Rethinking Gender and Migration in Africa, Austria

<b>Keynote Speaker and Discussant</b>:<br> Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch: "Gender and Migration in Sub-Saharan Africa"<br> <br> <b>Panellists</b>:<br> Odile Goerg: "Women and urban migration: changing patterns, from primarly men to more diversified models"<br> <br> Marie Rodet: "Disrupting Masculinist Discourse on African Migration: The Study of Neglected Forms of Female Migration"<br> <br> Linda L. Mhando: "Reconstruction of Identity in Sudan: Contextualizing Local Responses to Global Narratives"<br> <br> <b>Catherine Coquery Vidrovitch</b> is Professor emeritus of modern African History at the University Paris-7-Denis-Diderot, and Visiting Professor at New York University, Institute of French Studies. She trained numerous French speaking African historians in Paris and in African universities. She has published many books, among which two were translated into English: Africa South of the Sahara, Endurance and Change, (University of California Press, 1987), and African Women, a Modern History, (Westview Press, 1998). She has edited more than twenty books on African studies and the third world and received the 1999 ASA (African Studies Association) Distinguished Africanist Award in Philadelphia.<br> <br> <b>Odile Goerg</b> (University of Paris 7) aims to question some gender biases concerning African women in colonial cities: Using a case study of a group of female and male migrants from Sierra Leone, she deconstructs the idea of a permanent imbalance of the sex ratio at the disadvantage of women in colonial Conakry (French Guinea). She also attempts to give a different view of the economical position of African women in colonial towns.<br> <br> <b>Lindah L. Mhando</b> (St. Cloud State University, MN) is specifically interested in exploring the complexities and contradictions of ways migratory experience might be gendered, or how female Sudanese immigrants' processes of up-rooting and re-rooting in Minnesota might differ from male immigrant' s. She uses verbal art and oral history to validate our deciphering knowledge and our understanding of these complex migratory experiences.<br> <br> <b>Marie Rodet</b> (University of Vienna) examines through specific case studies in French Sudan (now known as Mali) how the focalization of the androcentric colonial administration on male labour led the colonizers and later scholars to regard male labour migration as the only noteworthy form of migration in Africa. 'Labour migration' appears to be ultimately a masculinist concept since 'labour migration' is considered as the central/neutral/universal reference where the referent is actually a male one.<br>