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This article sets out to assess the opportunities and risks for the advancement of gender equality in the European Union offered by the establishment of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE). It argues that the formal aims and objectives of the Institute mirror the wider political context today (and as such are congruent with the preferences of the political elites); for the same reason, however, the Institute may be hard-pressed to fulfil those functions originally envisaged by a specific but broad range of actors in the field of equal opportunities. Whether or not the Institute will be able to live up to the challenge will depend in large part on its ability to link with the gender studies research community and to forge critical political alliances with other strategic feminist actors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent European literature on migration, two main trends characterize the ways in which migrants are increasingly portrayed. The first tends to define migrants in terms of their belonging to 'communities' while, in the second trend, migrants and refugees epitomize ideas of diaspora and hybridity, as resistance to constructions of place-bound 'communities'. In the context of these trends, women migrants hold ambivalent positions as particular 'others'. In our article, we attempt to problematize the 'purity' of these approaches. Based on research with Albanian migrant women in Athens, we examine the ways in which they construct very local, but also transnational and imagined communities while they seek to settle and find ways of integrating in the new setting. Using material from focus groups and biographical interviews with women migrants, as well as with women employers, we discuss: (a) the importance of informal practices of support and assistance at the neighbourhood level; and (b) the role of social services (health and child care), as they affect migrant women's efforts to negotiate a place for themselves and their dependents, to forge a sense of belonging and redefine communities and gender relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contends that gender equality policy objectives become part of the main political agenda of the European Union (EU) only after their meaning has been transformed to satisfy other policy priorities. Content analysis of relevant official EU acts; Gender equality in the labor market; Political and economic priorities in the EU.