Migrant women

We understand the term migrant women to refer to people who were born in another country and moved to Germany. These women have their own personal experience of migration. (See https://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/lexika/270612/migrant). For a long time, migration was seen as a male phenomenon. Nowadays, women make up the largest proportion of migrants globally. Germany is a country of immigrants where people from various cultures and nationalities live. In recent years in particular, many people came to Germany as migrants and/or refugees. The proportion of migrant women is high: in 2017, about 5.24 million Germans had experienced migration, and 53 percent of them were women. This means that 6.35% of the population in Germany was made up of migrant women. In total, 35.1 percent of people who are entitled to asylum and/or refugee status in Germany are women.

Access to counselling, support and care as well as medical assistance varies by state. Migrant women may face special challenges or problems when they experience an unintended pregnancy and do not know whom to turn to. This may affect their care, settling in Germany and prospects of staying in Germany.

This makes personal networks and resources particularly important for migrant women.

We are interested in their life situations in Germany, especially when it comes to the matter of unintended pregnancy.

We want to learn about their experiences with unintended pregnancy in Germany.

We are interested in where you feel there are problems in terms of care and what you see as being positive in hindsight. The focus is on the time when you found out about the pregnancy: how and why did you decide whether or not to carry the pregnancy to term? And what happened after that? Regardless of whether this relates to counselling, health care or psychosocial services, who supported you and where would you have liked to receive more support? This also relates to your social environment, your personal resources and difficulties.

The changes and challenges associated with a pregnancy (also unintended) in the context of migration are rarely discussed. Accordingly, it is difficult to assess whether the care and support system is sufficient.

As part of the research project, we want to learn about your own personal experiences. We would like to know what your experience of the time around your pregnancy in Germany was like.

If you recognise yourself and your experiences in this description, we would be very grateful if you would get in touch with us and agree to share your experiences with us. Your experiences are important! All conversations are, of course, fully anonymised so no conclusions can be drawn about your identity.

You can contact us at:

E: elsa@hs-nordhausen.de

T: +49 3631 420 592

ELSA-VG

Nordhausen University of Applied Sciences

Weinberghof 4

99734 Nordhausen

• Affected by violence
• Refugees
• Undocumented