405 - Regular Session. Transnational Social Movements

Session Submission Type: Paper Session 100min

Description

How can we conceptualize transnational activism at the current global juncture, at which national interests clash with regional and global concerns in the migration and refugee crisis in Europe? Illumining this urgent politico-historical question, this session asks how traveling diasporic migrants, global governance structures, and national governments construct political and cultural imaginaries of rights and subjectivities.
The panelists approach transnational activism with a focus on the diasporic women’s movement, the UN, and national representatives. Women’s experience, framing of gender equality, and cultural interpretation of religion are the specific sites where the panelists delve into the importance of institutional and non-institutional politics, culture, and activism in local, national, and global contentions.
In particular, the shifting diasporic geography of Kurdish women’s movement from Europe to Turkey is explored in terms of its constitutive effect on the transformation of political subjectivities. The UN’s interaction with gender equality actors, including women’s movement organizations and governments, is investigated to explain how distinct framings of gender equality and empowerment translate into action for women’s rights. Also, cultural models about religion and its relationship to women’s rights standards are examined as important discourses in the process of practicing human rights conventions by the UN and national representatives.

Sub Unit

• Transnational Social Movements

Session Organizer

• Hyun Ok Park, York University

Presider

• Hyun Ok Park, York University

Individual Presentations

• Europe at the Margins of Transnational Identities and Relations: Kurdish Women’s Political Mobilization Across Borders - Nisa Goksel, Northwestern University

• Contested Framings of Gender Equality: Action for Women’s Rights - Kellea Shay Miller, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Cultural Models of Religion, Feminism, and the Effort to Advance Women’s Rights within the United Nations - Shanna Corner, University of Notre Dame

Discussant

• Valentine M. Moghadam, Northeastern University