Gender, migration, mobility and transnationalism

Abstract

In reviewing the expanding body of work on the linkages between gender, mobility, migration and transnationalism in Gender, Place and Culture over the last decade, this article highlights three significant contributions. First, through critical engagement with transnationalism studies, the journal has produced a sophisticated and variegated strand of work on gender politics and multiple forms of migration and mobility. In this article, we focus primarily on mobility in terms of human movement across national borders, rural -urban migration, as well as the 'to-ing and fro-ing' that inform the embodied experiences of being here and there simultaneously as iterated in transnationalism studies [L. Basch, N.G. Schiller, and C.S. Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized NationStates. London: Routledge, 1994]. A second area of strength lies in the coalescence of work providing insights into the connections between social reproduction in a globalising world and intimate forms of global mobility and migration. A third highlight relates to the mutually constitutive relationship between the construction of masculinities and masculinist ideologies, on the one hand, and migration, mobility and transnationalism, on the other. The article concludes with a discussion of two more embryonic areas which merit further development in the journal: the first concerns the social and geographical (im)mobilities implied in cross-border reproductive care 1 and the global mobility and assemblage of body parts, while the second relates to the distinctive role that feminist geographers interested in migrations and mobilities can play in working collaboratively and transnationally across different worlds.

A post‐socialist legacy in transnational families: Russian and Polish women in Finland

“…There is a need to include a post-socialist analysis of transnational care alongside the post-colonial one (Yeoh and Ramdas 2014). There is a need to include a post-socialist analysis of transnational care alongside the post-colonial one (Yeoh and Ramdas 2014).…”

“…However, the major advantage (which is also a challenge) of combining these two perspectives lies in the opportunity it offers to test some of the epistemological assumptions that inform many analytical accounts in both areas of research. There is a need to include a post-socialist analysis of transnational care alongside the post-colonial one (Yeoh and Ramdas 2014). Some transnational family research draws on rather culturally barren, instrumental theories of care.…”

Afterword: Gender Practices in Transnational Families

“…These changes, during the second decade, overcame unidirectional research by unfolding from the perspective of women or men and using a gendered approach in migration studies (Sherif Trask 2010;Fouron and Glick Schiller 2001;Kofman et al 2011;Schmalzbauer 2011;Geisen and Parreñas 2013;Yeoh and Ramdas 2014;Schneebaum et al 2015;Fresnoza-Flot and Shinozaki 2017;Ala-Mantila and Fleischmann 2017;Marchetti and Salih 2017). Such a focus on gender practices within transnational families brings new ways in which to more deeply understand events involving their members.…”

Gendering activism, exile and wellbeing: Chilean exiles in the UK

“…Nevertheless, limitations remain regarding the ways in which 'gender' has been integrated into refugee and asylum debates and discourse (Hyndman, 2010). The framing of refugees has arguably become more complex, with new distinctions made between 'those who wait' in refugee camps and are deemed to be 'authentic' refugees but are portrayed as passive and feminised victims (regardless of gender), compared to 'those who move in' attempting to seek asylum and are viewed through masculinist lenses as politicised, selfserving individuals who pose a threat to state security in the Global North (Yeoh and Ramdas, 2014). …”