Hi,
I am seeking participants on the proposed panel "Migration, Technology, Gendered Lens: Women Migrants and Technology in South Asia"
This panel examines the intricate interplay between migration, technology, and gender through the specific lens of South Asia-a region characterized by complex migration patterns, entrenched gender hierarchies, and rapidly evolving digital infrastructures. From internal displacement and labor migration to cross-border movements shaped by conflict, climate change, and economic precarity, South Asian women experience migration in deeply gendered and uneven ways. Digital technologies-from mobile phones and biometric systems to social media platforms-are increasingly mediating these experiences, influencing how women migrants communicate, organize, work, and resist.
As digitalization transforms state governance and civil society across the region, women migrants in South Asia occupy a precarious position: often targeted by surveillance regimes and exploitative labor structures, yet also innovatively using technology to build transnational solidarities and advocate for their rights. This panel foregrounds the diverse and often underrepresented experiences of women migrants from South Asia-whether from Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, India, or Pakistan-whose voices are shaped and amplified (or silenced) through their interactions with digital technologies.
Engaging with South Asia not merely as a geographic location but as a socio-political formation with colonial legacies, nation-state tensions, and rich histories of resistance, this panel brings together interdisciplinary scholarship to interrogate how gendered migration in the region is being reconfigured through technology. The panel highlights both the structural challenges and the emancipatory possibilities that digital tools offer for women migrants and their communities
Please send me an email with your concept note at
afza2240@mylaurier.ca
Best
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Farah Afzal
Balsillie School of International Affairs,
Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada
afza2240@mylaurier.ca------------------------------