Exploring and Interpreting Migrant Women’s Experiences of Policy Making and Political Decision Making

In November 2025 the Irish pilot of INSPIRE | INSPIRE_Horizon held its second research event in Dublin. 16 women from different national, cultural and linguistic backgrounds participated in the event, which was co-hosted with the Intercultural Women’s Network Intercultural Women's Network (IWN), a network of women from the Kildare-Dublin region and INSPIRE partner organisation.

The goal of the first research event was to explore the views and experiences of women from migrant backgrounds about participation and inclusion in politics and policymaking in Ireland and the barriers and exclusions that they face. To support equality of expression and communication across different languages, the women used drawing as a creative method to express their ideas and views, and an artist then produced a set of drawings based on the women’s experiences. The second event sought to review and evaluate these drawings and identify issues with which to engage with policy makers in the next stage of the pilot.

As part of the second research event, Irish pilot team member Titaś Biswas carried out a Deleuzean observation and exploration of the women’s reflections on the drawings and the themes they address. The observation was divided into five key areas of perception, keeping in mind that every aspect in itself could become an epistemic universe in its own right. At a glance, the observation explored:

• Relations and connections: who/what connects with whom/what, how links appear, intensify, weaken, and reroute.

• Flows of affect and intensity: moments of affective charge, uptake, hesitation, and resonance (e.g., laughter, silence, rapid exchange).

• Material-discursive entanglements: how objects, technology, room layout, and language enact or reconfigure relations.

• Micro-powers and tactics: subtle co-ordinations, interventions, suggestions, collaborations, refusals, and ways participants coproduce order/meaning.

• Lines of flight and deterritorialisation — Identify any ruptures, unexpected innovations, and moments when practices may depart from norms.

A short video narrating Titaś’s experience/exploration of the embodied method of the Deleuzean observation was prepared and is available here:    

The Deleuzean exploration itself reveals that while the multiple burdens of race, ethnicity, patriarchal violence, neoliberal capitalism continue to intersect and give birth to newer forms of inequalities, there is a sense of resilience amongst the migrant women participants that offers alternative possibilities of sharing space. As a historically marginalised category, the analysis further asserts that the women are able to intuit their way through the difficulties imposed by difficult situations. In the face of material scarcity and layered forms of violence, decolonial and feminist methods of care are life affirming (choices).

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