People and Places
Asynchronous Session
Copyright, Originality and the Humble House View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Robert Greenstreet
Law affects architecture in many ways, casting an invisible yet influential web of restriction upon the built environment. One such area is copyright law, resulting in some unforeseen consequences to design creativity. Interestingly, the biggest impact is at the modest end of the design scale: the humble house. While not technically ‘architecture’ in some jurisdictions - In Wisconsin, any construction under 50,000 cubic feet does not require an architect’ stamp – residential projects are still covered by copyright law. Housing represents a substantial proportion of construction, and is the focus of numerous cases where ‘design trolls’ have received protection for simple, traditional homes and have sued countless other designers who were using a similar conventional vocabulary of materials and forms. However, can modest, single- family housing be sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection? While there are examples of architect-designed houses that clearly display creativity, market rate homes are small in size, comprised of a limited number of spaces and elements and, as market demand indicates, conform to traditional expectations of layout and appearance - hardly a recipe for originality. Coupled with this, copyright legislation, while not defining originality, specifically excludes certain elements from protection. These are functional requirements, traditional relationships of internal spaces and standard architectural elements – arguably the primary, if not sole, constituents of the single-family house. This paper explores the concept of residential originality and questions the role of copyright law in protecting and restricting the use of traditional design in the humble house.
Migration Routes and Resistance Strategies of Migrant Women in Precarious Situations in Quebec and Lebanon: Presentation of Preliminary Results of the Gender (Im)mobilities in Precarious Situations Project View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sonya Ben Yahmed, Roxane Caron
Gender (Im)mobilities in Precarious Situations (GIPS) is an action research project based on the intersection of gender inequalities and the specific realities of migrant women in situations of prolonged precariousness in Canada (Quebec) and Lebanon It advocates a Transnational decolonial feminist approach. The research and fieldwork with community organizations and migrant women, both in Lebanon and Quebec, is ongoing. So far, we conducted 24 individual interviews and 6 focus groups and we started the preliminary analysis showing the exacerbation of the labour conditions for migrants during the crisis, even when they are described as essential, “Essential work. Disposable workers”, according to Henaway (2023). It also highlights the gender distribution of labour and the exacerbation of gender-based violence, especially for women without status. To face this precarity, the migrant women develop different strategies such as relying on family and or community, volunteering but that could also be seen as a forced free work in the Canadian context, arts and activism. These strategies and the work of some community organizations, and despite/due to the numerous systemic and structural obstacles, empowerment happens, leading these women to taking up space and fighting, daily.
Measuring the Psychic Costs of Graduates’ Decision to Migrate for Employment View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kevin Albertson
In this paper we consider the psychic costs of graduates’ decision to migrate from their home locale, defined here as their place of residence prior to their attending university. We theorise the salary required to motivate migration indicates the monetary value of the psychic costs of migration. Using HESA data, and controlling for graduates’ backgrounds, education and employment, we estimate 1) the determinants of the decision to migrate, 2) the psychic cost of migration and 3) for those who choose to migrate, the relationship between distance migrated and net psychic costs of migration. This is, to our knowledge, the first time the psychic cost of migration has been estimated. To the extent that psychic costs of migration represent attachment to the existing community, we find graduates’ links to their community are valued at approximately 5% of a typical starting graduate salary. The value of community is significantly greater for women, mature graduates and graduates from an Asian ethnic background.
The ‘Stayers’ Dilemma: A Framework for the Study of Non-Migrants View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Klement Camaj
Traditionally, and from a sedentary perspective, the concept of staying within migration studies has often been seen as simply the opposite effect of migration. Non-migrants have generally been ignored by many neoclassical theorists of migration, making non-migrants seem like passive victims, and denying them agency. It has only recently been recognised in migration studies that those who stay make a conscientious decision to do so, exercising personal agency. Therefore, this paper examines the underpinnings behind the decision to stay and create a framework for the study of non-migrants within migration studies. It considers the aspirations to stay and their capabilities to do so by examining stories of those who chose to stay and others who cannot leave. As such, this paper shows that the decision to stay goes far beyond the neoclassical understanding of passive immobility and is instead a multifaceted connection between family and culture, as well as economics.
