Transnational and Transborder Familial and Gender Relations:
Comparing the Influence of Blurred and Brittle Borders
Venue: Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford
23-25 September, 2015
Organizers: D.F. Bryceson, A. Coles, S. Crisp (International Gender Studies, LMH, Oxford)
& C. Vélez-Ibáňez (School of Transborder Studies, Arizona State University)
Human population movement is an ancient phenomenon but its present scale is historically unprecedented. Millions of people are migrating voluntarily or involuntarily due to war dislocation, border disputes or economic displacement arising from the massive restructuring of the global economy. Such processes have direct impacts on family reproduction, familial life cycles, social protection, inclusion and exclusion from welfare systems, the feminization of migration flows, the creation of engendered spaces and places, and the manner in which subsequent generations seek to develop their human potential.
How these impacts are negotiated and dealt with are centrally important to how cultural understandings and identities are created, how social relations and exchange are gendered, and how economic and material resources are developed into wealth and capital for familial and network stability and health. This workshop’s objective is to compare social processes and welfare consequences of human populations migrating across a compendium of different types of national boundaries, ranging from the 'blurred border' situation pertaining to nationals of the European Union who can travel relatively unimpeded between EU countries, to that of ‘brittle borders' involving 'illegal aliens' entering, for example, the European Union or crossing the highly regulated Mexican-American border.
Our workshop focuses on how families and gender relations are formed and reproduced along a spectrum of regulated as opposed to flexible state migration policies. Paper givers are asked to explore differences in migration patterns and welfare outcomes in the context of historical symmetries and asymmetries of the global economy.
Those interested in attending the workshop are asked to submit an abstract of 200-250 words by September 1st 2014 with the email heading ‘IGS/ASU migration workshop’ to:
Notification of accepted abstracts will take place on October 1st.
Papers are due for submission by July 1st, 2015.