely to be highly qualified, earn less than men, and send a large share of what they earn to their families in their countries of origin. As for women fleeing violence and poverty, their clandestine routes increase their vulnerability to sex trafficking, abuse, and rape. For women who go to countries with fragile laws, or undocumented migrants may be impossible to secure their basic rights.
Between 2010 and 2017, the number of migrants forced to seek asylum or seek asylum increased by 8% per year, compared to an international migration rate of less than 2%. Women accounted for almost half of the 33.8 million people forced to migrate in 2019. In the same year, 33.4 million people – more than half of them women – were forced to move within their own countries, with natural disasters accounting for 75 percent of cases.
Sad and terrifying stories:
Many migrant women carry in their hearts stories suitable for the material-fiction or movie huge, usually linking the causes of migration have these women types of oppression and social violence against women in general or economic disadvantage which the women are the first victims of it.
One Vietnamese migrant was a victim of injustice, injustice, and poverty in her home country. To improve her material status and that of her family, the young Ngoc Tuen ventured out of her home village of Vietnam to enter into a pre-arranged marriage with a man from a rich country, Singapore.
On her wedding day, Ngoc Tuen was surrounded by strangers. She sat on a wooden bench in the Singapore Botanical Garden, dressed in a red dress with black edges and adopted a headband of tulips decorated with beads. She met the groom two months ago, and only got to know his family after arriving 16 days ago. The wedding mediator translated the ceremony into Vietnamese, and the newlyweds effectively sealed the tie with a dry kiss on the lips. After signing many documents, Ngoc Tuen’s marriage became official. You say: “it’s a good start. I want to work soon.” Tuen emigrated for marriage; she is one of tens of thousands of Vietnamese who have done so over the past decade, mostly women. It often starts with marriage intermediaries telling women in villages and towns about visiting men from South Korea, China, Taiwan, and Singapore.
This is how Ngoc Tuen (34) met her Singaporean husband Tony Kong (45). His picture appeared on a marriage broker’s Facebook wall with an address in Ho Chi Minh City and the date he met and interrogated potential wives. The conditions are clear: women come prepared to negotiate salaries for themselves and their families, and men declare their wages. Women in exchange for their beauty, youth, and support, Want financial stability… In the case of Nguyen Twain, the opportunity to work and send money to her family. Remittances are crucial in poor rural areas of Vietnam.
The story of Burmese immigrant Sajida Bahadurmia is of tragic proportions, but after fleeing religious persecution and a grueling journey, she and her family found freedom and support in Australia. At first, Sajida Bahadurmia (26) did not know that men in uniform would hurt her. It was 2013, and she spent 14 days-from April 23 to May 6 – in a boat with her husband Naimullah and four children, traversing the Timor Sea from a coastal city in Indonesia to Darwin in the far north of Australia. The 45-meter boat was packed with more than 100 Rohingya migrants like them fleeing persecution in Myanmar (Burma), as well as dozens of Bengalis and two Somalis. Every time a wave hit the hull, Sajida held her breath and held her one-year-old son tightly to her waist, as sharks hovered in the dark waters.
Her then 10-year-old daughter Asma asked her:” Are we all going to die?”. “It’s firmly in my mind,” says Sajda. I thought: if God saved me, I would never put my children in danger again.”
When the Australian Navy detected them, Sajida feared that the sailors would beat her, insult her or assault her in the same manner as the Myanmar army back home. But they were nice, she said. They respected Islamic customs, and women conducted medical examinations for refugees who were transferred to a detention center in Darwin. The Myanmar government has long persecuted the Rohingya, the country’s Muslim minority. With the outbreak of violence in 2012, Sajida and her family had to leave, and by the end of 2017, nearly a million Rohingya had fled to neighboring Bangladesh and elsewhere. Asma-now 16 years old-recalled the times when the military was breaking into houses, and she said, “one cannot trust the night.” They raped women and dragged men on the streets, arresting them or using them for hard labor. The government of Myanmar banned the word “Rohingya”.
During the three months they spent in the detention center, Asma and Sajida were offended that the authorities were addressing them with numbers according to the boat they arrived on board. However, soon they began to enter their new life. When Asma started attending public school, she didn’t speak English, but she was smiling and laughing with her fellow Australians as they ate sausages. “I became obsessed with it in Darwin,” says Asma about this Eater. Over time, Sajida-now 32 – and her family were resettled in Sydney under an Australian program that paid for their flights and supported their living expenses during the first months. As refugees, they were entitled to government assistance. Sajida discovered ketchup sauce and fell in love with Australian barbecue. She volunteered in a community kitchen, got a part-time job at her children’s school, and learned to drive a car. The family moved to a new home in Lakemba, a suburb of Sydney where the Rohingya language is spoken on the street. She saw the joy in the eyes of her children when they opened the door of their first home.