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Center for Gender Studies, European Humanities University
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Interdisciplinary Conference
The Promise of (Un)Happiness? Gender, Labour, and Migration
Conference dates: September 17-18, 2024
The conference focuses on different aspects of labour in the context of women’s migration (current and from a historical perspective and caused by various reasons) in Central and Eastern European countries (post-socialist countries). However, perspectives from other regions are also welcome.
The Promise of (Un)Happiness?
The title of our conference refers to the inspirational reflections of Sara Ahmed on happiness as an existential issue (“a problem”) for those who find themselves in the position of a displaced person. She ponders on a ‘melancholic migrant’ who, under new circumstances, while experiencing incongruence, loss and dispossession, considers happiness to be the key factor of her/his adaptation to a new environment. Ahmed relates happiness with a modality of good citizenship, as for her, “to see happily” means, first of all, not to face violence, asymmetry, or compulsion.
Such an approach prompts further reflection on the aspects that are often neglected or overlooked, namely, the interrelation between women’s migration and labour, which may, under certain conditions, become a locus of self-fulfilment and confidence or turn into a trap of alienation and, consequently, the reason for deprivation and unhappiness. It is worth noting that some aspects of migration (transition, transformation, translation, adaptation, change, etc.) are gender-neutral regarding their impact on professional identity and individual career opportunities.
However, women often find themselves in the most vulnerable position, as their needs and experiences require particular research.
Dialectical lens
Viewing the issue of (un)happiness in women’s migration and exile through a dialectical lens, we see that the negative effects of migration, regardless of its prerequisites, can be laden with melancholy and depression, exacerbated by a sense of vulnerability or a state of precariousness and insecurity. Yet, these conditions and feelings can also be intertwined with new opportunities, the vision of alternatives, and the anticipation of a different future.
This conference continues a series of events devoted to different aspects of labour at the intersection of women and technology (as part of the long-term project “Women In Tech”). Therefore, one of the conference’s focuses is women’s IT sphere and the transnationalisation of its labour market in the context of migration.
Conference program
17 September 2024
9:40
Registration
10:00
Opening
10:15
Keynote
Olga Sasunkevich (University of Gothenburg)
Affective Geopolitics of Migration in Times of Military Conflicts: Towards a New Feminist Agenda in Migration Research
In my presentation, I draw on the feminist theory of affect to offer a new theoretical and methodological perspective on migration during military conflicts. Russia’s war in Ukraine and the unprecedented level of forced displacement caused by Russia’s invasion exacerbated already existing affective polarisation in European societies where the anti-migrant sentiment has increasingly gained its momentum since the mid-2010s. This presentation asks what the affect-laden context of the military conflict implies for research on migration and how affect frames the relations of forcibly displaced people with host states, host societies and other migrants.
11:30
break
11:45
Panel “Challenges for Professional Identity. New States of Labour”
Moderator: Almira Ousmanova
Lidiya Lisovska and Kateryna Protsak (Lviv Polytechnic National University)
The Impact of Migration on Women's Professional Identity, Career and Working Conditions: The Case of Internally Displaced Persons in Ukraine
Dovilė Žemaitaitytė (Vilnius University)
Navigating Displacement: The Experiences of Syrian Women in Southeast Turkey Post-Earthquake
Anna Alekseeva (University of Modern Knowledge, Kyiv) online
Nicole Kronberger (Johannes Kepler University, Linz)
Subjective Well-Being of Migrants in the Context of Professional Identity Transformations
13:00
break
14:15
Panel “Affective Discourse of Displacement. Emotions, Care and Infrastructure”
Moderator: Tania Arcimovich
Yana Sanko (University of Lund)
“You need to monitor them a little bit”. The ambivalence of psychologising the refugee experiences.
Oksana Shmulyar Gréen (University of Gothenburg) online
Svitlana Odynets (Northumbia University, University of Gothenburg)
Handling Uncertainty of Present and Future: Ukrainian Transnational Families in Sweden and Romania Strategizing Their Lives
Viktoryia Kulyk (Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic)
Levelling the Gender Imbalance in IT Enterprises in Ukraine: Managerial Aspects
Antonina Stebur (European Humanities University)
When Attitudes Becomes Infrastructure
16:00
break
16:15
Presentation and Round Table
Creating Spaces of Solidarity: Gender Perspectives on Migration and Community Engagement
Moderator: Antonina Stebur
In this round table, we bring together experts working at the intersection of activism and art, with both practices deeply rooted in the issues of migration and displacement. Through firsthand accounts from those on the ground, we will explore migration from a gender perspective and discuss how art can serve as a vital tool in highlighting the challenges faced by refugees, promoting the inclusion of marginalized groups, and aiding in their adaptation.
Marina Naprushkina (Neue Nachbarschaft/Moabit, Berlin)
What does it feel like to build a community?
The artist Marina Naprushkina will introduce the initiative Neue Nachbarschaft/Moabit. It is a migrant-based association that was born out of a need for self-organisation in 2013, long before the so-called 'refugee crisis' began to dominate public discourse. Here, the focus is on reciprocity, not the subordination of one side to the other. Getting to know one another, exchanging knowledge, experiences, and ideas in personal encounters, working together and using artistic methods and skills, meeting in the neighbourhood on a regular basis—all this is the way to empower oneself, resist discrimination and marginalisation, and formulate an agenda with the help of artistic knowledge.
Round Table participants: Maria (Maro) Beburia (Ocalenie Foundatio), Marina Naprushkina (Neue Nachbarschaft/Moabit), Volha Aniska (The Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute)
18 September 2024
10:00
Keynote
Danielle Drozdzewski (Stockholm University)
On the move: (Re)inventing, (re)making, (re)working
What does it mean to be (a woman) on the move? What does it look and feel like to have moved – either for family, love, work, or a combination of these, or, to have been forced to move because of conflict, violence, persecution? How are the discussions that surround answering these questions gendered, generational and expectant of change?
These questions, and like much scholarship on identities and migration, the responses are partial, in-process and contingent on context and positionality. However, they do converge toward the theme of promise; the promise of what migration may bring and how such expectation is sometimes juxtaposed with the pragmatic outcomes post-migration too. These outcomes necessitate reinvention, remaking and reworking, processes that are never final and always felt.
In following this trajectory, I draw from feminist geopolitics that I situate within my own migration and migrant heritage. As a woman who has moved, I follow my great-grandmothers' and grandmothers’ migrant trajectories to explore the experiential, the embodied, and the sometimes (un)happy luggage we carry with promise as we move.
11:30
break
11:45
Panel “‘I am a refugee’. Researching on yourself”
Moderator: Andrei Vazianau
Valeriia Vershynina (Stabilization Support Services, Ukraine)
Empowering Displaced Women: The Role of IDP Councils in Local Democracy and Community Support in Ukraine
Margarita Korzoun (independent research, Belarus) online
No hope: Single mothers migrants as a new precariat.
Autoethnography case – Batumi, Georgia.
Aml Samer (Better Future, Tbilisi)
Challenges and Invisible Aspects of Women’s Migration in Wars and Humanitarian Crises
Olena Solodovnikova (journalist, documentary filmmaker / Ukraine)
Challenges of women’s migration in the conditions of wars, humanitarian crises and political turbulences
13:30
break
14:45
Panel “Immaterial Labour: Displaced Female Scholars’ Experience”
Moderator: Olga Sasunkevich
Olena Ostapchuk (NGO Parity, Zhytomyr)
Forced Migration Through the Lens of Ukrainian Women's Experience
Almira Ousmanova (European Humanities University)
Dis/placement, dis/location, dis/engagement? Feminist reflections on the production of knowledge in exile
Nadiya Kiss (Justus Liebig University)
Ukrainian Academics in Germany: Displaced People’s Agency and Diaspora Knowledge Networks
Tania Arcimovich (Erfurt University)
Notes on Unsuccess and Failure as the Critical Discourse. Stories of Female Migrant Scholars from Belarus
Closing the conference
Conference Organizing Committee
Tania Arcimovich
Erfurt University, Germany
Almira Ousmanova
European Humanities University, Lithuania
Olga Sasunkevich
University of Gothenburg
Antonina Stebur
Women in Tech program, EHU