Gender(ed) thoughts: special issue: gender and violence in the context of displacement and migration

This special issue originates from the Summer Symposium Reconsidering gender-based violence in the context of displacement and migration held at the Georg-August University of Göttingen on 6-7th July 2017. It was organised in collaboration with the Gender and Migration Network @ Lower Saxony, the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS)/University of Osnabrück, and the Göttingen Centre for Gender Studies (GCG)/Georg-August-University Göttingen and hosted by visiting guest professors Susanne Hofmann and Zeynep Kıvılcım.1 The aim of the symposium was to reconsider gender-based violence in the context of displacement and international migration across different regional and cultural contexts. Interrogating gender-based violence has been a critical part of the project of feminism, with grassroots activism playing a key role in raising consciousness and mobilising support and resources to challenge violence against women and other groups such as LGBTQI. However, we were concerned that recent processes of displacement and international migration had led to an intricate collusion between feminist antiviolence activism and state agendas of border control and migration management.