Announcement: CA23149-Conference “Historicizing the Migration/Antigender Nexus”, September 24-25, 2026, Amiens

We are pleased to present below the program for the conference “Historicizing the Migration/Antigender Nexus,” which will take place in Amiens on September 24–25, 2026.

This workshop explores the historical links between migration and anti-gender politics. It examines how concerns about migration, population change, urban growth, and social transformation have often been connected to fears about changing gender roles. Women's autonomy, sexuality, familiy life, and reproduction. Rather than focusing only on contemporary debates, the workshop adopts a long-term historical perspective to investigate how migration has repeatedly been portrayed as a challenge to social stability, traditional family structures, and established gender norms. By bringing together scholars from different disciplines, the workshop aims to deepen our understanding of the historical roots of current migration and gender backlashes and to explore how these issues have evolved across different periods and contexts.

Convenors: Heidi Hein-Kircher (Martin-Opitz-Library, Herne, Germany) and Maria Ruiz (UPJV)

24 September 2026

8:30-9:00 am: Welcome Coffee

9:00-9:30 am: Introduction and Welcome Speeches - Heidi Hein-Kircher and Marie Ruiz

9:30-11:00 am: Keynote: Saskia Bonjour (University of Amsterdam)

Chair: Heidi Hein-Kircher

The Gendered Double FAce of Racism: Intimate Politics of Modernity and Traditions in Claims of White and Western Superiority

11:00-11:30 am: Coffee Break

11:30 am-1:00 pm: Panel 1 - Women on the Move: Internal Migration, Labour and Moral Regulation

Chair: Rose Sikkink (EHESS)

1. Alba Osman Kreka (University of "Fan S. Noli"): Socialist Emanicipation and Moral Surveillance: Women's Mobility in Communist Albania
2. Özgenur Reyhan Güler (Istinye University): "The Dancer Coming to the City": Internal Migration, Female Labour, and Moral Panic Discourses in Turkey (1950-1980)
3. Irene Rabinovich (Holon Institute of Technology): Dangerous Women on the Move: Female Mobility, Social Panic, and the Pathologization of Jewish Women from the Shtetl to the Asylum

1:00-2:00 pm: Lunch

2:00-3:30 pm: Panel 2 - Empire, Race and Demographic Governance

Chair: Geraldine Vaughan (Lille University)

1. Pravat Ranjan Sethi (Central University of Himachal Pradesh): Empire, Mobility, and Moral Panic: Gender Backlash andthe Politics of Migration in Colonial India
2. Emilie de Witte (University Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3): "Populate or Perish": Demographic Anxiety, British Migration and the Limits of White Australia, 1839-1957
3. Maria Elena Indelicato (University of Coimbra): Migration Pathologies: Black Mobility, Family Reform, and the Gendered Politics of Assimilation in Interwar America

3:30-4:00 pm: Coffee Break

4:00-5:30 pm: Panel 3 - Reproduction, Sexuality and the Governance of Mobility

Chair: Marie Ruiz (UPJV)

1. Öznur Korukcu (Akdeniz University): From Clinic to Nation: Maternal Healthcare, Demographic Anxiety and the Hitorical Formation of the Migration-Anti-Gender-Nexus
2. Magdalene Klassen (Johns Hopkins University): Jewish Anti-Trafficking Activism, Migration and Gender Politics in the Early Twentieth Century
3. Anna Eroshenko (Quarteera Germany): Sexualising Post-Soviet Mobility: Central Asian Transgender Women, Sex Work, and the Gendered Policing of Migration in Russia after 1991

7:00 pm: Conference Dinner

25 September 2026

8:30 am: Welcome Coffee

8:45-10:15 am: Keynote: Caroline Ibos (University Paris 8)

Chair: Marie Ruiz (UPJV)

10:15 am-12:00 pm: Field Trip

12:00-1:30 pm: Lunch

1:30-3:00 pm: Panel 4 - Displacement, Nationalism and Contemporary Anti-Gender Politics

Chairs: Geraldine Vaughan (Lille University) and Rose Sikkink (EHESS)

1. Nino Gumorashvili: From Displacement to Gender Backlash: Historicizing the Migration-Anti-Gender Nexus in the Aftermath of the Georgian-Abkhaz Conflict
2. Lídia Minich: The Double Periphery of Refugee Women: Anti-Gender Politics and Asylum Governance in Hungary
3. Maria Diacon: The Feminization of Migration in the Republic of Moldova: Historiographical Developments

3:00-3:30 pm: Coffee Break

3:30-5:00 pm: Roundtable

Chairs: Heidi Hein-Kircher and Marie Ruiz

1. Luca Dudits (Ilga-Europe)
2. Mathilde Rogel (EHESS, Paris)
3. Nurhidayah Hassan (New Women Connectors)
4. Picum (Video)

5:00-5:30 pm: Concluding Remarks: Heidi Hein-Kircher and Marie Ruiz

A pdf-version of the programm can be found here, the conference poster is available here.