Project description "Engaging Women in Integration: Exploring Relations of Integration, Gender (Equality), and Voluntary Work" (tentative name):

Just as gender affects the decision and the experiences of migration, gender affects the way immigrants arrive and settle in in a new country, too. Situated in the gap between the equalizing of integration with employment and the presentation of female immigrants as suppressed, this project aims to contest the image of the seemingly “genderless” immigrant and to talk about processes of integration in voluntary organizations, and how the processes are obstructed and can be facilitated in particular for women. The focus is on the triangle of integration, voluntary organizations/ civil society, and gender (equality) in Norway addressing both underlying structures, as for example public or governmental guidelines, and how female immigrants understand and experience processes of integration through participating in voluntary organizations and projects.