The EU has expanded its remit to include policy issues far removed from its original concerns with creating a single market. It now has policies on migration, environment and development, amongst many other issues. These policies are made separately, but there has been growing awareness in recent years that they are interrelated, and approaches such as Policy Coherence for Development have been introduced in an attempt to ensure that policies in one area do not undermine policies in another. The EU has also declared gender equality a fundamental value of the Union, and has introduced gender mainstreaming in order to bring it about. The integrated approach to policy, enshrined in Policy Coherence for Development, and the commitment to gender mainstreaming, which means that gender will be considered at every stage of the policy process in all areas of policy making, together mean that we should expect to find coherent policy on migration, environment and development which takes gender into account at every stage. This paper focuses on the intersections between migration, environment and development, including, for example, forced migration as a result of environmental disaster or environmental degradation. It inserts a gender lens at these points of intersection, looking at the gendered representations, norms and institutions that influence them. It asks which actors are bringing/ignoring/resisting a gender perspective. It asks what happens to gender mainstreaming and gender specific actions when policy integration takes place. It finds that attempts to achieve policy coherence represent a further challenge for the integration of a gender perspective in policy making. Although gender is cited as a cross-cutting issue, which should be taken into account at all stages and in all areas of policy making, where these areas of policy intersect, gender is either absent, or mentioned as part of a formulaic add-on.
