Theorizing Gender Regimes from Below Through Transnational Conjugality
Seminário | 27 novembro 2024

O próximo Seminário Diversidade Cultural em Famílias Contemporâneas decorre no dia 27 de novembro, a partir das 14h30, com o tema "Theorizing Gender Regimes from Below Through Transnational Conjugality". 

O evento decorre online, via ZOOM.

 

ORADORA
Laure Sizaire
Laboratory of Anthropology Contemporary Worlds (LAMC), Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

 

COMENTÁRIO
Sónia Ferreira
CRIA - Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia - NOVA FCSH

 

LINK ZOOM
https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/95168935389?pwd=YtDbVajjPbAUeBPVTqpa2nckLKNgab.1

 


 

ABSTRACT
Conjugal choices are no longer confined to small geographic areas. Intimate and romantic encounters now occur on a global scale, extending matrimonial recruitment beyond borders, particularly between Western and non-Western regions. However, this distribution is not random; it is shaped by gendered and racialized logics, as evidenced by research on transnational intimacies and statistics on cross-border marriages. Drawing on my previous research on French-Post-Soviet intimacies and ongoing investigations into privileged mobility and transnational conjugality in West Africa and South-East Asia, I argue that adopting a cognitive perspective allows us to explore power relations from the bottom up. By examining how individuals themselves engage in categorization, we can reveal the existence of gender regimes – specific rules and norms each nation develops to organize gender relations. These regimes are contextual, situated, and historically grounded. They evolve constantly, albeit slowly, and are inherently linked to other power structures. Assuming that gender, class, and race are produced through interactions and particular frames, they can be challenged at any time, especially in the context of migration. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates that experiencing transnational conjugality involves navigating between different gender regimes and engages people in the work of comparing the norms they encountered in their home countries and those they found in their current country of residence. These cognitive operations—observing, describing, analyzing, and comparing practices, behaviors, and norms—highlight the existence of historically and geographically situated gender regimes, where conceptions of masculinity and femininity vary and are deeply interwoven with other power relations.

 

Laure Sizaire is an anthropologist whose research focuses on intimacy and conjugality, migration and mobility, gender and sexuality. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in post-Soviet spaces (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine) and France, where she explored the gendered dimensions of transnational relationships through intimate connections, marriages and international matchmaking. This initial research has been done at the University of Lyon. She then joined the Laboratory of Anthropology Contemporary Worlds (LAMC) at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), where she contributed to the AspirE project, which examines East and Southeast Asian aspirations to migrate to Europe. At LAMC, she became involved in BelMix, a research network on intimacies and migration, and successfully applied for the Marie Sklodowska-Curie European Postdoctoral Fellowship. Currently, her work extends to West Africa (Mauritania) and Southeast Asia (Malaysia), where she investigates North-South mobility through the lens of transnational conjugality. Her research aims to shed light on the global transformation of intimacy and the reconfiguration of power relations, approached from an intimate, intersectional, and gender perspective. 

 

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