2009 Symposium

Globalization, Families, and the State

The Topic

The effects of globalization on markets and workers have been widely examined in the legal literature.  However, the impact of globalization within households and upon families, and the response of the state, have not received adequate attention. This symposium will focus on issues related to globalization and families.  Attention will be given principally to the United States, informed by an awareness of global interdependencies, and set within a larger comparative international framework as a means to examine the range of possible legal responses to these issues.

The globalization of the economy has placed unrelenting pressures on contemporary families.  Throughout the industrialized world, marriage rates are declining, birth rates are falling, and hours that family members work outside the home are rising.

Globalization demands longer hours in the workplace, and inevitably results in competing and conflicting demands on time allocated to interpersonal relationships within households.  Workplace demands strain the labor resources of families, taxing the ability of heads of households to care for young children and aging parents. Further, the stability in which families flourish is undermined by the flexibility that globalization requires, and the increasing entrepreneurialism demanded of workers.

Globalizations’ effects include the loss of state-sponsored social and regulatory programs, increased privatization of family carework, the marketization of the very creation of family, and changing social and economic relationships within families and communities.  Government policies that promote the demands of the marketplace can exacerbate this tension between families and marketplace. In this symposium, we will examine the consequences of globalization on families and consider the effectiveness of different possible government responses to the difficulties that globalization poses for families.

Keynote Speakers

Morning Lourdes Benería Professor of Feminist, Gender and Sexuality StudiesProfessor of City & Regional Planning Cornell University Webpage Lunch Kerry RittichFaculty of Law University of Toronto Webpage
Panel Discussions Panel 1: Globalization and the Underinvestment in Families
This panel will consider the effects of globalization on the functions traditionally performed by families, including carework. It will examine the extent to which government policies can either ameliorate or exacerbate the conflict between the demands of the global workplace and the needs of families.  Panelists will discuss the extent to which longer hours required of U.S. workers conflict with the performance of carework, the way in which U.S. regulations routinely value paid work over family work, as well as the comparative approaches that have been used to mediate work-family conflicts.	Panelists Janine Brodie (Pol. Sci., U. of Alberta) Martha Fineman (Law, Emory U.) Maxine Eichner (Law, UNC Chapel Hill) Molly Shanley (Pol Sci, Vassar College)
Panel 2: Marketization and Families
This panel will focus on the ways in which areas that had traditionally been associated with families and considered non-economic have been increasingly commoditized in the global economy.  Panelists will consider issues surrounding the privatization of carework; private child adoption markets, the hiring of surrogates, privatized assisted reproductive technology, supply chains for nannies, and mail-order bride networks.	Panelists Barbara Fedders (Law, UNC) Melissa Jacoby (Law, UNC Chapel Hill) Kim Krawiec (Law, Duke University) Janie Chuang (Law, American University) Martha Davis (Law, Northeastern University)
Panel 3: Families and Global Migration
This panel will focus on the effects on families that result from the migration associated with globalization.  The import-export of migrant labor has had destabilizing effects on families whose members come and go across borders, but at the same time, may also produce socially and economically integrated networks.  This panel will examine such issues as the dislocations that separate parents from children and partners from one another, as well as the loss of support systems otherwise available in extended families or “home” communities.  It will also focus on gender violence as a consequence of the geographic and financial destabilization of families.  Finally, it will consider the impact of remittances as a consequence of global migration on family economies, local communities, and institutions that facilitate the flow of such economic transfers and how they create interdependent communities.	Panelists Jacqueline Hagan (Sociology, UNC) Adam Feibelman (Law, UNC) Deborah Weissman (Law, UNC) Rhacel Salazar Parrenas (American Civilizations, Brown) Leah Schmalzbauer (Soc., Montana St.)

Faculty Chairs

Maxine Eichner Professor of Law, UNC School of Law 919-843-5670 meichner@email.unc.edu web page		Deborah Weissman Reef C. Ivey II Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of Clinical Programs 919-962-3564 weissman@email.unc.edu web page
Symposium Editors
Jeremy M. Tarr jmtarr@gmail.com	Nora F. Warren nfwarren@gmail.com