States differentiate explicitly between categories of migrants (e.g., colonial, refugee, labour and family) and implicitly according to categories of analysis, such as gender, class, religion and ethnicity. This volume focused on this dual relationship between gender and categorisation. Categories of migrants are like communicating vessels: migrants can and do change categories. We analysed how, when and why this happens, and how this differs according to gender, as well as to class and ethnicity. Defining (the true refugee, the family member or difference) is directly related to enumerating migrants. Numbers (real or inflated) are vital to justify measures or new policies. Categorisation is not only important for allocating or withholding rights, but also for substantiating claims, particularly the claim that there is a problem. The numbers game plays out differently for migrant men and women: men are a risk, women are at risk.

In the introductory chapter, we summarised the large literature on gender and migration. With this volume, we have added to that literature in six significant ways.

In the first place, we moved away from taking stock of differences, and from the over-studied sectors of domestic work and prostitution, with their stress on victimisation, feminisation and problematisation. We explained the functionality of making differences.

Secondly, we focused on the public sphere (political debates and media coverage), where boundaries are redrawn, rather than on the private sphere, and we showed that issues move between both spheres.

Third, we illustrated not only that class and ethnicity intersect with gender, but that religion does so as well. Christian support groups advocated for their co-religionists, and as part of that strategy emphasised that Christian women were at risk of being harmed by Muslim men. The aim of anti-veiling campaigns was partly to protect Muslim women from repression by Muslim men. What is labelled a crime of passion when it involves non-migrants becomes a culturally-based honour killing when it involves Islamic migrants. The intersection between class and gender is often strongest as part of problematising ‘their’ poverty as ‘our’ problem. Poor men applying for asylum are more likely to be suspected of not being ‘true’ refugees than poor women. Poor men are also more likely to be suspected of being labour migrants who are abusing family migration policies.