Making Gender Matter in a Transnational World

• Published in: Journal of American ethnic history Vol. 37; no. 1; pp. 31 - 39
• Main Author: Reeder, Linda
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Champaign University of Illinois Press 01.10.2017
• Subjects: Analysis; Anthropologists; Change agents; Class politics; Cultural identity; Emigration and immigration; Ethnic groups; Ethnic identity; Ethnic Studies; Ethnicity; Female roles; Females; Feminism; Forum on Donna Gabaccia, Transnational Scholar; Gabaccia, Donna R; Gender; Gender identity; Gender roles; Historians; History; History instruction; Human migration; Husbands; Immigrants; Immigration; Interdisciplinary aspects; International borders; International migration; Jewish migration; Labor migration; Laws, regulations and rules; Love; Masculinity; Men; Migrants; Migration; Noncitizens; Personal experiences; Political migration; Race; Social classes; Social networks; Sociology; Transnationalism; Wives; Women; Womens studies; Working mothers; Works; United States
• ISSN: 0278-5927; 1936-4695
• DOI: 10.5406/jamerethnhist.37.1.0031

Second wave feminism, with its insistence on considering woman as historical subjects and agents of change in ways that challenged long-standing disciplinary conventions regarding periodization and historical significance, invigorated studies of migrant women. Throughout the 1970s, sociologists, historians, and anthropologists investigated how women--mothers, wives, and workers--migrated, detailing women's contribution in shaping ethnic identities and communities. The bulk of this work analyzed women's experiences through the conventional categories of race, ethnicity, and class. For the most part these studies lurked on the margins of their respective disciplines, seen as interesting additions, but not in and of themselves transformative. By the 1980s, however, the growing body of evidence that class politics were made not only in union halls and factory floors but also in the kitchen and family led to wider theoretical critiques of public and private, carving out space to rethink the meaning of both migration and the migrant. Here, Reeder discusses the women's roles in migrant communities.