ABSTRACT

This opening chapter explores the trope of the ‘moving woman’ as a significant cultural figure within the twenty-first century. Noting her various identities as forced migrant subject, political activist, and cultural practitioner, the chapter articulates the necessity of cross-cultural feminist attention to the ways in which women experiencing forced migration have been represented and have sought to represent themselves. It offers analysis of work by female and feminist creative practitioners including Wangechi Mutu and Ana Teresa Fernández by way of example. The chapter also offers a critical overview of the ways in which gender-consciousness has been mobilised within the core discourses of Gender and Development Studies and Forced Migration Studies to date, lays out this volume’s specific terms of engagement with the core intersecting premises of the ‘transcultural’ and the ‘feminist’, and argues for the necessity of a reinvigorated feminist approach to forced migration in the twenty-first century.