Mobilités / Κινητικότητες / Mobilities

1- Space and place in women’s migration. The importance of feminist thought
2- Migrant women autonomy in times of crisis.  A cross-scalar approach

Dina Vaiou National Technical University of Athens
Camille Schmoll University of Paris Nanterre

Salle des conférences de l’EFA / Αίθουσα διαλέξεων της EFA

Οrganisé par la British School at Athens (BSA) et l’École française d’Athènes (EFA), en collaboration avec le British Institute at Ankara (BIAA), et financé par le réseau Balkan Futures et l’EFAProgramme 2018

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1- In my contribution I will focus on the importance of feminist thought for understandings and interpretations of migration. Taking issue with the work of Camille Schmoll on the inconspicuous sites and scales in which migrant women’s subjectivities and practices are constituted, I will argue first that feminist thought has contributed to unveil gender inequalities in the geographies of mobility, integration, exclusion and displacement; in this sense it has enriched, and sometimes subverted, conceptions about key issues in migration literature, like borders and boundaries, spatial scales, subjectivities, local/global relations. Second, I will focus on the importance of space and place and on the different ways in which migrant women “inhabit” and move in/through space, with all its embedded practices and relations, which may involve variety and openness, but also strong geometries of power.2- Located where migration studies and feminist studies meet, my presentation will explore the making of migrants’ micro-geographies of power in the Euro-Mediterranean region. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken with women migrants in Southern Europe, I will claim for the need to feminize contemporary research on migration at the borders of Europe. By feminizing research, I do not mean to acknowledge the increasing importance of women within international migration dynamics but rather to take stock of a vast literature in gender and feminist studies, in order to amend our approach to contemporary migrations and mobilities. In particular I will draw on the inputs of feminist geography in order to show how migrant women intersectional subjectivities and spatial practices are constituted through inconspicuous sites and scales, such as the body, the digital space and the domestic space. The intersections between migrant women’s spatialities, as well as the transnational connections they build produce counter-spatialities of power through which women are able to negotiate with (and sometimes challenge) hierarchies and borders.

CONTACTSSophia Zoumboulaki
Assistante administrative pour la Direction des Études
sophia.zoumboulaki@efa.gr
+ 30 210 36 79 904

Nolwenn Grémillet
Communication
nolwenn.gremillet@efa.gr
+ 30 210 36 79 943