Parallel to the very first German course that maiz organized in 1995, the course participants also requested related counseling. Since then, we have made counseling services by and for migrant women a central focus in our work at maiz.
As part of our counseling work we develop, together with migrant women, strategies to support the articulation and improvement of their life and work situations. Our counseling services are anonymous and partisan, with the goal of enforcing the rights of migrants. In doing so, strengthening migrant women as political subjects in their private, occupational and social lives is our most important concern.
Within the counseling services the themes addressed often relate to one another. For example, a counseling session regarding legal residency may also be relevant for measures dealing with violence prevention, which, in turn is the starting point for educational or vocational guidance. The important thing is network-like thinking and acting.
The personal experiences of the women who come to us for counseling are reflected in the societal context as a whole. Individual problems are also cause for collective action in order to make the demand for the rights of migrant women more publicly visible.
