FENIX: Network for Research on Women Exiles & Migrants. Founder and Coordinator: Eugenia Helena Houvenaghel (Utrecht)

About us

The Fenix network focuses on women’s migratory movements to and from Spain and Latin America throughout the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. As an international and interdisciplinary research network, Fenix brings into contact researchers from different fields to share their perspectives on women exiles’ and migrants’ experiences.

Focus on Art and Literature: The network centers on the artistic and literary production of migrant women spanning the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, serving as testimonies to their trajectories of displacement, experiences as newcomers, and processes of transnational networking and identity development.

Focus on History: The field of Migration Studies successfully focuses on today’s migratory flows but rarely addresses historical matters. Still, migration and exile have long roots in Western History. The 19th, 20th and 21st centuries are especially characterized by massive refugee crisis and migratory flows to and from Spain and Latin America. The Fenix Network provides an insight in the strategies used by 19th, 20th and 21st-century migrants and exiles to overcome the challenges of displacement.

Focus on Gender: Women exiles and migrants fulfill an important role in both the processes of integration in the host country and the preservation of the culture and language of the country of origin. However, female testimonies on the trajectory of displacement, adaptation and identity development are less foregrounded, which means that the figure of the refugee is generally determined by a male perspective. The Fenix network provides an insight in the specificity of women exiles’ and migrants’ experiences.

The Fenix network offers a wide range of research activities (seminars, congresses, joint publications, meetings) and possibilities for exchange between its members. By means of collaboration and shared exploration of insights, the network aims at showing the female face of 19th, 20th and 21st-century exile and migration to and from Spain and Latin America.