Feminism and the Grass Roots: Women and Environmentalism in Nova Scotia, 1980–1983*

L'exemple de l'engagement des femmes dans le mouvement contre l'extraction de l'uranium en Nouvelle-Écosse au milieu des années quatre-vingt fait exception dans les études récentes sur l'appui des femmes dans l'activisme environnemental. Le taux de participation des femmes était éléve dans ce mouvement, comparativement à la collaboration apportée a d'autres formes d'action politique. Les hypothèses couramment invoquées pour expliquer cet engagement - disponibilité structurelle et préoccupations des femmes à l'égard des dangers immédiats et locaux qui menacent la santé et le bien être des enfants—ne s'appliquent pas vraiment ici. Les femmes de Nouvelle-Écosse ont ete plûtot recrutées grâce au réseau que constituent les associations féminines a l'échelle de la province (groupes environnementaux, pacifistes et feministes en particulier). The pattern of women's involvement in the anti-uranium mining movement in Nova Scotia in the early 1980s is an exception to what has been reported in the recent literature on women's involvement in environmental activism. The rate of women's participation was high in this, relative to other forms of political action. But hypotheses commonly used to explain this involvement—“structural availability” and gendered concerns for immediate and local threats to the health and well-being of children—do not fit the case well. Nova Scotia women were more likely to be drawn in through network links to province-wide women's organizations (in particular, environmental, peace and feminist organizations).     

Forced transnationalism: transnational coping strategies and gendered stigma among Jamaican deportees

Once forcibly returned to their countries of citizenship, how and why do deportees engage in transnational relationships? Through analyses of 37 interviews with Jamaican deportees, I approach the question of why deportees engage in transnational practices and reveal that deportees use transnational ties as coping strategies to deal with financial and emotional hardship. This reliance on transnational ties, however, has two consequences: (1) male deportees who rely on transnational strategies to survive face a gendered stigma because they must relinquish the provider role and become dependants; and (2) the transnational coping strategies serve as a reminder of the shame, isolation and alienation that deportees experience because of their deportation. This consideration of the consequences of transnational relationships sheds light on why some migrants are transnational and others are not.