Gender, Mobile Lifestyles and Places
Invitation to international workshop in TROMSØ, October 14th, 15th and 16th 2014
Call for papers
We hereby invite you to an international workshop organized by KVINNFORSK’s NCRproject: Mobile Lifestyles: Perspectives on Work Mobilities and Gender in the High North and
we hope that all the participants will make a presentation.
The aim of the workshop is to present and discuss approaches, methods and research
findings that increase our knowledge of the practices and representations of women’s and
men’s diverse work mobilities, both past and present, in the High North – an area that
encompasses countries along the North Atlantic and North Pacific. Specifically, we are
looking for papers that problematise relationships between gender, work mobilities,
lifestyles and place in multiple sectors from service through to transportation and
communications, retail and resource extraction and manufacturing in Arctic and subarctic
contexts. This project is built upon the assumption that the gendered drivers and
consequences of work and work mobilities are variously impacted by places and the
connections between them, as well as by local, regional and larger-scale labour markets in
different sectors and contexts, and by contemporary organizations of men’s and women’s
work, households, and home and host communities. However, we are well aware of the need
to study such processes using an intersectional perspective including attention to ethnicity,
age and class in addition to gender
The importance of a gendered lens
We define gender broadly, in that it is dynamic and encompassing of a spectrum of
orientation and identity. We know that gender informs all aspects of our lives, including the
choices we make, the work that we do, our responsibilities and expectations, and especially
our patterns and choices, or lack thereof, of mobility. Furthermore, we know that gender
intersects with many factors; including for example age, class and place. . Our goals in this
project and this workshop specifically are to develop new perspectives about mobile
lifestyles, as well as about the structures and cultures of workplaces, households and
communities, and the relationships between them. We believe that better insight into such
processes and relations will contribute to new perspectives and understandings of the patterns
of gendered mobilities, work and local life in the study areas including awareness of both the
drivers of mobilities, their consequences, and the potential policy implications of these
mobilities.
Through the workshop, we aim to explore :
a)
the ways in which gendered work-relatedmobile practices) relate to place, to
industrial sectors, to gender and to institutions such as households, unions, business and
community associations, etc).
“The place” can be a workplace, community, town or city where the mobile men or women
are employed or the place where they live. This discussion will inform the development of
future research on if and how diversely situated mobile workers, , employers and community
and neighborhood leaders create interconnections and relationships between places.
b)
how these mobile practices are represented in the media, official papers, and
areas of cultural expression within the local, regional and national contexts in question.
Responses to this question will give us insight into such issues as when, and in what situations
the different forms of gendered work mobilities are treated as positive, negative or
challenging to the current order of things including the ways in which policies intersect with
such mobilities and with what consequences. What aspects of mobility are foregrounded in
these accounts and what are backgrounded or largely excluded from public discussion and
policy formation? In short, under what circumstances and how are the different forms of
mobility and their representations problematized in general and from a gender perspective?
Invited participants will be expected to deliver a presentation (paper) focused broadly on one
or both of the two questions raised above. We are interested in papers that emphasize
empirical, theoretical and methodological questions. Papers based on research that is in its
early stages and research that is completed or close to completion are welcome. In order to
broaden our scope and cover a more extensive area of the High North our collaborating
partners from Canada, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands who have projects that focus on many of
the same questions and themes, are especially invited to present their analyses and findings.
A proposal for the paper should be sent to Siri Gerrard (siri.gerrard@uit.no) by July 1.
This also includes the Norwegian project-participants and will serve as the basis for
registration for the workshop.
The final program will be distributed to the participants by the 15th of September.
Participation at the workshop is free, but the participants must pay their own travel and
stay.