Adolescent Girls’ Migration in The Global South by Katarzyna Grabska & Marina de Regt & Nicoletta Del Franco

Author:Katarzyna Grabska & Marina de Regt & Nicoletta Del Franco
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030000936
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Fig. 5.2Accommodation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Fig. 5.3Accommodation in Khartoum, Sudan

Settling in and Housing Arrangements

Settling in is a process that takes time—to get to know the city, to establish new contacts and relations, and to gain some social and financial capital. While the nexus between urban mobility and migrant integration has been widely studied, Buhr and McGarrigle (2017, p. 227) argue that not “enough attention has been paid to the link between migrants’ urban mobilities and the material urgencies of settlement, such as finding accommodation , work and simply learning to navigate a still unfamiliar territory”. In addition, this is also a highly context-specific and gendered process (see Grabska 2014) in which the opportunities and expectations of settling in and making a place for oneself are often different for women and men. Relatively few studies have paid attention to these gendered differences in place-making , especially regarding young women who have migrated independently.

The living conditions of migrant and refugee communities vary depending on their financial situation, social status, access to social capital and networks of support. Garau et al. (2005) show that in terms of accommodation the situation of recent migrants to the cities does not always correspond to the common assumption that they all end up living in slums . While most of our research participants lived in rather miserable conditions, both in slums as well as in relatively impoverished areas of the city, there were substantial differences between slum areas and poor neighbourhoods, the latter being more developed and with better facilities than the former. In addition, there are differences in the living patterns among migrants in the cities. In Dhaka , migrant girls tended to conglomerate in slum areas and share similar living conditions whereas those in Khartoum and Addis Ababa were scattered throughout these cities and their living conditions could vary.

Many girls shared their accommodation either with family , or other girls or women, often from their places of origin. Sharing is not only to minimize living costs , it is also a strategy, as the Eritrean girls in Khartoum reported, to overcome loneliness and harassment from Sudanese neighbours and landlords who consider it inappropriate for young girls and women to live alone. In Sudan , young girls and women are usually not allowed to share accommodation with (unrelated) men. In some cases, when brothers of some of the respondents arrived in the city, the girls had to look for different accommodation and landlords who would allow them to share with their male relatives . Most often sharing among relatives and friends is arranged according to their place of origin, religious beliefs or new social networks developed during their migration journeys . For example, people from the Bilen3 ethnic group in Eritrea tend to live close to each other mainly in the Jereif area, which is arranged by nationalities and ethnic origins. Next to ‘Nigerian’ and ‘Genubeen’ (South Sudanese) houses, there are ‘Ethiopians’ and ‘Eritreans’. The Eritrean households are also divided by places of origin, with groups of relatives or people of the same ethnic origin sharing the same spaces .

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