Paper short abstract:

This person-centered ethnography critically interrogates the reproductive healthcare encounter as a site at which hegemonic discourses intersect to reshape gendered bodies and subjectivities and reconfigure Syrian refugees as proper sexual citizens of the nation-state.

Paper long abstract:

Since the colonial period, the norms distinguishing socially desirable from deviant reproduction have been shaped by the hierarchical ideologies of racial inferiority that justified EuroAmerican imperialism Racialized, gendered subjects are produced through morally-laden discourses surrounding the responsible reproductive subject. Migrant bodies, in particular, are subject to especially stringent forms of “reproductive governance,” through which they may tenuously acquire the status of responsible sexual citizens or, conversely, be constructed as “anti-citizens,” whose deviant sexual and/or reproductive practices threaten the wellbeing of the nation-state. Drawing upon 24 months of fieldwork with Syrian refugees, this paper critically interrogates the reproductive healthcare encounter as a site at which hegemonic discourses intersect to reshape gendered bodies and subjectivities and reconfigure refugees as proper sexual citizens of the nation-state. I unite the experience-near perspective of comparative ethnography with rigorous feminist analyses16 of biopower and the nation-state to contrast the varied practices and forms of reproductive governance present at two very different sites—Amman, Jordan and San Diego, California. By foregrounding bodily experience as described by my interlocutors during person-centered interviews, the article considers how reproductive subjectivities and desires are reshaped under such conditions.

Paper short abstract:

Our person-centered ethnography asks how pervasive structural racism shapes the experience and subjectivity of Black mothers at high risk of infant death. Centering their lived experience is a crucial project of a decolonized, antiracist psychological anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

In Cleveland, Ohio babies born to Black mothers die at three times the rate as babies born to White mothers in their first year of life. Structural racism from myriad angles, breadths, and depths gives us the “why;” our person-centered ethnography asks how pervasive structural racism shapes the experience and subjectivity of Black pregnant women as they at once embody their baby and the (socially imposed) responsibility for its survival. We interviewed 17 women at their homes up to 6 times each over a 9-month period, spanning at least one trimester of their pregnancy and into their baby’s first year. The women’s narratives paint complex, fluid perspectives on what motherhood means and mothering entails, what they expect of themselves, their partners, and their communities, how Blackness and racism shape their lives and children’s futures, and how they see Cleveland as a constraint and companion in their journey. Black motherhood has long been a flashpoint for White supremacy with fervent hatred in the form of stereotypes, brutality, and desire to control. With this dark legacy of negativity and pathology, extreme care must be taken to center the lived experience of Black mothers, whose subjectivities are undoubtably shaped by structural racism, but demonstrably not reducible to it. In this effort, this paper brings together psychological anthropologists who locate lived experience at the intersection of subjectivity and structure (notably Jenkins and Csordas 2020) with the work of Black feminist anthropologists who center the experience and subjectivity of Black mothers (notably Dána-Ain Davis 2019).

Paper short abstract:

While general discourses may portray refugees as a homogeneous mass of miserable people, this paper tries to draw, in contrast, the multiplicity of their experiences surviving trauma in exile. Based on a non-trauma centered ethnographic study, it tracks the life-desire along with the suffering.

Paper long abstract:

Almost by definition (UN, 1951) to be a refugee is to be someone who has suffered from persecution and arguably experienced trauma. Refugee populations are thus often researched through a damage-centered lens, and “portrayed as broken” (Tuck, 2009).

Through an ethnographic study conducted in a trauma-therapy center for refugees in Stockholm, and thus a damage-defined space, this paper looks at experiences of surviving trauma and going through therapy, through multifaceted lenses. In fact, while the people I met, were, certainly, victims of violence, oppression, and inequalities_not only in their home-countries but also in their host society_ and their stories were a lot about that, they were also about resistance, desire, hopes, and dreams. One of the characteristics of these stories was their future-centeredness, which is far from being a story of mere trauma, fatal damage and misery, but was rather echoing with Gerald Vizenor’s concept of survivance and moving beyond the survival (1994).

This paper focuses on the complexities and multiplicities of these experiences_ the experiences of trauma and exile_, resisting over-simplifications and the binaries of pathology and recovery, of suffering and wellness, of the fortunate and the vulnerable. It tries to acknowledge the nuances, and how conflicting experiences and feelings co-exist, interact and are lived. It tracks the life-desire, while trying not to minimize the accounts of suffering, in a pursuit of what anthropology aims to (or should): bringing voices in their complexity rather than being an alternative (and thus modified) voice.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the lived experiences of two qualified migrant women in Switzerland who face the predicaments of mobility. I look at qualified migrants’ embodied, professional and existential immobilities, and their aspirations in the face of uncertain work life on the move.

Paper long abstract:

In a world perceived as being constantly on the move, ‘mobile’ individuals become either subject of “praise or condemnation, desire, suppression or fear” (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013). Regimes of mobility, while demanding to reconsider spatial and temporal boundaries and to challenge work and life possibilities, dictate who can move, when, how, and where. Those unable to conform to the disruptions, rhythms and velocities of mobility may feel excluded, immobile and trapped into altered categories. This paper explores the lived experiences of two migrant women in Switzerland - a refugee and the partner of a diplomat - who face the multiple predicaments of mobility. I look at the rupturing event of migration for qualified workers, the embodied, professional, existential immobilities, and aspirations in the face of uncertain and unstable work life on the move. Qualified migrants’ aspirations and views about the future may be in tension with the work opportunities and pace offered by institutions, which may immobilize people by putting them in a limbo situation where continuing or planning a career becomes difficult. However, immobility also becomes a space for imaginative and aspirational moves, which assist in orienting toward the world and in engaging the future in spite of uncertainty. Shedding light on the disruptions, immobilities and lived experiences of qualified migration can challenge categorical boundaries between ‘vulnerable/precarious’ and ‘privileged’ migrants, and support in exploring the complexities, inequalities, and (im)possibilities of mobility.

Paper short abstract:

Dance research has charted various routes by which discursive formations channel unequal power relations of gender, race, and class into aesthetic performance. Through a phenomenological “desire-centered” paradigm, this research traces ways subjects “dance” into being complex personhoods.

Paper long abstract:

Critical Dance research has charted various routes by which discursive formations channel unequal power relations of gender, race, and class into aesthetic performance. In many ethnographic studies, researchers investigate how dancers navigate through coercive scripts, such as those imposed by a state agency or under economic pressures of the touristic gaze. In other ethnographies, the focus is on the performed practice of inequality and the ways in which dancers “play the game” of enacting social scripts of identity. Yet, both approaches often use a “damage-centered” paradigm that situates the underlying ideologies of subject formation through dance as problems to be solved. By refocusing on dance through a phenomenological “desire-centered” (Tuck 2009) paradigm, dance research can trace how subjects negotiate complex social scripts of personhood, as brought into being through dance performance.

Whether staged or social, the discourse of desire shapes dance enactment. This discourse is fluid, and it flows between all the participants: the choreographing subject, the dancing subject, and the perceiving subject. Thus, an identity construct, such as “latinidad,” crosses through various streams of desire, mixing together a “complex personhood” (Gordon 1997) infused with social sediments of diverse densities. A phenomenological “desire-centered” approach comprehends dance in this experience of (in)soluble or (im)miscible components that embody the eddies and flows of social and personal desire.