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 Nation-States. 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 care1 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.

Género, migración, movilidad y transnacionalismo

Reviendo la cada vez mayor literatura sobre las relaciónes entre género, movilidad, migración y transnacionalismo en Gender, Place and Culture a lo largo de la última década, este artículo resalta tres contribuciones significativas. En primer lugar, a través de la participación crítica con los estudios sobre transnacionalismo, esta revista ha producido una sofisticada y variada serie de trabajos sobre la política del género y las múltiples formas de la migración y la movilidad. En este artículo nos centramos principalmente sobre la movilidad en términos de movimiento humano a través de las fronteras nacionales, la migración rural-urbana, así como el “ir y venir” que influye sobre las experiencias encarnadas del estar aquí y allá simultáneamente como se itera en los estudios de transnacionalismos (Basch et al. 1994). Una segunda área de fortaleza se encuentra en la coalescencia del trabajo que brinda miradas sobre las conexiones entre la reproducción social en el mundo globalizante y las formas íntimas de la movilidad global y la migración. Un tercer aspecto destacable se relaciona con la relación mutuamente constitutiva entre la construcción de masculinidades y las ideologías masculinistas, por un lado, y la migración, la movilidad y el transnacionalismo por el otro. El artículo concluye con una discusión de dos áreas embrionarias más que merecen más desarrollo en la revista: la primera concierne a las (in)movilidades sociales y geográficas implicadas en los cuidados reproductivos trans fronteras (CRTF)¹ y la movilidad global y el ensamblado de las partes del cuerpo, mientras que la segunda se relaciona con el rol distintivo que lxs geógrafxs feministas interesadxs en las migraciones y movilidades pueden jugar para trabajar en forma colaborativa y transnacional a través de mundos diferentes.

性别、迁徙、流动与跨国主义

本文回顾《性别、地方与文化》期刊于过去十年来所刊载的有关性别、流动、迁徙与跨国主义的扩展中的文献，强调三项显着的贡献。首先，透过批判性地涉入跨国主义研究，该期刊生产了有关性别政治及多重形式的迁徙及流动的复杂且多样化之研究。我们于本文中，主要聚焦下列的流动——跨越国界的人类移动、城乡移民，以及“往返来回之间”此一跨国主义研究中不断復述的同时存在于此地及他方的身体化经验（Basch et al. 1994）。第二大长处则在于，对全球化世界中的社会再生产，及其与全球流动和迁徙的亲密形式之间的关联性提出洞见之研究。第三个重要部分，则关乎男性气概建构和大男子主义意识形态，以及迁徙、流动和跨国主义之间的共构关係。本文于结论中，探讨本期刊值得进一步发展的两个酝酿中的领域：第一个领域关乎跨境再生产照料（CBRC）所意味的社会及地理的（不）流动，以及身体组成部份的全球流动与凑组；第二个领域则关乎对迁徙和流动有兴趣的女性主义地理学者，在与不同的世界共同合作、或进行跨国工作中可扮演的显着角色。

Keywords::

• social reproduction
• masculinities
• gender
• migration
• mobility
• transnationalism

Palabras claves::

• reproducción social
• masculinidades
• género
• migración
• movilidad
• transnacionalismo

关键词:::

• 社会再生产
• 男性气概
• 性别
• 迁徙
• 流动
• 跨国主义

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our research assistant Alice Chen Huiyu, the anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions, and the editorial team at Gender, Place and Culture.

Notes

^1. CBRC is what Payne (2013) attributes to the rapid development and spread of assisted reproductive technologies that have given rise to a global market for human eggs, sperm and surrogates.

^2. The argument for a transnational approach (as opposed to the prevailing assimilationist paradigm) in the study of migration was first made in 1994 by three anthropologists working in the US context, Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller and Cristina Szanton Blanc, in their path-breaking book, Nations Unbound.

Additional information

Funding

The funding support was provided by Singapore Ministry of Education's Academic Research Fund Tier 1 [R-109-000-156-112].

Notes on contributors

Brenda S.A. Yeoh

Brenda S.A. Yeoh is Professor (Provost's Chair), Department of Geography, as well as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore. She is also the Research Leader of the Asian Migration Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, NUS. Her research interests include the politics of space in colonial and post-colonial cities and she also has considerable experience working on a wide range of migration research in Asia, including key themes such as cosmopolitanism and highly skilled talent migration; gender, social reproduction and care migration; migration, national identity and citizenship issues; globalising universities and international student mobilities; and cultural politics, family dynamics and international marriage migrants. She has published widely in these fields.

Kamalini Ramdas

Kamalini Ramdas is a lecturer with the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore. She is a feminist geographer with a keen interest in issues pertaining to gender, sexuality and race. Her PhD research topic on singlehood among Singaporean Indian women based in Singapore, London and Melbourne uses a feminist ethics of care to critique the biopolitics of transnational familyhood and community in Singapore. Kamalini has published out of her PhD in Environment and Planning A and Gender, Place and Culture. Kamalini has co-edited and contributed to Changing Landscapes of Singapore: Old Tensions, New Discoveries (Singapore: NUS Press). Prior to embarking on her PhD, she worked at the Asia Research Institute (ARI) and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). At ARI, she co-edited a book with Gavin Jones, (Un)Tying the Knot: Ideal and Reality in Asian Marriage (Singapore: Asia Research Institute).