Should I stay or should I go now? Exploring Polish women's returns “home”

At a time when there are more people on the move than ever before, it is pivotal to explore people's motivations and experiences of return migration. Whilst motivations for migration are comparatively well explored, return migrants' experiences are less well‐known and migrants' gender is rarely considered. This article addresses these gaps. It is based on qualitative research and in‐depth interviews with 32 Polish women: 16 migrants and 16 return migrants. Considered through the lens of agency and structure, this research uncovers how fluid the process of migration has become; migration motivations and patterns are blurred and interlinked with one another while classic migration theories seem outdated. The study uses an “intersection of motivations” to show how inseparable migration‐related motivations have become. This article contributes to the growing literature on East–West return migration and highlights women as migrants and the gendered nature of their mobility.     

Street Harassment: Current and Promising Avenues for Researchers and Activists

Research about street harassment indicates that the problem is far reaching in its effects and that most women and girls experience sexual harassment from men they do not know in public spaces. In recent years, an increasing number of activists, bloggers, and online media outlets have published pieces about street harassment, reflecting a growing and international anti‐street harassment social movement. In this article, I discuss what scholars and activists tell us about street harassment, including prevalence, victims, harassers, responses and consequences, and theoretical explanations. I conclude with suggestions for further research, a call for more attention to the influence of overlapping inequalities, and an appeal to researchers to further explore this serious social problem.     

The Relational Contexts of Migration: Mexican Women in New Destination Sites

This article assesses Mexican immigrant women's experiences of isolation and autonomy in three new destination sites in Montana, Ohio, and New Jersey. We highlight six case studies from our cross‐comparative data set of in‐depth interviews and field work with 98 women to illustrate the intersections between contexts of reception and gender relations in shaping women's settlement experiences. We find that women in sites with a concentrated Mexican population and a well‐developed social service infrastructure are relatively autonomous in accomplishing daily activities independent of their relationships with husbands or partners. In contrast, for women living in sites with few social support services, relationships with the men in their lives, what we call their “relational contexts,” matter for women's experiences of isolation or autonomy outside the home. Relational contexts have not been emphasized in previous literature on gender and migration but may be significant in shaping women's experiences across varying contexts of reception.     

Suspending,settling, sponsoring: the intimate chronomobilities of young Asian migrants in Australia

In this article, I develop the concept of ‘intimate chronomobilities’ to understand some of the intersections between the temporalities of intimate relationships and of migration in the lives of young and ‘middling’ transnational migrants from Asia to Australia. Drawing on in‐depth interview data, I reveal how romantic partnerships are highly significant to experiences of transnational mobility, and how such experiences take place in the context of a governance regime in Australia in which migration has become increasingly transient, transitionary and transitory, and in which sponsored partner and spouse visas can secure migration futures. The analysis explores how the lived and imagined timelines and timings of intimate partnerships play highly significant roles in defining and structuring migrants' mobilities, and reveals how intimate chronomobilities of ‘suspending, settling and sponsoring’ are understood by migrants through lived experiences of sequence, synchronicity and tempo.     

‘Knowing one's place’: gender,mobility and shifting subjectivity in Eastern Indonesia

Abstract In this article I analyse the gendered space of transnational mobility by problematizing migrant subjectivity in everyday practices. In line with feminist perspectives I highlight the significance of the micro‐scale experience of female migrants from Eastern Indonesia in acquiring mobility as a struggle for new subjectivity. I frame this migration as a production of the subjective space of power. Based on in‐depth interviews with returned migrants, I present reflexive accounts of two migrants on contract domestic work abroad to illuminate the changing contours of the relationships between gender, mobility and shifting subjectivity. Households take into account the cultural meanings of space in everyday life including local relations in the decisions on mobility. Strategies of ‘knowing one's place’ reflect women's agency in negotiating alternative roles and positions within the intra‐household dynamics and in the workplace. Women's personal accounts have the potential to illuminate spatial processes of migration as a contested space for the repositioning of self in networks of family, kin, local and global relations.     

Gender and rural-urban migration in China

Many men and women in China are migrating in search of better economic opportunities. Young women who migrate to urban centers in search of opportunity may stay away from their home villages for several years. At some point, however, they are likely to return home. This article considers the effect which such circular migration is having upon gender relations in China. The author's argument is presented in sections on China's 1990 census, migration and the sexual division of labor, migration and child care, the influence of returning migrants, the influence of young female returnees, and the fertility of returnees. She speculates that the demands and expectations of young women who return to their villages after spending some time earning high wages in urban areas will be affected by urban norms. While their return may lead to initial conflict, it is likely that the women will retain greater personal autonomy from their urban experience. Their return is also likely to lead to a higher degree of material consumption in the rural areas. Present circular migration in China has the potential to return human and financial resources to the villages, thereby helping to prevent the urban-rural gap between economic, social, cultural, and educational factors from growing even wider.     

HOMEWARD BOUND: THE RETURN MIGRATION OF SOUTHERN-BORN BLACK WOMEN, 1940 TO 1990

A major demographic trend of the twentieth century has been the dramatic decrease in the percentage of African Americans residing in the South. The Great Migration reduced the percentage of Blacks living in the South from 90 percent at the turn of the century to 53 percent in 1990. However, since at least 1940 there has been a measurable North to - South counterstream of migrants , and since about 1970 there has been net in - migration of Blacks to the South . This in - migration includes northern - born Blacks, as well as former migrants returning to the South. Prior research on the Great Migration, and its more recent reversal, has tended to overlook the experiences of Black women. In this study, we use the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series to describe the return migration patterns of southern - born Black women in 1940, 1970, 1980, and 1990. Our analysis has four primary objectives: (a) to provide a broad overview of trends in return migration to the South for Black women during the last 60 years of the twentieth century, (b) to determine the selectivity of female return migrants from the larger population of southern migrants residing in the North, (c) to compare female return migrants with southern - born women who had remained in the South, and (d) to help set an agenda for future research on female return migration. Although the focus throughout the article is on the return migration of African American women, parallel information is presented for Whites to provide a comparative perspective.     

Consuming the transnational family: Indonesian migrant domestic workers to Saudi Arabia

Abstract There is heated debate in contemporary Indonesia about the rights and regulation of transnational women migrants, specifically about the ‘costs to families’ of women working overseas, but little attention has been given to women migrants' own views of family or women's own motivations for migration. In this article, which is based on field work in a migrant‐sending community in West Java, I focus on migrant women's narratives of transnational migration and employment as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. I contribute to the literature on gender and transnational migration by exploring migrants' consumption desires and practices as reflective not only of commoditized exchange but also of affect and sentiment. In addition, I show in detail how religion and class inflect low‐income women's narrations of morally appropriate mothering practices. In conclusion, I suggest that interpreting these debates from the ground up can contribute towards understanding the larger struggles animating the Indonesian state's contemporary relationships with women and Islam.     

Mentoring,Sexual Harassment,and Black Women Academics

ABSTRACT

The #MeToo Movement both within academia and popular culture has largely been seen as an issue for white women (and men). While the phrase Me Too was originally coined by Tarana Burke in 2006 to raise public awareness of sexual harassment, violence and assault experienced by women of color, the Movement has largely been whitewashed by primarily depicting victims and survivors as white women. Black women academics, like myself, also experience sexual harassment. By highlighting the ways that race-based sexual harassment further marginalizes already underrepresented groups in political science, I use my personal story to elucidate how a gender-only lens misses the complexities of Black women’s experiences with power inequities in academia. Throughout this narrative I underscore the importance of mentorship, professional networks, and the ability to harness scholarship as a vehicle to combat the pervasiveness of sexual harassment, violence, and assault for Black women in political science.     

Sexual Harassment in the Creative Industries: Tolerance,Culture and the Need for Change

The economic, social and cultural contributions of the creative industries are essential elements of many societies and their governments' policies. However, there is growing evidence that precarity, competition and lack of regulation within these industries is exacerbating inequalities with respect to gender, race and class. With a focus on gender and sexual harassment among female workers, this study involved 32 in‐depth interviews with women working in the Netherlands' creative industries. Data were analyzed using content analysis. Findings suggest that sexual harassment is prevalent, and many women considered it to be part of their occupational culture and career advancement. Four factors influenced this phenomenon: competition for work; industry culture; gendered power relations; and the importance of informal networks. Implications include the need for a climate of non‐tolerance, sector‐specific research and guidelines, sensitivity training and further work with unions and professional associations to provide worker protection strategies traditionally undertaken by organizations. The article concludes that effective sexual harassment prevention requires action at the individual, educational, sectoral and governmental levels, beginning with public conversations to convey the message that sexual harassment is never acceptable.     

Split Return: Transnational Household Strategies in Afghan Repatriation

Split return is a common strategy of repatriation among refugees and migrants. Facing great uncertainty, both economically and security‐wise, households disperse in two or more locations in order to minimize risk. The phenomenon is well‐known in migration studies and in studies of return from the distant diaspora, but is studied less among the overwhelming majority residing in countries neighbouring their own. This article draws on experiences from Afghanistan, comparing split return to similar strategies in migration generally and in refugee situations specifically. It suggests that while splits are conceived as a temporary measure, they often become a lasting form of life. Opportunities for split return are often crucial for the willingness to start repatriation, as well as for the sustainability of the household's economy upon return. The article develops the concept of split return in relation to contextual factors, intensity of networks (at origin and in exile) and household composition.     

Migrant Women’s Transnationalism: Family Patterns and Policies

Whereas current policies on migration and integration are beginning to recognise family reunion as one of the most legitimate reasons for acceptance by a host society, they in most cases still do not account for the growing trend of feminisation of migration, and even rarely do they address specific migrants’ needs. As currently constituted, the integration bills envision a one‐way process that places migrants into a position where they cannot question, but only accept and fulfil the predetermined requirements of integration plans. But who are the women that migrate, what influence do their transnational experiences have on their families, and how do migration policies envision the reality of increasing transnationalism? This paper focuses on biographical interviews with migrant women in Slovenia as a valuable method to question current integration measurements, applied here to explore female migrants’ experiences in transnational family life and social networks. A gender sensitive approach is applied that critically evaluates the specificities of family reunification policies, which define women migrants as dependent family members. We discuss life trajectories of women migrants, focusing the debate on their own experiences in and with family life. This new empirical material is used to theorise gaps in contemporary migration research. Women migrants’ own reflections of transnational family ties show a great variety of experiences and their narratives are a unique window into motivational, political, as well as legal dimensions of migration.     

Post‐return experiences and transnational belonging of return migrants: a Dutch—Moroccan case study

In this article we explore the links between return migration, belonging and transnationalism among migrants who returned from the Netherlands to northeast Morocco. While transnationalism is commonly discussed from the perspective of a receiving country, this study shows that transnationalism also plays a vital role in reconstructing post‐return belonging. Return migration is not simply a matter of ‘going home’, as feelings of belonging need to be renegotiated upon return. While returnees generally feel a strong need to maintain various transnational practices, the meanings they attach to these practices depend on motivations for return, gender and age. For former (male) labour migrants, transnational practices are essential for establishing post‐return belonging, whereas such practices are less important for their spouses. Those who returned as children generally feel uprooted, notwithstanding the transnational practices they maintain. The amount of agency migrants are able to exert in the return decision‐making process is a key factor in determining the extent to which returnees can create a post‐return transnational sense of home.     

Bitch,slut, skank,cunt: patterned resistance to women’s visibility in digital publics

Resistance to women’s public voice and visibility via street harassment and workplace sexual harassment have long constrained women’s use of and comfort in physical public spaces; this gender-based resistance now extends into digital arenas. Women face extreme hostility in the form of digital sexism in discussion rooms, comment sections, gaming communities, and on social media platforms. Reflecting on two years of in-depth interviews with women who have been on the receiving end of gender-based digital abuse (n?=?38), conversations with industry professionals working in content moderation and digital safety, the extant literature, and news stories about digital attacks against women, I offer a lens to think through the prominent patterns in digital sexism, showing (1) that aggressors draw upon three overlapping strategies – intimidating, shaming, and discrediting – to limit women’s impact in digital publics, (2) the way femininity and femaleness are used to undermine women’s contributions, and (3) men call attention to women’s physicality as a way to pull gender – and the male advantage that comes with it – to the fore in digital exchanges. Finally, I argue that when digital sexism succeeds in pressing women out of digital spaces, constrains the topics they address publicly, or limits the ways they address them, we must consider the democratic costs of gender-based harassment, in addition to the personal ones.     

‘Aprendemos A Convivir’: Conjugal Relations,Co‐parenting,and Family Life Among Ecuadorian Transnational Migrants in New York and The Ecuadorian Andes

The aim of this article is to examine conjugal relations, co‐parenting and family life among Ecuadorian transnational migrants in New York and the Azuayo‐ Cañari highlands of Ecuador. It counters two commonly‐held views of transmigration. Officials and academics often stress the negative impacts of male migration to the USA, arguing that it leads to spousal abandonment. In addition, studies of gender in transnational relationships generally concentrate on women's experiences and lack a more nuanced understanding of men's lives in migration. Based on interviews with both male migrants in New York and women in Ecuador, this research focuses instead on how intact couples work to redefine roles, relationships and family life; how they learn to live side‐by‐side (aprender a convivir). The article begins with an account of men's adjustment to single life in the city, which is then juxtaposed to women's experiences in the sending villages. The main section presents a narrative of one couple, revealing how they handle remittances, communication, child‐raising and their own relationship. Their experiences highlight the tensions and problems faced by young couples starting to form their own autonomous households in a setting increasingly different from that of previous generations. But, despite hardships, such couples often state that their relationship improved after migration.     

Navigating return: the gendered geographies of skilled return migration to Ghana

In this article, I extend the literature on return migration by exploring the gendered mechanisms of return for highly skilled Ghanaian migrants. Drawing on interviews with Ghanaian women and men who returned in their prime productive years, I examine their decision‐making, the strategies they implement and the challenges they negotiate in the process. While the decision to return was straightforward, the actual processes circumscribing it contained tensions and compromises that involved renegotiations of gender identities, roles and norms, which themselves intersected with class differences. The empirical analyses emphasize how skilled migrants capitalize on their class status, social networks and transnational activities as means not only to return but also, for some, to mitigate the impacts of separation for themselves and their families as they seek to accomplish specific goals.     

Sexual Harassment in Small‐Town New Zealand: A Qualitative Study of Three Contrasting Organizations

This research investigates women's experiences of sexual harassment in three different organizations in the same New Zealand town. Women working at the local meat‐processing plant, a retail store and a local bank were interviewed about their personal experiences of sexual harassment. The interviews revealed that sexual harassment took different forms and was interpreted and responded to differently in each organization. Women at the meatworks were often socially isolated from other women and had few effective strategies for combating the verbal and physical harassment collectively perpetrated by male employees. In contrast, women at the store had a range of collective coping strategies which enabled them to regard harassment from fellow‐workers and customers as an irritant rather than a serious threat. Women at the bank also had various collective coping strategies, but were more constrained by customer service norms in the organization. These findings are discussed in relation to three key themes; firstly, the influence of the local environment on organizational life; secondly, the effects of differing organizational structures and cultures on the expression and interpretation of sexual harassment and thirdly, the effectiveness of the various ‘communities of coping’ which women develop to combat sexual harassment in the workplace.     

In between leaving and being left behind: mediating the mobilities and immobilities of Indonesian non‐migrants

In this article, I consider how and why some non‐migrants partially inhabit migrant subjectivities. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Central Java, Indonesia, I describe the experiences of those who embarked on pre‐departure migration processes, but failed to leave the country. Men were often victims of fraud; women typically ran away from the confines of training centres. When redirected away from the border spaces of airports and recruitment centres, they typically identify themselves and are perceived by kin and neighbours as ‘former’ transnational migrants. I analyse how migration infrastructure – intersecting institutions, agents and technologies – produces such subjectivities in‐between conventional migrant and non‐migrant categories. These positions in between leaving and staying illuminate the infrastructural conditions that enable, constrain and mediate transnational mobilities. These cases of non‐departure show the expansive social and spatial effects of migration infrastructure beyond the facilitation of transnational movement. Such less considered (im)mobilities of non‐migrants point to the diverse ways in which migration institutions and agents mediate the circulation of persons between and within national borders.     

The State,Unauthorized Mexican Migration,and Vulnerability in the Workplace

For the last 20 years, migration scholars have generated a number of important empirical insights about the ways in which the state, through the enactment of immigration policies, creates workplace vulnerabilities such as discrimination, harassment, wage theft, workplace raids, and the threat of deportation. Recent studies of illegality also examine the role of the state but do so in a way that explores what legal status means and how it is experienced in everyday lives of migrants marked as “illegal” by the state. This article reviews recent research that shows that the state operates in a gray zone of enforcement that puts migrants in ambiguous social spaces and heightens their vulnerability at work. However, research also finds that migrants find ways to exert their agency in challenging work environments.