Session Abstract

On the backdrop of rapid urbanization and industrialization in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, migration of women and men from, to and within the Middle East intensified to unprecedented scale. While the urban population continually increased, the urban fabric lacked social coherency, and the urban population became more anonymous. From those who lived on petty crimes to those who lived on others’ charity, the social margin, both in moral and geographical meanings, enlarged and incorporated many morally and materially fallen. The expansion of the social margin in that time of rapid social transformation underscored of the failure of urban centers in absorbing the migrants as well as the failure of the newcomers to carve their space among the “respectable” urbanite.

The proposed panel will examine gendered aspects of the social margins in Middle Eastern towns in the first half of 20^th century to question, first, female marginalization in its relation to rapid urbanization, second, national and colonial policies managed marginalized women, third, how tropes of respectability played into official policies and public discourses to expand, and or limit, women’s socio-economic choices.