Research Proposal:
Everywhere, the globalization of trade,
the expansion of the tertiary sector and women’s growing access to labor
markets have—far from triggering a drop in domestic labor and “care
work”—led to a “rise in mobility” among women and, to a lesser extent,
men to meet the global demand for reproductive labor. This increased
mobility happens at different scales: from urban-rural migration to
inter-continental migration. It is part of an more general feminization
of labor migration that concerns many economic sectors (factory work,
sex work, farm labor, tourism, entertainment, etc.).
While migrant women who are domestic
workers have been the subject of many studies in sociology and
anthropology, spatial readings of their migratory dynamics are still
rare. This is what the candidate should attempt to do, taking a
comprehensive approach to women’s mobility in its multiple scalar and
territorial configurations.
This study will take place in the
Mediterranean context: a very diverse zone in terms of demographics and
wealth, undergoing multiple transformations (economic crises, political
crises and civil wars, frontierization and flow intensification
phenomena), the countries around the Mediterranean Sea share specific
family models and strongly service-based economies with large demand for
domestic labor and care work.
An investigation of the spatial dynamics of women migrants notably raises the following questions:
What are these women’s spatial practices in their host countries and
cities? How do they reconfigure spaces, notably public and domestic
spaces? Here, contributions from urban geography and feminist geography
could be mobilized.What scales are relevant to analyze these migratory processes? The
national scale has been strongly challenged with the development of
transnational studies. Has this scale really lost its relevance to
understand migratory dynamics? What of local and micro-local scales?
What of transnational scales (networked territories, or even virtual
spaces frequented and run by migrants)?Women’s trajectories and what they tell us about the
mobility/immobility dialectic, the effects of borders and regulation,
the role of “spatial capital” and social networks in migratory paths.
From the methodological standpoint, we
wish to favor a comparative reading: for example, the research could,
based on the skills of the researcher, take place in a Southern European
country and a Middle Eastern country. The comparison could also be done
between several groups (for example, Filipino and Sri Lankan women).
The research will be qualitative
(ethnography, interviews) but contributions from quantitative approaches
(network analysis, quantitative processing of interviews, etc.) will be
welcome. The use of original supports for the research (films, etc.) or
the development of innovative methodological approaches (web analysis,
multi-site research) could be significant “pluses.”