Feminist Geography Conference (pre-AAG IGU Gender and Geography Commission Conference)
April 19-20, 2015
Theme of the proposed session: Gendered right to the city, migration and citizenship
Session organizers: Eleonore Kofman and Elena Vacchelli, Middlesex University, UK
The panel calls for original conceptualisations of the Right to the City, where this fascinating theoretical tool and the questions it raises, are used to shift perspectives from the national scale to urban politics. The right to the city can be claimed by those who contribute to its daily production and reproduction and are therefore empowered by it. There is an increasing recognition of the centrality of the city in understanding these issues that go beyond the nation-state as a framework of analysis. The ‘resurgence’ of Lefebvre’s Right to the City is in part linked to the increasing recognition that the city provides a more relevant focus to explore social relations as well as socio-economic and cultural issues than the nation state (Massey, 2005). Purcell (2002) suggests that Lefebvre’s right to the city is an argument for reworking both the social relations of capitalism and the current structure of liberal democratic citizenship. Lefebvre’s idea is a call for a radical restructuring of social, political, and economic relations, both in the city and beyond. However we know that the Lefebvrian notion of the right to the city has not paid sufficient attention to patriarchal relations (Fenster 2005) and to other intersectional dimensions of social exclusion.
A gendered right to the city aims at widening the idea of citizenship to encompass a bundle of social, political and economic rights such as participation, access to resources, right to housing and welfare, having one’s work paid for and recognised, and one’s voice heard and not silenced. Working class, precarious, migrant and refugee women carry a disproportionate burden in having to look after their children, the elderly, and by having to negotiate (under) paid or temporary work with care and domestic commitments. Migrant and refugee, in particular, face a wide range of barriers to a dignified life when facing de-skilling, unprotected labour, domestic abuse and other forms of gender violence at a time when institutional support is diminishing and citizenship is becoming a central factor for the eligibility to services (Martin 2013). Many migrant workers are excluded from a range of protective workplace regulations and access to welfare benefits in a way that reinforces devaluation of their social reproductive labour.
Exploring gendered rights to the city should be envisaged as an articulation between gender, ethnicity, race and class. In other words, gendered rights to the city are determined at the intersection with other social categories (Yuval-Davis, 2006) and social divisions. Anthias (1998) further highlights the importance of looking at what happens at the local level, such as the city and its specificities, when dealing with the question of ‘social divisions as parameters of social inequality and exclusion’ (p. 530). We are thus looking for papers which address current gaps in relation to the broad theoretical framework offered by the gendered ‘Right to the city’, migration and citizenship. We particularly welcome papers highlighting that migrant and refugee women are increasingly faced with rising demands for services and other unregulated work domains which situate them in increasingly unequal, vulnerable and disempowered positions, and less and less able to claim their right to the city.
Possible themes include but are not limited to:
• Gender, migration and crisis of social reproduction in relation to the right to the city
• Austerity/welfare restructuring and impact on women in vulnerable situations
• Right to the city and its intersectional articulations with gender, ethnicity, race and class
• Citizenship and gendered rights to the city
Please send 250 words abstracts to Elena Vacchelli ([log in to unmask]) and Eleonore Kofman ([log in to unmask]) no later than 1st December 2014. Notification of acceptance will be in early January 2015.
Dr Elena Vacchelli
Senior Research Fellow in Gender and Migration
Programme Leader MSc/PG Cert/PG Diploma ‘Professional Practice in Research Methods’
Social Policy Research Centre
www.sprc.info<http://www.sprc.info>
Middlesex University
The Burroughs, Hendon
London NW4 4BT
Tel: +44 (0)20 84114103
http://www.mdx.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/staff-directory/vacchelli-elena
https://mdx.academia.edu/ElenaVacchelli
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