[URBANTH-L]ANN: SSHA Interdisciplinary Migration and Gender Workshop

[Angela Jancius]

Workshop
Numbers, Narratives and More: Towards an Interdisciplinary Analysis of
Migrant Gender Ratios 

Sponsored by the Immigration History Research Center (IHRC), University
of Minnesota
Http://www.ihrc.umn.edu

In conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the Social Science History
Association 

Thursday, November 2, 2006
9:30-12:00 followed by a light (free) lunch

Gender ratios among international migrants have changed so dramatically
over the past century that scholars sometimes refer to the "feminization
of migration" in the twentieth century. Even among contemporary
populations of migrants, refugees, and resident immigrant or foreigners,
the balance of men and women varies significantly.  Why is this so?
Across the disciplines, scholars acknowledge variations in gender ratios
without often attempting to explain them. 

In this workshop, former members of the SSRC "Gender and Migration
Theory" Group, together with staff at the IHRC and the MPC (Minnesota
Population Center) will ask participants to consider how a
"multi-method" or interdisciplinary collaboration might tackle the
complex relationship between gender and migrations.  We will begin by
introducing participants to a wide array of data and sources that
document in some way complex questions about why men or women migrate in
differing numbers and about how gender shapes their motives, decisions
and destinations. Functioning at first as a multi-disciplinary group, we
will discuss methodologies traditionally associated with the analysis of
each type of data of source. But then we will push on into
interdisciplinary discussions of combining and mixing methodologies:
what would an ethnographer do with population data? How would a
demographer or an historian approach a fictional account?  What would a
psychologist do with a series of letters? Could a specialist interested
in heavily female- or heavily-male social or kinship networks ask new
questions of data on gendered patterns of wage-earning or gendered laws
governing migration? 

Convenors: Donna Gabaccia (IHRC) and Trent Alexander (MPC); Katharine
Donato (Sociology, Vanderbilt University); Jennifer Holdaway (Political
Science, SSRC); Martin Manalansan (Anthropology, University of
Illinois); Patricia Pessar (American Studies and Anthropology, Yale
University) 

Interested in the current state of the field? See the forthcoming
special issue of "Gender and Migration," International Migration Review 


This workshop is free and open to students and faculty at the University
of Minnesota and to those attending the SSHA

For additional information or to register (DEADLINE: Oct. 23, 2006): 
drg at umn.edu