Introduction: The need for a retrospective and a comparative perspective

Our aim is to provide a brief overview of the literature in France focusing on gender and women in migration since the beginning of the 1990s and to point to existing gaps in research. The timespan covered corresponds to a turning point and a new phase in the European migration landscape triggered by the end of the bipolar world, its subsequent European enlargement, increasing globalisation, transnationalisation and the feminisation of migratory flows. But, in order to avoid being trapped in the discourse on ‘rethinking migration,’ on ‘new trends’ and ‘discoveries’ (taking for granted, for instance, that “feminisation of migration is a new phenomenon” – a frequent assertion in the literature lately, not only in France), we cannot ignore the production of knowledge which has shaped the current highly interesting and multi-faceted debate. Thus, in order to understand what appears to be ‘a new trend’ – or what takes place differently under such new circumstances, without actually being new – it is important to underscore continuities. Our first section will therefore be devoted to the debates preceding the period we are focusing on, namely from the 1970s onwards. The subsequent sections will provide an overview of selected issues and trends in research: we will see that, in spite of the diversity of origins, profiles and patterns of migration, paradoxically there is a persistence in stereotyping women as ‘passive victims,’ which, in turn, impacts on the types of jobs women have access to. Research focusing on agency and migrant women's mobilisation challenges such persistent images.