Tanja Visic is going to present a working paper on '“Making a place to make it work”: “Motility” and Gendered Work Cultures'

Based on an ethnographic study on motility and gendered work cultures, the paper sheds light on Serbian female domestic workers who commute (in the three months visa regime) between Germany and Serbia in order to perform care and domestic in the private households. The paper brings together the specific characteristics of irregular work and regular circular migration highlighting the specific position of Serbian care workers in German informal care market and necessity of better qualitative understanding of multiplicity of dimensions of social reality that shape migrant worker’s experiences and lives apart from gender – age, nationality, religion, different social and educational background and geopolitical location. Using the concept of “motility” – ability to move, paper explores individuals' capacities and skills that either directly or indirectly influence physical mobility, knowledge or the recognition for the need of knowledge on how to cross border and how to stay mobile which redirects our attention to the aspirations and lives of women who, despite myriad impediments, move between German cities and their home communities. The analysis of in-depth interviews shows that strategies these women use to be able to move for work (for example, building a socil networks, gaining a new skills, acquiring a knowledge about movement regulations, etc.) are a basis for understanding of women’s decisions and opportunities to move, as these constitute their everyday experiences and practices which are not marked only by risks but also by personal transformations.

Tanja Visic is presenting a working paper on 'Ethnography of living arrangements, informal work and the transnational care: Experiences of domestic workers from the former Yugoslavia in Germany'

The main objective of the doctoral research project is to examine the phenomenon of care and domestic work from a perspective that combines a macro-level and micro-level using ethnographic approach based on case studies, thick descriptions and perspectives from the actor’s points of view. The text you are reading is doctoral dissertation description which is divided into five parts. The first part introduces the subject of research, main research questions and information about fieldwork that has been conducted so far. The next two sections outline main theoretical debates around domestic and care work within feminist theorization of care work, migration and globalization studies. In the fourth and fifth section I contextualize previously mentioned debates within Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav female labour migration indicating the research gaps in the field and potential contributions of my research project. Next two parts will inform you about research questions, levels of analysis, approach to the research and concepts which will be applied in the study. In the last part I will present multiple practices of data collection known as ethnography I use in the research, and shortly introduce the methodology, namely the challenges of feminist ethnography while focusing on production of knowledge about women lives in specific socio-cultural contexts.