“Women’s Empowerment Integration and Participation” project, co-funded by the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund of the European Union aims to provide migrant and refugee women in four EU countries (Spain, Italy, Poland and the UK) with enhanced opportunities for integration.

Europe is currently facing a massive influx of refugees coming from war-torn countries and the partners of this project are already seeing an increase in numbers of refugees. The experience of refugee women in particular, is marked by additional layers of discrimination that needs gendered responses to facilitate integration. Women are also migrating to Europe in growing numbers because of the feminisation of poverty and are looking for better employment and education options. Gender discrimination also plays a role in decisions to migrate. Migration (in the broader sense) can open up opportunities for women. However, migration can also reinforce restrictive gender stereotypes and increase women’s lack of decision-making power. In our experience migrant and refugee women (MRW) arrive with no language skills in the host country, do not know how to navigate the system and end up trapped in low skill/low paid jobs, often as victims of violence and abuse including through sexual exploitation. Gender roles affect MRW’s integration and the ways in which they are able to contribute to and benefit from their destination communities.

The objectives of the WEIP project are focused on providing new and recent migrant and refugee women (MRW) with a better start to life in the EU and improving their chances of integration in the host countries by increasing their skills, access to services and employment opportunities. The planned activities will address the priorities of this project by providing concrete initiatives such as language and skills training, employability activities, specialist advice and education advice and recreational pursuits for MRW in four European countries.

Through this holistic programme of complementary activities, WEIP will help foster the integration of MRW but also facilitate the access to work and improved job prospects for MRW that are often trapped in low skilled and low paid jobs.

The partners of this project are:

KARAT Coalition https://www.karat.org/

Differenza Donna http://www.differenzadonna.org/

Red Acoge http://www.redacoge.org/es/

And the Latin American Women’s Rights Service – LAWRS http://www.lawrs.org.uk/en/

Karat Coalition runs activities aimed at empowering migrant and refugee women in the labour market in Poland.

Activities implemented in Poland encompass:

• Five Polish language courses of 12 weeks (72 hours) for 60 migrant and refugee women
• Seven workshops and individual sessions for employability guidance and skills and on labour rights empowering 50 migrant and refugee women
• Roundtable on the situation of migrant and refugee women in the labour market in Poland

Get to know another Karat’s initiative on women migrants and refugees in EU “The Europe we want? The feminist approaches to gender, migration and democracy”. 

The project is co-funded by the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund of the European Union