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Dr. Maria Luisa Di Martino is EU Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Fellow, with the project REWRITE: Rewriting Migrant Identities across Women’s Literature, at Ca´Foscari University of Venice. PhD in Human Rights at the University of Deusto (Spain). Expert in postcolonial and globalisation studies with an MPhil in Globalisation Studies and International Cooperation, Peace and Development, obtained at the University of the Basque Country (Spain). She obtained a BA in Foreign Languages and Literatures at the Orientale University of Naples. Her research and publications focus on Migration and Mobility, in particular, on Highly Skilled Migrations, Identity transformation processes, and Self-Reflexivity in Migration research, explored from an intersectional perspective and systemic/relational approach.
The COVID-19 pandemic has signified an historical change in human mobility. By transforming the patterns of people on the move, it has highlighted gender-based inequalities and women’s vulnerabilities. The link between COVID-19 and return migration shapes returnees’ readaptation process in their home countries, as returnees are embedded in a limbo between the pandemic’s pressure on the policy and socio-economic setting, on one hand, and their efforts for reintegration, on the other. Due to the pandemic, the gender-based imbalance has increased existing gender gaps both in migration and return, exacerbating women’s vulnerability. Thus, personal aspirations and professional expectations of highly educated women are caught in a system of socio-economic and geographical (im)mobility, which represents the principal outcome in their relocation and readaptation process. Based on a qualitative methodology through the analysis of ten life histories of highly educated returnee migrant women, this paper sheds light on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on their migratory trajectories, providing a typology of them. Findings stress the necessity for more sustainable measures and resources for life–work balance and gender-sensitive policies, to promote a better integration process into the local labour market; to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on returnee women, and to prevent the proliferation of mental health problems among returnee women.
Maria Luisa Di Martino. Exploring Returnee Migrant Women, COVID-19 and Sustainability in Spain. Sustainability 2021, 13, 9653 .
AMA StyleMaria Luisa Di Martino. Exploring Returnee Migrant Women, COVID-19 and Sustainability in Spain. Sustainability. 2021; 13 (17):9653.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMaria Luisa Di Martino. 2021. "Exploring Returnee Migrant Women, COVID-19 and Sustainability in Spain." Sustainability 13, no. 17: 9653.