Challenges to identify the vulnerability of migrant women on the southern border of europe: Contributions from biographical narratives

Abstract

In the 1980s, the Southern Frontier of Spain became one of the southern borders of the European Union after Spain entered into the European Economic Community (EEC). On the African continent, the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla that border with Morocco are physically separated from Spain by the Mediterranean Sea. Those two cities became a privileged enclave for immigration control, but also for the detection of vulnerable conditions of the migrant population. This paper has a double objective: to describe the action research developed in the Center for the Temporary Residence of Immigrants in Ceuta and to analyze 49 biographical interviews with women residents of the Center within the framework of said action research. The results show the diversity of situations of vulnerability in which migrant women can find themselves in this border context. Hence, it is important to rethink the intervention to avoid secondary victimization within critical and humanistic models of intervention. This work, precisely, addresses the design of a tool for biographical narratives from the perspectives of integral health and care.