Seminar on
Social Legitimacy, Symbolic Gender Politics and Global Migration Circuits:
Twenty-first Century Transitions in Kerala Nurse Migration

Date: 6 February 2009
Time: 3.30pm- 5pm
Location: Earth Lab, BLK AS2/02-03, Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS
Speaker: A/P Margaret Walton-Roberts, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
Chairperson: Dr Mika Toyota, Department of Sociology, NUS

• Jointly organized by FASS Migration Research Cluster, and the Departments of Geography and Sociology, FASS, NUS.

Kerala is an important site to explore female migration as it stands in contrast to India as a whole which has been perceived as a non-sending region when it comes to the tradition of female migration. While much of the focus on females and migration in Kerala has been linked to women
being 'left behind' by male migrants,  a growing body of literature has explored the migration of female nurses from Kerala. Beyond focusing on women’s experiences per se, this paper tackles the wider discourses associated with female migration from Kerala over the last 5 years or
so, and charts the tensions and paradoxes that exist between increased social legitimacy for skilled nurse migration on the one hand, and the symbolic gender and sexual politics linked to  female mobility on the other.


About the speaker:

Associate Professor Margaret Walton-Roberts is a human geographer with a focus on international migration. Her research has operated on two broad tracks; the first has been on Indian emigration and transnational migrant
networks, and the second has been on immigration to second and third tier cities in Canada. Currently she is an associate professor in the Geography and Environmental Studies Department and Director of WLU’s International Migration Research Centre.


Registration

Admission is free. Persons interested in attending the workshop should email their name, affiliation and email address to the following address: Ms Sharon Wok (fasswe@nus.edu.sg)