Gender, Movement and Safety. Intersectionality in the Sexual Assault of Irregular Migrant Women Entering the EU

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Chapter 4: Undocumented Immigrant Women: The Walls between Abuse, the Law and the Human:
One of the most critical issues within the field of Migration Studies today remains the delicate status of undocumented immigrants. In turn, immigration legislative proposals are currently at the center of heated debates on political, social, and economic levels - these debates often hindering the more important issue at hand which is the needs of undocumented victims of abuse.
Undocumented women who are victims of any form of abuse, be it physical, emotional, sexual or verbal abuse committed by their spouses, parents or citizens of the host country do not possess any form of legal protection. The sad fact is that the law does not always treat these immigrant women as individuals with rights, but rather looks at their illegal "status" as a justification for the fact that they are being stripped of their basic human rights and their dignity.
Despite the fact that discourse, research, and policy critiques have both addressed the severity of this issue, as well as provided tremendous research and publication efforts in the areas of history of current legal protections and the potential for these victims to obtain citizenship legally, little progress has been made in this regard. Even more noteworthy, is the fact that discourse and research has also tackled the barriers associated with reporting abuse and seeking help for undocumented battered women, and has also looked into medical practices and advocacy in order to aid in moving beyond the challenges in the accessing of services by this marginalized and segregated faction of the population.
The group "immigrant women" is a diverse group which encompasses women who have lived in the host country anywhere between one month and fifty years. An immigrant woman within this category may have entered the host country as a refugee, as a student, as a tourist, or as a jobseeker looking for better economic conditions and

Ms. Diab is a Canadian-Lebanese researcher, author, manager and consultant in the areas of International Affairs, Dialogue, Gender, and Migration and Refugee Studies.
She holds a B.A. in International Affairs and Diplomacy she earned from Notre Dame University-Louaize (NDU) in Lebanon, as well as an M.A. in International Law she earned from NDU, complimented with coursework at both University of Pisa, and University of Palermo in Italy. Ms. Diab earned her second Master of Advanced Study in Democracy and Human Rights from the Saint Joseph University of Beirut in Lebanon, under a joint supervision with the International University for Rabat in Morocco. Currently, she is a PhD Candidate in International Relations and Diplomacy at the esteemed Centre d'Etudes Diplomatiques et Stratégiques (HEIP/INSEEC U.) in France.
She currently serves as Country Director (Lebanon) of the Global Peace Chain. Other positions she holds include: Office, Research and Project Manager at the Lebanese Research Center for Migration and Diaspora Studies at the Faculty of Law and Political Science at NDU, Operations Manager and Youth Coordinator at the Lebanon Dialogue Initiative, as well as Consultant at the Lebanese Development Network.
She is a Research Affiliate at the Middle East Institute for Research and Strategic Studies, as well as at the Carthage Center for Research and Information. Ms. Diab is also the Editor of The International Journal for Arts and Politics, a journal published by the Global Arts and Politics Alliance in Austria.