*Note* This scheduling program was not designed by folks who do a lot with APA Style and unfortunately it defaults to listing authors in alphabetical order. We cannot fix this for this online schedule, but the author orders are posted in the order submitted in the printed program available via pdf here.
This symposium includes presentations representing chapters from an upcoming edited collection on women’s experiences of migration. Panelists explore the gendered personal and emotional costs of the dislocation of space in the contemporary global political/economic regime. Even though popular notions continue to perceive the immigrant as male, the presence of females is central to the process. And yet, most published work on immigration does not focus on the gendered processes that underlie the experience of migration. With very few exceptions, even when data about women and girls are presented, a gender analysis of the implications of these data tends to be absent. Through a combination of empirical research, personal narratives, and clinical insights about women immigrants and refugees, these presentations contribute an innovative and multicultural approach to the knowledge base on women’s experience of migration. The extant psychological literature about women who migrate tends to pathologize their experiences and/or emphasize the needs of clinical populations (e.g., studies of depression among immigrants). In other words, the focus tends to be on illness-based studies. By contrast, this panel provides other perspectives and healthy alternatives, including those of survival, resilience, and success. Presenters provide a gender analysis of women’s and girls’ experiences of migration, not simply examining women as subjects of scholarship, but exploring ways in which gender is an organizing structure of power relations. These presentations do not simply examine data about girls and/or women, but provide a feminist analysis in which gender is a central organizing axis of power, alongside other social structures such as age, class, race, ethnicity, nationality, and so on. Specific topics explored by these presenters include gender identity, acculturation, language, food, violence, intersectionality and the psychology of place and space.