A Life Course Perspective in the Analysis of Self- Experiences of Female Migrants in Belgium: the Case of Ukrainian and Russian Women in Belgium

This study analyzes how migration transforms experiences of the self in Russian and Ukrainian women in Belgium, from a retrospective life course perspective. The author particularly focuses on gender identities in interaction with other aspects of the self such as educational and professional background, nationality and legal status. She aims both to highlight variation in gendered responses between Russian and Ukrainian women (inter-subjective variation), and within Russian and Ukrainian women (intra-subjective variation) over time and in two life domains (family and the labour market). The present analysis draws on the transversal analysis of the FEMIGRIN-project, a Belgian science policy project on female migration that cross-compared 5 case studies of female migrants in Belgium. The results of this transversal analysis were grouped in the construction of several “characteristic” migration trajectories of female migrants in Belgium. The present article reconstructs these trajectories with the qualitative data of the Russian and Ukrainian case study, from a life course and intersectional theory perspective. The combined life course and intersectional research perspective enabled the author to study how personal goals, aspirations and experiences of the self are continuously interpreted and re-interpreted in the course of migration, in interaction with the surrounding environment. Since women’s migration life courses develop largely according to their legal status and migration type, the author can conclude that female migrants’ opportunities and constraints are highly determined by these social categories. The analysis reveals that women’s life courses seem to be less structured by the investment of individual level capacities than by policy determined categories.