Migration, gender, and sexuality: the unequal production and circulation of knowledge in an epistemic community

Scholars of gender and sexuality within migration studies might be seen as constituting an epistemic community or “networks of scholars that have emerged around certain topics, concepts, approaches, or disciplines” that have emerged in the past 30 years or so in response to the critique of the previous absence of such considerations. However, as the epistemic community of gender, sexuality and migration expanded and consolidated, it has done so primarily in the Global North. This new epistemic community has tended to reproduce global inequalities in the production and circulation of knowledge. This chapter first addresses the unequal status of where knowledge is produced, namely the priority accorded to that generated in particular sites in the Global North and the limited perspectives of gendered mobilities in a heterogeneous Global South. Second, the chapter examines issues related to the difficulties of circulation of knowledge and institutional contexts. These include the language of teaching, research, and publishing with English as the hegemonic language; the place of education and research; and the political environment of research. Finally the chapter considers initiatives and the way forward in addressing inequalities in the production and circulation of knowledge in relation to gender, sexuality and migration.