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October 3, 2025Politics & Gender3 citationsOpen Access

Feminist Foreign Policy Without Migration? Examining Exclusions in Germany’s FFP Guidelines

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HMHanna L. MuehlenhoffLPLara Sosa PopovicNWNatalie Welfens

Key Points

  • Migration's exclusion from Germany’s Feminist Foreign Policy illustrates gaps in feminist discourse, emphasizing the need for a more inclusive approach.
  • The article analyzes state-civil society consultations, focusing on the limited participation of diverse actors in these discussions about migration.
  • The reliance on established policy actors for drafting the guidelines seems to sideline important perspectives on gendered mobility and migration.
  • Institutional power dynamics within the Foreign Office hinder the recognition of migration as a significant feminist issue, indicating systemic barriers.

Abstract

Abstract Germany’s 2023 Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) Guidelines commit to a transformative, intersectional agenda across diplomacy, security, and climate policy, but omit migration. This article examines how and why migration was excluded, despite its centrality to foreign policy and the involvement of civil society in the drafting process. Drawing on practice theory, Black feminist and postcolonial scholarship, we analyze state–civil society consultations as a community of practice shaped by epistemic hierarchies based on race and coloniality. We show how the Foreign Office’s reliance on established, Germany-based policy actors with limited expertise in gendered mobility sidelined migration as a feminist concern. The consultation format constrained participation and reinforced boundaries around what counted as legitimate feminist knowledge. Bridging literature on migration and FFP, the article advances understandings of how institutional and epistemic power shape feminist policy-making. It calls for a more inclusive FFP attentive to the gendered and racialized dynamics of mobility.

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Cite This Study

Muehlenhoff et al. (2025) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/68e034f7f0e39f13e7fa32e4https://doi.org/10.1017/s1743923x25100391
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