Leeds Migration Research Network Spring Seminar 2025-26

Trans-local perspectives on Migration and Gender
4th of March 2026, 2:30-5pm
Newlyn Building SR (GR.02)

You are warmly invited to attend the Leeds Migration Research Network Spring seminar 2025-26 which includes three different papers from University of Leeds researchers, impact partners and a PhD candidate from the University of Bari (Italy). Please see the abstract and authors’ bio below.

Please join us for an exciting afternoon of international and inter-disciplinary research exchange and to learn the exciting work of early career researchers. The authors will present their recent research focusing on migration and gender, spanning the local and the global, from Yorkshire to the Global and European South.

No need to register in advance. Refreshments will be provided.

First paper: “Working for laowai*: gender, employment and social status in Chinese international trading city of Yiwu”

By Heila Sha (Saheira Haliel), University of Leeds Business School 

*Laowei is the Mandarin term for ‘foreigners’.

This study contributes to emerging scholarship on Chinese Muslims’ participation in the global economy and advances debates on migration, gender, and employment by shifting attention from migrant workers to host-society citizens in migrant-owned workplaces. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research conducted between 2016-2017 in Yiwu amongst Hui Muslim migrant women who are employed by foreign Muslim business owners in restaurants, café, trade agencies and domestic spaces, this paper shows that internal migrant Hui women perceive themselves as being discriminated against by their employers, despite being host country citizens and sharing ethnic and religious affinities with employers.
Based on their daily lived experiences, Hui employees developed racialised stereotypes of their employers and distinguished themselves from them by emphasizing their own ‘Chineseness’ rather than their shared Muslim faith, demonstrating how intersecting status and power dynamics at work can lead to shifts in identity. The paper further shows how gender shapes these dynamics: employers’ home-country cultural expectations and gender norms structure women’s labour, discipline, and mobility, especially in informal small-scale businesses where boundaries between work and personal life are blurred. Yet, power is experienced not through wages and contracts, but through everyday interactions in which esteem, respect, and moral valuation become key markers of status. This paper also highlights the significance of south–south migration, the role of informality and cultural embeddedness in reproducing inequality, and the value of micro-level perceptions for understanding structural power relations.

Bio Dr Heila Sha (Saheira Haliel) is a Research Fellow at Leeds University Business School, working on skills/labour shortage and employment of migrant workers in the UK as part of EU Horizon Project-Skills4Justice. She’s trained as a social anthropologist, with research expertise in migration, gender, eldercare, (transnational) marriage, and cross-border trade, with particular regional focus on China, Central Asia and UK. Saheira has published widely with internationally recognised publishers and in leading academic journals, including her first monograph in 2017, titled Care and Ageing in Northwest China (Lit, Berlin), and journal articles in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Global Networks, and International Migration etc. She has contributed a chapter to The Palgrave Handbook of South–South Migration and Inequality.

Second paper: “e-Health literacy of migrant women survivors of gender-based violence (GBV): an Apulian perspective”,

By Antonella Campobasso (PhD candidate, University of Bari)

The removal of linguistic, social, and cultural barriers is essential for moving towards equitable healthcare access for migrants and asylum seekers (Norman & Skinner, 2006). This doctoral research investigates the co-creation of a multilingual digital platform of healthcare services for migrant women survivors of gender-based violence (GBV). The study addresses epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007), whereby migrant patients’ experiences are disbelieved or misunderstood within healthcare systems. Drawing on English and Medical English as lingua franca (ELF and MELF), the research foregrounds intercultural communication and gender-sensitive language mediation as key dimensions of equitable healthcare. The methodology involves qualitative assessment through NVivo of data collected via stakeholder interviews and focus groups in Yorkshire (UK) and Apulia (Italy) to understand the social
determinants of holistic health for female migrants. In Southern Italy, best practices include the interdisciplinary approach of Bari family clinic, which provides free contraception and support for women affected by FGM. At CARA camp, referral pathways link psychologists, lawyers, and gynaecologists to accelerate asylum procedures. The presentation reflects on the researcher’s insider role within the third sector to inform a model of collaborative governance treating care as relational practice—a conversation between equals.

Bio Antonella Campobasso Losacco is an Italian early-career researcher in Gender Studies and Migration, specialized in intercultural and linguistic mediation. She is currently completing a study visit at Leeds Beckett University, investigating the co-creation of a multilingual digital health literacy of migrant women survivors of GBV. Her PhD is based at the University of Bari Dipartimento Di Scienze Della Formazione, Psicologia, Comunicazione.

Third paper: “Migrant women entrepreneurs – A focus on West Yorkshire”

By Deema Refai (Leeds University Business School) and Ewa Lelontko (Migration Yorkshire)

The importance of migrant businesses to the UK economy cannot be overlooked. The entrepreneurial capacity of Ethnic minority businesses (EMBs) in the UK as a whole is represented through 250,000 EMBs contributing to around £25 billion per annum to the UK economy. Despite the importance of migrant businesses, aspiring entrepreneurs from ethnic minority communities struggle to access mainstream business support. In particular, the Yorkshire and Humber – one of the three regions in the UK – presents with below average Total Entrepreneurial Activity rate for ethnic minority groups, and more than half of this group are unable to access suitable start-up support. Given the under-representation of women entrepreneurs generally and the exacerbated challenges they can face in their entrepreneurial journeys, this presentation reflects on a project that draws on the experiences of migrant
women entrepreneurs in West Yorkshire.

Bios The presentation will be delivered by Ewa Lelontko (Integration Manager at Migration Yorkshire/ Project Lead) and Dr Deema Refai (Associate Professor in Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, UoL/ Project Co-lead). We explore this domain by delving into support interventions available, and how those can be enhanced to promote migrant women entrepreneurial activities.