CfP: Conference Female Agency, Mobility and Socio-cultural Change, June 11th – 12th 2015, Barcelona, Spain

The feminisation of migration is one of the most significant social patterns to have emerged in the course of the last century. Too often, female migrants occupy vulnerable positions in their host societies, engaging in domestic work, sex work and other unregulated sectors. Despite being so vulnerable and despite established patterns of exploitation, the numbers of women who choose to migrate is rising. This conference focuses on this phenomenon, in order to better understand why and how migration may offer routes to empowerment to women. Specific areas of focus include the extent to which migration offers women new sociocultural horizons as they move between different regions of the world, while also considering links between mobilities and mobilisations through for example, digital mobilities and mobilisations of women and ideas. This conference will examine topics such as female agency, diasporas and transnationalism, labour and decent work, processes of identity construction, the sociocultural reconstruction of home, work and urban spaces and policy responses to female mobilites. It will put academic research into dialogue with debates in the United Nations that address gender discrimination and the role of female migrants in development agendas. In addition to keynote lectures and panel presentations, the conference will feature events that engage with artistic representations of the themes.

Keynote Speakers:

Professor Maggie O’Neill (Durham University), Professor of Criminology in the School of Applied Social Sciences and Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing

Professor Christiane Timmerman (University of Antwerp), Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center of Migration and Intercultural Studies (CeMIS)

Dr. Maria Jaschok (University of Oxford), Director, International Gender Studies Centre, Lady Margaret Hall

Themes:

• Women, Diasporas and Transnationalism

• Gender and Migrant Labour

• Mobilities and Mobilisations of and by Women

• Migrant Women and Sociocultural Change

• Policy and Civil Society Responses to Female Mobilities

• Women as Actors of Social Change

• Mobility and Female Empowerment

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words and short bios of max 100 words to pescinski@unu.edu no later than 20th April 2015. Decisions will be communicated by 30th April 2015.