International Conference 2017 LOVA Network Netherland Association for Gender Studies and Feminist Anthropology “Ethnographies of Gender and Mobility” 5-7 July 2017, VU Amsterdam Panel: “Women crossing borders with objects. A material approach to female mobilities”
Convenors: Dr. Norah Benarrosh-Orsoni (EHESS, Paris)
[email protected] Dr. Marta Vilar Rosales (Ulisboa, ICS)
[email protected] Panel Abstract This panel looks at what happens when women cross borders carrying goods. Focusing on transnational activities with a specific material culture perspective holds a rich potential to reveal some of the gendered mechanisms of (im)mobility. In this panel, we focus on the regular, mundane aspects of female mobility, be they mobile workers, cross-border traders, economic migrants or tourists, and investigate their manifold material manifestations to understand how these affect their lives. What role do mobile objects play in these specific transnational settings? More specifically, what does being mobile practically means for women? How do one or the other kind of mobility practices reshape women's social positions, be it by empowering them or on the contrary, by limiting their agency? We are also interested in the way these mobilities affect their social environments on both sides of the national borders: how do care settings unfold through the circulation of women and the goods they carry? How are immobile persons affected by these circulations? Answering such questions also implies to consider the material features that structure the world of mobile individuals: transportation, roads, borders, stopovers, selection technologies appear as ideal locations to investigate transnational dynamics in the making (Urry, 2007; Dalakoglou, 2016).
Papers Abstracts
“Between Brazzaville and Kinshasa: Women, Cross-border trade and social relations” Sylvie Ayimpam (Aix-Marseille University)
[email protected]
This paper highlights the migration conditions of women practicing cross-border trading between Kinshasa and Brazzaville. The aim is to analyse how migratory strategies, trade obligations and love relationships articulate in these women’s career-paths. Although this women’s migration between the two cities is of a commuting type, it sometimes entails a temporary settling period in Brazzaville which requires them to do casual jobs or even “prostitution”. Our interpretation is that, for these women, cross-border trading is an opportunity to rewrite the rules governing gender relations.
“Romanian women and their carryalls. Suitcase-trade, risk and cooperation on the Istanbul-Bucharest cross-border road”
Norah Benarrosh-Orsoni (EHESS, Paris)
[email protected] This paper deals with the phenomenon of suitcase trade between Turkey and Romania. It is based on the ethnography of the cross-border bus trips women make when they smuggle clothes and jewellery they bought in Istanbul. Contemporary observations are balanced with a series of interviews of women who opened this commercial road right after the fall of Ceausescu’s regime in 1989, and with the 1990 archives of the main Romanian newspaper which largely addressed the issue of smuggling (bișniță). Focusing on the life trajectories and the traveling practices of these women, this paper aims at understanding the role played by the smuggled average commodities since the opening of the Romanian national borders. Detailing the way they were and still are both sold or kept for personal use in Romania, I will argue that this activity is a way for many middleclass women to enjoy their social status in a country that is still unable to provide the affordable consumption goods they expect.
“Sending and Carrying Things: Caring Across Borders”
Kathy Burrell (Department of Geography and Planning, University of Liverpool)
[email protected] This paper considers the role of sending and carrying things in the reconfiguration of caring relationships across borders. Based on interviews undertaken for different UK based migration projects over the past few years, this paper brings together the discussions of women who send and carry things back home after migrating, and what they bring back with them too. It underlines several points about the gendered nature of migration and post-migration sending and carrying. First, it asserts the role of care in these transnational practices - that for all the economic asymmetries and social obligations tied up with the practice of sending, there is an underlying care which ultimately drives these activities, and that this care is manifested in gendered ways. Second, it considers in more detail what is actually sent back and forth, and why the materiality of these objects is so important to this practice. Third, it acknowledges the practical dimensions and hurdles of sending and carrying in different temporal and spatial contexts - whether this means physically navigating borders in socialist era Europe, or filling water butts with things to send to Zimbabwe. The paper finds that by focusing on the materiality of these mobilities we come to see the humanity of migration more clearly than ever.
“Food from here and food from there. Aspirations and positioning strategies of migrant women in Portugal and brazil” Marta Vilar Rosales (Ulisboa, ICS)
[email protected]
This paper addresses the aspirations and positioning strategies of young migrant women through the lens of food. Based on comparative ethnographic research carried out in four cities (Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Lisboa and OPorto), it aimed to observe and discuss the main contours of present-day migration movements between Portugal and Brazil and how these movements intersect, impact and are guided by the movements of things across the Atlantic. The paper will argue that a) food shopping, preparation and consumption plays a significant role in the materialization of migrant’s projects, negotiations and evaluations of the origin and host context; b) of all food consumed, things brought from origin or sent by family and friends play a particularly significant role in forging (or maintaining) and managing new (and old) networks, belonging and positioning strategies, as well as in reinventing and establishing new gendered identities and representations.
