Carolyn Sargent
Heroy Hall, Room 311
(214)768-2753
csargent@smu.edu
Reproduction, Family, and Immigration: West African Migrants in France
Carolyn Sargent has been at the forefront in medical
anthropology, introducing new directions for research in such areas as medical
decision making, gender and health, and immigrant health issues. After spending
six years living and conducting research in West Africa, she initiated fieldwork
on child health in the West Indies, and since 1998, has been investigating changing
gender roles, reproductive health, and the influence of Islam on Malian migrants
from West Africa, currently living in Paris, France. This current project has
involved interviews and observations with approximately 200 women and 50 men in
both clinical and community settings in order to assess how government policies and
public hospital regulations have shaped decisions concerning marriage and family
among migrants from the Senegal River Valley in West Africa.
France has a history of pronatalism dating at least to the World War
I era, which has generated strategies for encouraging larger family size in the French
population by such means as monthly financial stipends for each child . State
pronatalism, however, faces challenges from public debate concerning
"excessively" high fertility among immigrants, especially those from North
and West Africa. The politics of immigration increasingly plays out in public hospital
practices, where immigrant women seek health care for themselves and their children.
The public hospital system, mandated to present family planning information to women in
the maternity service, reflects and responds to the broader political debate linking
anti-immigrant sentiment to fertility regulation. Discussion of contraception with
Malian women represents a prime moment for the transmission of state policies,
political agendas, and personal philosophies of hospital staff. Women, in particular,
confront contradictory messages from social workers and hospital staff who urge them to
limit or space childbearing, and from husbands, family members, and Muslim religious
authorities who vigorously oppose family planning.
Sargent's research suggests that transnational migration
patterns associated with postcolonial politics, population and social welfare policies,
rising unemployment, and low-income housing shortages in Paris, together with highly
restrictive immigration legislation, have contributed to the pressures that influence
migrants' reproductive and family goals.
In the course of this long-term research project, Sargent has been named research
fellow at CRESP, a center for the study of economics and public health at the
University of Paris 13, and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes . She plans to collaborate
with scholars at CRESP who are also engaged in research on immigration and public
health and to involve SMU graduate students in this enterprise.
Curriculum Vitae | Publications
Return to Faculty and Staff Listing
