Gender, Displacement, and the Ethics of Protection

Abstract

Focusing on the flight of women and girls from Venezuela to Brazil, and on South American refugee regimes, this paper addresses the ethics of forced displacement and the requirements of gender-responsive systems of protection. The analysis centers the voices of displaced women brought in through fieldwork in Manaus and Boa Vista, Brazil, in 2020–2022, to identify gaps and negative effects of gender-blind provision of shelter, healthcare, and other services at crossing and reception. We argue that current approaches to protection privilege humanitarian responses to victims, whereas any efforts to break cycles of deprivation and exclusion affecting displaced women and girls should privilege determinants of relational autonomy and the social agency of displaced women and girls. By developing this analysis, we contribute directly to feminist critiques of refugee protection, and reconstruct (based on migrant women's perspectives and feminist work on relational autonomy) key elements of a gendered account of protection that centers on the recognition of autonomy.