Module ’Gendered Regimes of Migration'’

June 5/6, 2015

Prof. Annuska Derks, Zürich; Prof. Sabine Strasser, Bern; Dr. Olivia Kilias, Zürich

Prof. Nicole Constable, Pittsburgh

From “gender-sensitive” programs through which the Filipino state sends hundreds of thousands of women abroad as short-term contract domestic workers, to HIV/AIDS prevention projects targeting migrant men to the paternalistic logic of certain policy instruments geared towards the “integration” of migrant women in “post-multiculturalist” European nation-states, contemporary migration and border regimes can be seen as deeply gendered institutions that ask for a critical, feminist lens of analysis. 

Anthropological studies have revealed in fine-grained ethnographic detail how gender shapes decisions to move or to stay, directions and destinations of migration movements, ideas about appropriate forms of employment, migration policies as well as migration outcomes. On the other hand, migration has been shown to transform gender roles and perspectives as well as family and kinship structures. Rather than to use “gender” as a code word for women, we are interested in the various ways in which gender and sexuality intersect with migration, citizenship and border regimes. Anthropology has much to contribute to a critical, postcolonial analysis of migration, gender and sexuality in and beyond Europe - and to develop theory beyond eurocentric models of analysis. Indeed, despite the fact that most research in mainstream migration studies is looking at migration to Europe and North America, globally, most people move within or between countries outside of the West: from Indonesia to Malaysia, from Syria to Jordan or within China. Moreover, and despite the vivid contemporary interest in restrictive border regimes such as “Fortress Europe”, migration can in no way be reduced to the mobility of labour migrants and refugees – less visible but no less important is the mobility of the world’s highly-skilled elites.

There is currently a concentration of expertise in the fields of gender and migration in Anthropology Institutes in Switzerland as a result of the appointment of new faculty members. This is also reflected in the fact that many doctoral and post-doctoral students currently focus on these issues. The aim of this module is to bring together students and scholars attached to various institutions and to discuss key texts and new approaches to the research on gender, sexuality and migration. Doctoral students will be expected to present their research projects and raise issues that are both related to the theme of the module and their own work.

This module is conceptualized as the starting-point of a longer-term collaboration between scholars interested in these issues and is designed towards the establishment of a research network on gender, sexuality and migration.

Keynote speech: TBA

Zürich

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