Patriarchy, migration and violence:
challenge for historians

Migration has become a global challenge. If, in the 19th century, more than 60 million Europeans left the Old World to settle on the four continents, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have witnessed the migration of millions of people from poor to rich countries, where migrants are subject to rejection, exclusion, criminalization and even violence, by a frightened population reacting with xenophobia and suprematism. Feelings amplified by social networks and media, and which eventually increase violence.

The displacement of populations is also the result of borders imposed by wars and imperial conquests. The Mexicans faced that in Texas and California during the United States war against Mexico, 1846-48; similarly, today we observe the movement of refugees in Europe, after the invasion of Russia in Ukraine. Wars accelerate migration and have a big impact on geopolitics - now for a bipolar world? an American hegemony? a new form of cold war? or a third world war? - which aligns globalization.

Since the spring of 1997, the Mexico France research project has been studying the meaning of French presence in Mexican history and culture. To this end, it uses the problem of sensitivity and the perspective of globalization. Two relevant concepts that feed the pages of, already, ten published books. However, among the problems, we note an imbalance in the space accorded to women, to forgotten migrants, a lack of knowledge about their experiences, their perspectives and their sensitivity that challenges us.

How to study women s migration? Under the conditions imposed by the form of the male social and legal organization. A perspective that requires rethinking practices of exclusion and differentiation between men and women. Thus, the concept of "patriarchy," with those we have used until now - sensitivity and globalization - will be the triad that will allow us to think about migration and its meaning in history. A proposal that is put to the test in the Mexico France virtual seminar: "Migration of women and patriarchy," and that will continue in a workshop, in autumn, and at an international congress, scheduled for 2024.

This is the great challenge that will fuel our intellectual adventure,
which is now a quarter of a century old!