The Migration Footprint: Sex Equality, Competing Identities, and the Migration Continuum

The contours of sex equality in the migration context clarify the tension between sexual equality and religious and cultural freedom. This article argues that the immigration, citizenship, and integration spheres constitute a continuum that is more than the sum of its parts. This continuum incorporates the dimension of time into the migration process, positing that migration is not a singular event but the ongoing negotiation of the terms of entry and settlement. Following sex equality as it travels through this continuum reveals dissension in the existing legal frameworks for equality and identity. Both the group-identified nature of equality law and the oppression focus of intersectionality theory fail to address the situation of multiple identities within a single equality claimant that are not all pointed towards harm. This concept of "competing identities" captures the idea that only some of an equality claimant's identities ground the equality claim. Other identities might ground other claims, might be neutral, or might even undercut the claim to equality. The migration continuum brings this to the fore by revealing the migration footprint that follows immigrant women into the state. By examining the shape that equality takes in the spheres of immigration, citizenship, and integration, the sense of negotiability that marks the identity of the female immigrant is brought to bear. The article concludes by suggesting that the migration continuum points toward more robust spaces of incommensurability where difference can live.