Mobile women, stigma and return: critical readings from Burkina Faso

Through the case studies of migrant women returning from Côte d’Ivoire to Burkina Faso, we propose an analysis on how the stigmatisation of women migrants manifests itself in societies where patriarchal norms exist and, conversely, how processes of empowerment might emerge and the forms that these might take. We shall examine the representation of women’s bodies in migration in the Burkinabe context and the challenges – often conflictual – confronted by returnees. Women migrating alone, pursuing that path of personal choice and emancipation that is quite common for men, carry a profound social stigma, that centres around their body and their safety: it is socially believed that migration will lead them to prostitution, and could expose them to various dangers, grounded in understandings of the vulnerable and powerless nature of their bodies. Recent interviews with and about female returnees provide a narration of their skills and abilities learnt through migration, their achievements (both social and economic) and their newly acquired space in the society. Women bodies, depicted as fragile by the Burkinabe patriarchal social representation, are actually the site of social changes through which patriarchal norms are profoundly challenged.