Marriage, migration and colonial populations: continuity and change in female strategies
The session will consider female strategies not only in time of war and crisis, but also in time of peace and golden periods, all this under various demographic regimes and in different countries and continents. This session intends to highlight the way families, thanks to females, adapt their strategies of reproduction, applying or rejecting old practices or imposing new practices of reproduction, in order to achieve their goal of family continuity over generations. It is an interdisciplinary approach: anthropology, historical demography, economy, theology, history of mentalities and gender. This session intends to highlight the way the inhabitants of many countries all over the world looked at interfaith, interethnic and international marriages and the way they look at them nowadays. How did the Church, the state, societies and families succeed/or fail to deal with the problem of interfaith, interethnic and international marriages? Migration, in the past as in present society, has been linked to a number of questions. The study of historical migration and mobility, either temporary or definitive, individual, with the partner or with the family, especially for ancient periods and if they concern women, requires imaginative solutions. The session will take into account the women’s role play as facilitators of migration processes. This session seeks to bring original interdisciplinary perspectives that enable its study which cover long periods and wide and varied geographic and cultural spaces. This session focuses on three key areas for the study of the overseas societies colonized from Europe: 1. Processes of census-taking and its normative framework; 2. Health, living standards and demographic transition; 3. Colonial cities: urbanization and public health.