Absolute Illiteracy in European Union Policies. Exploring the Intersections of Gender, Migration and Education

In the context of a study focused on the absolute illiteracy of migrant women in Europe, this article assesses the extent to which European Union policy instruments on gender, migration and education incorporate an intersectional perspective. The analysis was based in the content analysis of a selected group of EU policy documents and included i) the close and iterative reading and thematic codification of the texts; ii) the word frequency counting of relevant terms; and iii) the assessment of intersectionality through a set of quality criteria. Apart from revealing the invisibility of absolute illiteracy as a policy problem, results confirm previous evidence showing that the presence of intersectional approaches in EU public policy is still marginal. Some attempts to address the intersectionality of gender, migration or education inequalities have been identified in the selected documents, but a comprehensive policy framework to understand and address those inequalities is still lacking. The article adds up to the existing scholarship claiming for more inclusive policies in contemporary European societies.

dult's absolute illiteracy is broadly defined as the inability of reading and writing.i According to the United Nations' estimates, there are more than 700 million illiterate adults in the world, with women representing two thirds of the total illiterate population (UNESCO, 2017).The gendered dimension of the phenomenon is largely attributed to gender inequalities in the educational strategies of families, which, in several parts of the globe, still tend to expect more from the returns to education of boys, and therefore, to invest more in their schooling (UNESCO, 2004(UNESCO, , 2017)).
In Europe, absolute illiteracy is marginal amongst the Europe-born population.Although statistics are limited 2 , it is estimated that the proportion of individuals whose education corresponds to the level 0 of the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) accounts for 0,6% of the Europe-born population (Eurostat, 2020).However, amongst the foreign-born population, not only it accounts for 3%, as it has been increasing slightly over the last decade, with relevant gender differences: in 2011, 3.04% of migrant women had no formal schooling, compared to 2.78% of men; in 2020, these figures were 3.72% and 2.96% respectively (Eurostat, 2020).Possible explanations may reside in the evolving nature of immigration to Europe, which is tendentially more diverse in terms of country of origin and sociodemographic characteristics of migrants.Many migrants in Europe are originally from countries with widespread low levels of literacy and/or strong oral traditions, where writing and reading are practices with reduced use in everyday activities (Adami, 2016).In addition, the migration experience may disrupt the educational trajectory of a significant number of individuals who are forced to migrate to flee from war, political persecution or extreme poverty.Consequently, although migrants tend to possess higher educational levels than the average of their home countries (Ichou et. al, 2017), and although skilled migration, namely female, is rising in Europe (Christou and Kofman, 2022), the intersections of gender, migration and illiteracy are shaping a number of life trajectories in contemporary societies.The changing nature of female migration, no longer exclusively associated with a male-dependent role, adds up to the complexity of the phenomenon and to the need to discuss the available responses to migrants' illiteracy in terms of social inclusion.
Local and community organizations often recognise and report the challenges faced by these segments of the population, who are at the intersection of gender, migration and illiteracy (Elvias Carreras, 2009;Sierra Rodriguez and Pelaez-Paz, 2017).However, few is known as to how the European public policy is addressing them, concretely at the European Union level.
Within the framework of a study on the absolute illiteracy of migrant women in Europe, this article provides an analysis of the intersections of gender, migration and education in a selection of EU policy documents.The analysis starts by reviewing the main studies analysing gender, migration and illiteracy or low-education, and by highlighting the current debates on the incorporation of intersectionality in public policies.Following the presentation of the research methodology, the results are described and discussed.

Absolute Illiteracy, Gender, and Migration
Literacy has been discussed and theorised not only as a technical acquisition of reading and writing skills, but also as a social practice, whose uses and meanings are shaped by relations of power (Street, 1984(Street, , 2012)).Literacy acquisition is a process that implies a change in the way the reality is apprehended and in the way the individual perceives him/herself (Freire, 1970;1981).Relevant studies have analysed the relationship between gender and illiteracy, and demonstrated how literacy acquisition is associated with increased capacity for challenging power relations in everyday life, social engagement, and even political participation (for instance, Ghose and Mullick, 2012;Kalman, 2005;Maddox, 2005;Niño-Murcia, 2009;Olomukoro and Adelore, 2015).
The interconnectedness with migration status and with the migration experience has been less explored in the literature, although some contributions are noteworthy.North (2017) focuses migrant domestic workers living and having literacy classes in the UK.The author discusses the impact of transnationality in the engagement of these women with different types of literacies over their learning trajectories, and how these literacies interplay in their individual experiences and needs.Sierra Rodriguez and Pelaez-Paz (2017) in their ethnographic research on a literacy programme in Spain remark how the lives of Moroccan migrant women, some of them also domestic workers, are shaped by the intersections of gender, ethnicity and social class.The study reports on the added difficulties of living, working, and learning a new language while being unable to read and write, drawing attention to the insufficiencies of the migrants' integration systems in guaranteeing the full access of these women to fundamental rights.Using a quantitative approach based in the UK's longitudinal survey on refugees, Cheung and Phillimore (2017) found significant gender differences disfavouring women in terms of language acquisition, health, employment and housing.The authors denote that the acquisition of literacy and language competencies amongst refugees in the UK is associated with pre-migration education and that women entail in learning programmes later than men.In the specific case of women, inadequate schedules, unaffordable childcare or absence of singlesex courses are pointed out as possible obstacles to attendance and successful learning (Spencer and Cooper, 2006).Iñiguez-Berrozpe et al. (2020), analysing OECD PIAAC data, give evidence on the benefits of adult education for low educated women in Europe.With a focus on the attainment level ISCED 0-2, the study points out the overrepresentation of migrants amongst this populational group.The results show higher levels of social and political confidence, cultural participation, health and employability, for low educated women enrolled in adult education.
Existing scholarship converges in claiming for policy responses that adequately intersect gender, migration and education in contemporary societies, namely by meeting the needs of migrant women with low literacy, but research is need on how the existing policies are actually addressing these disadvantages.

Intersectionality in Public Policy
As coined by Crenshaw (1989), intersectionality refers to the interconnectedness of different identity markers in the shaping of the lived experiences of individuals (for a thorough discussion of the origins and development of the concept of intersectionality, see for example Hill Collins and Bilge, 2016).
Gender, ethnicity and class are the social categories traditionally studied in intersectional analysis, but the range of identity markers contemplated in today's scholarship is wide enough to include other categories, namely those with a mutable nature, such as education or migration status (Manuel, 2006).
Several authors have been debating how to incorporate intersectionality in public policy to prevent the exclusion of those who, belonging to different social categories, carry a number of "singularities" (Hankivsky and Jordan-Zakhery, 2019;Manuel, 2006).The intrinsic nature of public policy, designed to be tendentially universal and inexpensive doesn't seem to be compatible with the complex and costly process of addressing the needs of those who are at the intersection of different axes of discrimination (Manuel, 2006).The selection and identification of the axes of inequality, in itself, constitutes a difficulty in the adoption of an intersectional approach to public policies (Hancock, 2007;Jiménez Rodrigo, 2020, 2022).Other obstacles include the variety of uses and (mis)interpretations of the concept of intersectionality (La Barbera et al., 2022;Brochin, 2018;Jiménez Rodrigo, 2020), the compartmentalized structure of some policymaking institutions (La Barbera et al., 2022) or the unavailability of data able to inform policy (La Barbera et al., 2022).Consequently, to a large extent, public policies are still designed to target homogeneous social groups, concentrating on single axis of exclusion, or treating multiple inequalities as independent (Hancock, 2007), in what is often labelled the "one size fits all" approach (Béland, 2017;Hankivsky and Jordan-Zakhery, 2019;Verloo, 2006).
In their recent systematic literature review on intersectional public policy, Garcia and Zajiceck (2022) recognize the increasing visibility of the field, although underlining the still limited knowledge on how intersectionality is actually integrated in existing policies.It seems to be clear that intersectionality has gained increasing attention by scholars in the recent decades, but the transfer of academic research to policymaking takes time, especially when we are considering complex concepts such as intersectionality (Ferreira, 2022;Manuel, 2006).

Methods
The research was based in the content analysis of six EU policy documents on Gender, Migration and Education: All documents were issued by the European Commission, and they provide a non-biding framework to identify, understand and address current social problems in the respective policy area.Although other documents could have also been examined, the intensive nature of the analysis required the delimitation of the number of documents to be screened.These were selected based in their topicality and relevance at the time of the study, since they constitute the reference frameworks for the European action in each field.
The analysis was threefold.The content analysis started with the close and iterative reading of all documents, to understand their purposes, scope, approach, and terminology used.Then, using MAXQDA Plus software, and following a deductive approach, the documents were coded according to preestablished codes: problem definition, objectives, priority areas, references to other EU policy documents, categories addressed and relationship between categories, and expression of intersectionality.
Secondly, a word count was performed, quantifying the frequency of occurrence of specific terms.In all of the documents, the occurrences of the terms intersectionality, multiple disadvantages/discrimination/vulnerabilities and diversity were counted.In the gender policy documents, the occurrences of words related to migration and education were counted.In the migration policy documents the frequency of words related to gender and education was counted.In the education policy documents the occurrences of the terms related to gender and migration were counted.
Finally, the collected data was analysed applying the intersectionality quality criteria defined by Lombardo and Agustin (2012), which offers a comprehensive and structured framework, based on specific criteria that allows assessing how intersectionality is framed in policy instruments: a) explicitness, visibility and inclusiveness of the references to intersections, referring to the way inequalities and intersections and named and made visible and explicit in the documents; b) articulation in the expression of the relationships between the categories considered, referring to the explanation of the relationships between intersecting inequalities, namely by making a distinction between "additive" categories (sum of disadvantages) and "multiple constitutive categories" (intersecting disadvantages are more than the sum of inequalities); c) gendering, understood as explicit references to gender; d) transformation potential, based in the structural understanding of inequalities and in the consideration of the effects of power hierarchies at the individual and collective levels; e) challenge of privileges, referring to the questioning of norms and advantages of the dominant groups; f) (lack of) stigmatization of the target groups, referring to the ways by which policy instruments may promote or reinforce stigmatization; g) consultation with the civil society.
Considering that the gender documents would perform better in the gendering quality criteria, and although aware of the de/gendering debate in intersectional scholarship (see Lombardo and Agustin, 2012), gendering was excluded from the analysis.Also, given the variations in the consultation processes that informed the development of these documents, and considering the lack of information publicly available, an accurate analysis of the consultation criteria would surpass the scope of this research, and therefore this criterion was also excluded.
While the authors recognise that these criteria are open for suggestions, Lombardo and Agustin's proposal proved to be suitable for policy impact assessments of concrete policy issues (Lombardo and Agustín, 2016;van der Vleuten, 2019), and revealed to be an appropriate scheme to analyse policy responses and planned actions for the inclusion of migrant women with low literacy in the receiving countries.

Explicitness, Visibility, and Inclusiveness
The GES (European Commission, 2020a) shows important advances in relation to the SEGE (European Commission, 2016) regarding the integration of intersectionality as a principle.The latter had an approach much more focused on gender mainstreaming in European policy.The former, in turn, refers explicitly to intersectionality, both in the definition of its objectives and in the identification of the priority areas of intervention (Table 1).This attempt at a change of paradigm is attested by the wordcount, that shows differences between the two documents in the occurrence of the terms intersectionality and mainstreaming (Table 4).The references to other EU policy instruments in each document are also illustrative of a greater cross-cutting approach in the GES (Table 1).
Both documents give visibility to the combination of different categories of inequality (age, migration status, ability, violence, occupation/education).In fact, the GES rarely mentions gender in isolation.Instead, the expression "in all its diversity" is preferred (p.2, footnote 9), being often, but not always, followed by some specification: sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age, sexual orientation.In the SEGE, gender is mostly treated as the primary category of analysis.
The intersectionality criterion of explicitness is evident in the GES.The visibility of different categories of inequality is present in both documents, as is the inclusiveness of considerable number of categories of inequality.However, in the attempt to adopt an inclusive and comprehensive approach through the expression "in all its diversity", the references to the categories of inequality lose specificity in the GES, and therefore its inclusiveness may be questionable.The same holds true for the use of the expression "multiple disadvantages" in the SEGE.

Articulation
In terms of articulation, both documents still lack a comprehensive explanation of the relationships between the inequality categories.Gender, age, family situation and employment, are articulated when both texts mention poverty in old age and its relationships with the gender pay gap in earning and pensions, the gendered patterns of paid and unpaid work, and the economic disadvantages of motherhood (eg.: p.10 of GES or p.8 of SEGE).However, this articulation is limited for the intersections of gender, migration status, ethnicity, and ability, and inexistent when the references to intersectionality appear under the general form of "multiple disadvantages", and "in all their diversity".

Transformation Potential
The structural understanding of the intersecting inequalities is not comprehensively elaborated in the selected texts.There is an attempt to contextualize gender inequalities in the problem definitions, and to present it as a rationale for the strategies and respective actions.However, this is mostly done by treating gender as an isolated category, and still lacking an in-depth view of inequalities.In the SEGE, the relationships between gender, education and employment outcomes are outlined, as are the connections between gender pay and pensions gaps, poverty and age (eg.: p. 8, 12-13, 24-26).In the GES, although intersectionality is explicitly mentioned, a structural understating of the nature, causes and consequences of these inequalities and interconnectedness is lacking.
The transformative potential of intersectionality is absent in the SEGE, and in the GES it arises mainly from the claims to a more integrated approach in EU policies and through the identification of concrete policy instruments that, together with the strategy, may deliver more inclusive responses (Table 1).

Challenge of Privileges
No explicit references were found challenging the male norm or the current structures of power.

Stigmatization
No references were found that could be interpreted as a stigmatization of particular groups.
There are no specific references to absolute illiteracy in the texts.

Explicitness, Visibility, and Inclusiveness
In general, the selected documents in the field of migration consider migration status as the main category of inequality, and although some signs of an intended intersectional approach are present in the texts, these are limited.
The NPMA (European Commission, 2020b) addresses nationality and migration status as central categories (throughout the document, it is possible to find expressions such as "legally resident", "unauthorized movements of migrants", "legally staying migrants"), although references to age (migrant children, older migrants), gender (migrant women and girls) and education (highly skilled talent; low and middle-skilled workers), together with broader references to the "most vulnerable groups" are also present in the text.In the definition of the actions, it is underlined the need to move towards tailor made approaches, where different policy areas do not act independently (p.2).However, this interconnectedness seldom goes beyond age and education, as seen by the references to other EU policy instruments (Table 2), and by the wordcount, that shows that the words intersectionality and mainstreaming are totally absent, and that the terms gender, women, men, girls, boys, appear very sporadically in the text (Table 4).
The APII (European Commission, 2020c) in turn, clearly adopts a social policy mainstreaming approach, and states that "the combination of personal characteristics, such as gender, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, sexual orientation and disability can represent specific challenges for migrants" (p.6).Gender assumes a central role in the plan, with one of its main objectives being to consider gender mainstreaming and anti-discriminatory priorities (p.6).Besides the combination of gender (migrant women), age (young migrants), education (highly educated migrants) or gender identity or sexual orientation (LGBTIQ migrants), the intersection of more than two individual characteristics also appear throughout the text ("overqualified migrant women", "migrant children with disabilities").The wordcount reveals that the term intersectionality appears twice, and mainstreaming is referred once.Other terms, such as equality, diversity or discrimination, women, are more frequent than in the NPMA (Table 4).
Although both documents give visibility to certain intersectional inequalities, the explicitness of those references and inclusiveness of different categories of inequality are reduced.

Articulation
The articulation of the intersecting inequalities is poor on both documents.In the NPMA there are some observations regarding the vulnerability of women and children to the risks of trafficking and violence, and one note to the specific needs of low and medium skilled migrants regarding admission permits, but there is no elaboration on the nature of the relationships between migration, age, gender, or education.In the APII, although more categories of inequality are mentioned, this is done mostly in an additive fashion, in a logic of adding up disadvantages (Lombardo and Agustin, 2012), and scarce explanations are provided for the relationships between them (eg.: "Such discrimination can be based solely on their migrant background, but may be exacerbated due to their ethnic or racial origin as well as their religion or belief.LGBTIQ migrants and migrants with disabilities can also face multiple forms of discrimination.",p.7).An exception is the case of gender, family status, education, and employment, for which a more comprehensive reasoning is offered as to why migrant women (and girls) are confronted with more difficulties in accessing language learning, entering the labour market, or getting their qualifications recognised (p.12-13).

Transformative Potential
The structural understanding of the intersecting inequalities is not developed in the migration documents.There is an attempt to put the migration experience in context, and to portrait the present situation of Europe as a rationale for the actions proposed.This includes mentioning multiple vulnerabilities and intersectional inequalities, but not discussing the structural causes and consequences of these inequalities.In the APII, the urge to integrate over-qualified migrants, and to support the low qualified ones, is presented as an imperative to avoid losing human capital (p.2), and as such can be interpreted as an indication of the transformative potential of intersectionality.However, just as in the gender texts, the transformative potential of intersectionality arises mainly from the claims to more interconnectedness of EU policies and through the identification of the policy instruments where dialogue and joint action is needed to achieve the defined objectives (Table 2).

Challenge of Privileges
No explicit references were found challenging the current structures of power in any of the documents.

Stigmatization
No explicit indications of stigmatization of certain groups were found in the APII, but in the NPMA, the use of expressions such as "the right to stay" or "legal migration", as well as the links established between being in an irregular situation and being more vulnerable to criminal networks, clearly makes a stigmatization on the grounds of administrative status.
The texts do not mention absolute illiteracy.However, there are some references to the obstacles faced by migrants with low educational levels.

Explicitness, Visibility, and Inclusiveness
In the selected documents, skills and education are the main categories considered.There are no specific mentions to the term intersectionality; mainstreaming appears once in each text; and inequality and discrimination are mentioned very sporadically (Table 4).Several categories of inequality are indicated in the texts, but primarily as separate dimensions (Table 3).Intersectionality is expressed mainly through the intersection of two categories (education and gender, or education and age), and rarely include a third category (usually migration status or occupation).
In the ESA (European Commission, 2020d), education and skills, and in particular the high and low educated groups, are the central categories, although gender ("women and men alike"), age ("low/high-skilled adults"), and gender and age ("young women") appear frequently to specify the scope of action.General expressions such as "vulnerable groups" or "other discriminatory stereotypes" are also present in the text, and for specific actions, there are clear mentions to gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, age, sexual orientation, low-qualified adults, and migrants.Migration and migrants are mentioned throughout the document; however, this category is often undissociated of residency status, with "legal migration" and "legally residing migrants" (eg.: p.17) being the focus of the planned interventions (Table 4).
In the EEA (European Commission, 2020e), gender equality is a central topic and constitutes one of the priorities of the plan (Table 3).Gender is generally addressed through the expression "women and men in all their diversity" (eg.: p.16), or through the combination of gender with age "young women and girls".Migration and age ("youth with a migrant background") also appears as elements to be considered in the definition of the EEA, but with less centrality than gender.The explicitness, visibility and inclusiveness of intersectionality is, thus, very limited in the education documents.

Articulation
The relation between the categories is not articulate.

Transformative Potential
In the ESA, there is an attempt to relate gender and education when addressing the underrepresentation of girls in the STEM educational fields, but the argumentation lacks depth and the causes of the inequalities are not properly discussed (p.9).In the EEA, the same relationship is more developed, with a greater elaboration on the education institutions, the gendered education experience, stereotypes, and the conditionings to educational choices, as well as the persistence of male and female dominated occupations (eg.: p.8 or p.20).The EEA states the need to bring together different policy instruments, notably the GES, but without explaining how the structures of inequality relate.Both documents make a contextualization of the main educational problems, key facts, and figures they aim to attend to, but without discussing structural causes, namely the effect of intersectional inequalities in the access, participation, attainment, and achievement in education at all its levels.

Challenge of Privileges
No explicit references were found challenging current structures of power in any of the documents.

Stigmatization
Just as in the NPMA, in the ESA, the targeting of specific actions to the "legally resident migrants" stigmatises those in an irregular administrative situation.
There are no specific references to adults' absolute illiteracy.In the EEA the underachievement of students and the mastery of basic skills, namely reading, are generally addressed and correlated with socioeconomic status.In the ESA, the disproportion of lower education among migrants is referred to as an obstacle to labour-market inclusion.

Conclusion
This analysis allows us to conclude, firstly, that absolute illiteracy remains as an invisible phenomenon in European strategy documents.Although there is evidence that absolute illiteracy is a reality that affects a segment of the population residing in Europe, and that disproportionately affects migrant women, there are still no signs of a real concern in European policymaking.
Secondly, the presence of an intersectional approach is still very occasional in the policy documents analysed.Some attempts to address gender, migration or education inequalities in an intersectional view have been identified.This is mostly visible in the way the texts either refer directly to the concept of intersectionality or mention different categories of inequality in combination.However, these references rarely include more than two social categories, and, using Lombardo and Agustin's framework (2012), almost never include the explanation of intersectionalities, their contextualisation in larger systems of inequalities, the identification of the transformative potential of combating intersectional inequalities, or the questioning of prevailing power structures.As some scholars have been noting (Brochin, 2018;Jimenez Rodrigo, 2020;2022), this merely discursive use of intersectionality incurs the risk of transforming it in a buzzword, undermining its transformative potential.
The gender documents are those which present the greatest incorporation of an intersectional view of inequalities.It is also gender, as a social category, that appears most frequently in intersection with other inequalities.This is possibly due to the role that gender scholarship assumed in the dissemination of intersectional perspectives, but also to accumulated years of a gender mainstreaming strategy in European policies (Ferreira, 2022).
It is clear from the analysis that the need to design public policies that bring different areas of intervention into dialogue is well present at European level.This is noticeable in the way the documents analysed draw on, cite, and plan collaborative actions with other EU policy documents.However, the form that these potential collaborations will take is never or almost never explicit.The nature and objectives of the different policy instruments, namely regarding migration and education may bring additional challenges to this collaboration.The conception of migration policies as regulations about security and protection (Pinyol-Jimenez, 2021), and of education policies as guidelines and plans to tackle deficits, lead to the consolidation of profiles of "unwanted" migrants who are often excluded from policy interventions.In the specific case of gender and migration, it is crucial to consider that educational trajectories already shaped by gender norms, are often disrupted due to migration, and that the possibilities for skilling or re-skilling are, for their part, also determined by gender and migration status.
The results are in line with previous studies that underline the lack of intersectional approaches in EU policies.In the specific case of illiterate migrant women, the absence of targeted policy responses and the way policy instruments address women and migrants as homogenous social groups may reinforce existing vulnerabilities and exclusion.As individuals with multiple identity markers, the dynamism and complexity of their lives tend to be ignored in public policies (Manuel, 2006).As such, their concrete needs are not reflected in the current EU policies on gender, migration, and education.A structural understanding of how gender, migration and education inequalities interplay in determining the everyday complexities of being a migrant woman unable to read and write in Europe is indispensable for securing full rights to this populational group, but it is also essential for developing robust policy responses to social inequalities, able to guarantee the general well-being of society at large.
By providing a throughout list of dimensions through which intersectionality can be manifested and assessed, Lombardo and Agustin's (2012) framework allowed a comprehensive analysis of the incorporation an intersectional lens in these policy documents.Although limited in scope, this analysis contributes to the field by providing new evidence to the discussion of intersectionality in public policy, and by underlining the invisibility of adults' absolute illiteracy in Europe as a policy problem.Even so, additional research, namely with a broader documental corpus, would be valuable to develop the conclusions further.

Table 1
Thematic distribution of EU Gender policy documents

Table 2
Thematic distribution of EU Migration policy documents

Table 3
Thematic distribution of EU Education policy documents