SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society

Gendered Effects of Environmental Policy on Migrant Populations

Room 217, West Center

In the modern world, there exist many concerns for the well-being of society and among the most important of these concerns are the environment and the government policies regarding it. Although the environment is thought often about in an abstract manner, the gendered effects of environmental policies are neglected with a great frequency. This neglect has led to an undervaluation of the effects such policies have on a significant portion of the population. Environmental policies effect the underprivileged and impoverished communities of the nation the most and amongst these underprivileged communities are immigrants. The portrayal of immigrants in American society is generally negative and they are politically weak. The intersection of gender and immigration is integral to the study of environmental politics and cannot be ignored for progress to be made. Females are more likely to be impoverished than males and females are more likely to immigrate than men. Environmental policy will thus more greatly effect females in a negative manner than are males. This research provides a glimpse into the intersectional relationship between the aforementioned populations and provides a more complete view of poverty in the United States. The isolation of policies as things that only affect individual groups has led to a lack of emphasis being placed on groups which are at elevated levels of risk to harm brought about by such policies.