New Scholars in Global Gender and Sexuality Studies

Name: Gabriella Nassif

Department and Degree Program: Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies

Research Topic Title: Laboring Margins: Migrant Domestic Work in Beirut, Lebanon

About Gabriella’s Research: Feminist research on migrant domestic workers over the past two decades has produced a number of important insights, most notably the global care chain analytical framework. However, this framework is underpinned by a number of problematic assumptions that marginalize migrant domestic workers in middle-income, postcolonial countries in the global South. My dissertation, entitled “Laboring Margins: Migrant Domestic Work in Beirut, Lebanon,” argues that the complex realities of migrant domestic workers in middle-income, postcolonial countries like Lebanon can expand feminist analyses of migrant domestic work. Specifically, I show that migrant domestic workers are not only domestic workers. Contrary to what the term implies, migrant “domestic” workers in Beirut equally work outside of the domestic sphere, where they contribute to the broader work of social reproduction, the variety of processes involved in the maintenance of human life over time, in Lebanon. This distinction has two important implications. First, it highlights the contributions of migrant domestic workers to Lebanese society as a whole. Second, it constructs migrant domestic workers in relation to the broader crisis of social reproduction, which is the continued underdevelopment and underfunding of social institutions and care work under capitalism. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted among migrant domestic workers in Beirut, Lebanon, my dissertation uncovers the immeasurable importance of migrant care workers in middle-income countries.

Keywords: migrant workers, domestic workers, postcolonial, social reproduction, capitalism, Lebanon, migrant care workers

Name: Hilary Vandenbark

Department: Global Gender and Sexuality Studies, PhD program (7^th year)

Dissertation Title: "Political Performance, Pressure, and Policy Outcomes: A Case Study on the Sexual Assault Survivors' Bill of Rights"

Description: My dissertation develops an analysis of the cultural context in which state actors and activists interact and how that shapes policy outcomes. Using Shirin M. Rai’s Political Performance Framework, I analyze the passage of the NY Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act of 2018. The legislation provides for the long term storage of sexual assault forensic exam kits and establishes the right to have an advocate present during the exam or police interviews, among other things. Rai’s framework takes into account the partisan nature of legislative politics through a matrix of low-high/risk-reward outcomes for the politicians who support or oppose activist claims. I argue that when activists can successfully frame a policy change as low-risk, high-reward for all state stakeholders, it is more likely to be adopted, especially in a cultural context which may move a bill from the low-reward category to a high-reward one. For example, the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights represents very few changes to current policies, corrects practices on the ground, and presents politicians with an opportunity to capitalize on the MeToo movement and demonstrate bipartisanship.

Bio: Hilary Vandenbark currently serves as Gender Violence Prevention Specialist at the NYS Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence in the newly formed Sexual Assault Policy, Prevention, and Programming Unit. In 2019, she was a Women and Public Policy Fellow at the Center for Women in Government and Civil Society, SUNY Albany. Vandenbark worked as a housing and economic security policy consultant at the New York Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence as part of the fellowship. Vandenbark hopes to continue working in government policy on sexual and gender-based violence upon completing her dissertation, which examines the legislative process and implementation of New York's Sexual Assault Survivors' Bill of Rights Act of 2018.