[CFP] Female Migrant Workers and the Global Flow of Labor: The Ethical and Political Dimensions

An interesting CFP.

Female Migrant Workers and the Global Flow of Labor:
The Ethical and Political Dimensions

Zahra Meghani and Lisa Eckenwiler (editors)

Every year, millions of women from poorer countries cross borders to seek work in richer nations. While some of them have work authorization, many do not. However, whether they are documented or undocumented, a significant number (especially those who do not have work authorization) are systematically exploited, dominated, marginalized, objectified, and subjected to violence. The countries from which they migrate may also suffer from their absence in a variety of ways.

The essays comprising this volume will offer nuanced ethical and political philosophical analyses of the female global labor flow. The articles will draw on the data collected by sociologists, geographers, economists, and political scientists about the unjust treatment of female migrant workers around the globe including the US, the European Union nations, and Arab states. The essays in our collection will adopt a particularist methodology in the sense that they will recognize that the experience of female migrant workers is not homogeneous. The specific legal, political, and social institutions, norms, and practices of different nations determine the treatment that is meted out to female foreign migrant workers within their borders. Depending on their race, ethnicity, age, nationality, educational attainment, and immigration status, some female laborers from the global South may be subject to worse and greater injustices than others.

Feminist scholars from a variety of discipline, including sociology, geography, political science, and economics, have tracked carefully and in much detail empirical data about the injustices suffered by millions of female migrant workers. Our collection will advance the work done by them by focusing in more detail on the ethical and political dimensions of the global female flow of labor.

We invite original papers that will address the ethical and political dimensions of the treatment meted out to non-citizen female workers (especially those who are poor and undocumented) by taking a particularist approach. The papers should be characterized by sound theoretical analyses and critiques that are informed by the relevant empirical data and they should focus on particular nations.

The deadline for submitting a 500 word abstract is 28th February 2011. A list of references should be submitted along with the abstract. Abstracts should be sent to Zahra Meghani (meghaniz AT mail.uri.edu) and Lisa Eckenwiler (leckenwi AT gmu.edu). Completed versions of the papers selected for inclusion in the collection should be submitted by 30th June 2011.