woman ironing clothes
woman ironing clothes

Details

The proposed presentation focuses on adolescent girls who navigate complex family relations in the houses of relatives to pursue different forms of education. Through its focus on so-called migrant girls, the study challenges Euro-centric ideas about family, mobility and belonging. The study is situated in the Casamance region of Senegal where mobility in childhood is the norm. The circumstances surrounding the move into relatives’ house vary tremendously and disrupt neat typologies, and yet the sentiment of being in a different position because they do not live with their mother or parents is recurrent in the girls’ narratives. Based on empirical material produced through photovoice and interviews between 2017 and 2019, the study analyses girls’ subversive tactics to circumvent relatives’ authority to define their future lives. In particular, we examine how girls curb demands on their labour, notions of transitional suffering, and adult choices of educational pathways through evoking support from their peer group. We argue that despite structural constraints girls defy class-based ideas of appropriate behaviour to pursue notions of adulthood that are most likely to give them some independence and social status without causing rupture with respectable feminine identities.

Speaker

Dorte Thorsen is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. Her research fields are centred around children/youth, gender, and mobilities. The main corpus of her work focuses on adolescent mobilities and migration, often challenging universal ideas about child labour and trafficking. Through the use of participatory and ethnographic methods she demonstrates the diversity in young people's experiences of work and mobility and their agency in choices surrounding work and training. Dorte has a disciplinary background in African Studies and Anthropology.

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Accessibility
If you require accommodation, please contact the event host as soon as possible.
Date and time
Oct 17, 2023
10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Format and location
In person, Virtual
Desmarais Building (DMS)
DMS 3105
Language
English
Bilingual question period
Audience
General public, Graduate students, Undergraduate students, Faculty and staff