INTRODUCTION

In the fall of 2004, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam organised an international conference on women and immigration law in Europe, entitled ‘Gendered Borders’. Traditionally, studies on migration and immigration law have focused on male migration. Yet women have always played an important role in international migration, and there is evidence that their share in the total number of migrants has increased in recent years. It is estimated that in the more developed regions of the world – among others Western Europe – women now represent at least 50 per cent of all migrants. The estimated total number of female migrants living in Western Europe was estimated at 9,229,682 in 2000.1

The purpose of the ‘Gendered Borders’ conference was to analyse and evaluate immigration law in Europe from a gender perspective. In the course of the conference, it became clear that the issues that emerged were not only relevant to immigration law, but referred back to some classical issues of second-wave feminism: labour, equality and sexual violence. Moreover, during the discussions held at the conference, we realised that many fundamental questions of feminist debate remain unresolved. What started as a conference over the apparently marginal theme of women and immigration law ended in reflections on the continuing relevance of classical feminist issues and of the undiminished urgency of the theoretical questions raised in the classical feminist debates.