Abstract

The Cambridge Migration Society is pleased to present the Lent 2017 Graduate Migration Research Seminar Series.

The GMRSS offers PhD, MPhil, and Masters students currently engaged in research on migration an opportunity to present their work, get feedback and meet other graduate colleagues working on similar issues.

Presenters are from various fields, disciplines, and universities, and similarly, and we welcome attendees from across the University.

For details of presenters, please see below:

Title: MANUFACTURING DIFFERENCE : SWISS INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSES TO INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE Speaker: Faten Khazaei, visiting PhD student, Social Anthropology

Abstract: In the wake of the 1970s feminist movements in Europe and the United States, violence against women has been recognized as a public problem, and many countries have designed and implemented public policies to combat it. While this type of violence was originally understood to be intrinsically related to gender, more recent public debate in Switzerland regarding this issue has focused on migration.This thesis will investigate how cases of intimate partner violence (as one type of violence against women) are treated by the institutions in charge of combatting it. How does the way in which this type of violence is framed shape the actions of institutional agents in their daily practices? In what ways are these practices based on the types of categories assigned to the beneficiaries? In other words, what categories of difference do these institutions employ to adapt their responses in cases of intimate partner violence?

About Faten: Faten Khazaei is an Iranian PhD Student in social Sciences at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland.Her doctoral research is a multisite ethnography of State institutions in charge of the struggle against domestic violence in Switzerland. She is interested in understanding the processes of the reproduction of “us” and “them” dichotomy in the daily practices of social agents. She also conducted an ethnographic study on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva for her Master’s thesis to investigate the integration of a gender perspective in the discourses and practices of international officials. She is now a Visiting PhD student at the Department of Social Anthropology here in Cambridge.