Sara Dorow
Biographic Data
| ID | 124869 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sara Dorow |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sara |
| FAMILY NAME | Dorow |
| SIGNATURE | DOROW S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Alberta |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7698-6860 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 143 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 19 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The morphing subject
Reinforcing, negotiating and resisting gender norms among reunited couples in Mexico
This article examines the reunification experiences and gender dynamics of reunited Mexican couples post-migration, and the intersections that shape those experiences. In 2021, we conducted a critical ethnographic study guided by intersectionality theory in Veracruz, Mexico. We interviewed women who stayed behind (n = 20), return migrants (n = 12), health care providers (n = 6), and community leaders (n = 12). Data was analyzed using thematic ana…
It goes with the job”
A multi‐scalar critical analysis of return migration policies in Mexico
Services and resources for migrants returning to Mexico are necessary to ease their transition and “re‐integration” into home communities. Policies that do not have a holistic approach can result in serious implications for the social, political, cultural, and health of returnees, receiving families, and communities. This research critically analyses return migration policies in Mexico drawing from the intersectionality‐based policy analysis fram…
Managing liminal time in the fly-in fly-out work camp
Fly-in fly-out (FIFO) work camps are built and organized to ensure that long-distance rotational workers are fed, housed, and mobilized in sync with the pressing yet unpredictable rhythms of resource extraction. Positioned thus ‘betwixt and between’ the complex relations of work and life (Johnsen and Sørensen, 2015), the work camp is a generative yet hitherto neglected example of the temporal operations of permanent liminality (Bamber et al., 201…
Gendered circuits of care in the mobility regime of Alberta’s oil sands
This article examines the gendered circuits of care found in the fly-in fly-out arrangements of resource extraction zones. In the oil sands of northeast Alberta, Canada, tens of thousands of workers commute long distance between far-flung households and local work camps for rotations of one week or more. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted from the unique vantage point of work camps, we attend to the gendered relations and identities of ca…
Re-working mobilities
Over the last decade, an increasing number of geographers and other social science researchers have deployed the insights of the new mobilities paradigm to study work, labour, and employment. These insights include attention to the meanings, practices, and politics of work-related movement as well as to multiple spatial and temporal scales and types of im/mobility for and at work. In a review of this literature, we find five different vantage poi…
Putting mobility theory to work
Although the "mobility turn" has captured the critical imaginations of researchers studying an array of topics, its possible contributions to analyses of the spectrum of employment-related geographical mobility have only begun to be defined. Studies of work have engaged with the growing body of mobility theory in limited ways; by the same token, mobilities studies have taken a somewhat narrow and sometimes uncritical view of work, labor, and empl…
Constructing childhood at the boundaries of the nation
This article analyzes and compares two instances of national border crossing that involve decisions about children from China: children whose Canadian relatives have applied to adopt them, and unaccompanied children who seek refugee status. Discourse analysis of interviews, hearings, and official documents in the two cases demonstrates how the 'innocence' and 'best interests' of children are produced through three specific forms of knowledge: age…
"Where is Fort McMurray? The Camera as a Tool for Assembling "Community
In response to the global mythology spawned by visual representations of Fort McMurray, Canada, this article examines a critical, collaborative youth project that sought oblique entry points to prevailing storylines of “community” and to what it might mean to live in the shadow of one of the world’s largest resource extraction complexes. Building on visual methodologies where participants are encouraged to produce representations of home and plac…
Fort McMurray, Wood Buffalo, and the Oil/Tar Sands
Introduction to the Special Issue
Adopted Territory
Belonging in an Adopted World
Childhood Redux
Blood and desire
In this article, we use narratives of cultural identity among U.S. parents of children adopted from China to conceptually explore the ideas that underwrite socially intelligible kinship. Although these narratives address the cultural heritage of the child, we find that they also perform a kind of social labor. The ways adoptive parents respond to the "culture question" (their children's birth heritage) also speak to family identity in relation to…
Adoption in a Color-Blind Society
Outsiders within
Book Review| July 01 2007 Outsiders within: Writing on Transracial Adoption Outsiders within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah and Sun Yung Shin. Sara K. Dorow Sara K. Dorow Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2007) 26 (4): 100–101. https://doi.org/10.2307/40543208 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search …
Racialized Choices
The transnational, transracial adoption of children provides the opportunity to explore how race binds and differentiates kinship and national belonging, especially when considered in relation to options for adopting both at home and abroad. More specifically, the reasons white parents give for choosing to adopt from China reveal how the normative white, American family is constructed through discourses of foreign and domestic, Asian and black. I…
Adoption across Borders
Outsiders within
Book Review| July 01 2007 Outsiders within: Writing on Transracial Adoption Outsiders within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah and Sun Yung Shin. Sara K. Dorow Sara K. Dorow Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2007) 26 (4): 100–101. https://doi.org/10.2307/40543208 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search …
Putting mobility theory to work
Although the "mobility turn" has captured the critical imaginations of researchers studying an array of topics, its possible contributions to analyses of the spectrum of employment-related geographical mobility have only begun to be defined. Studies of work have engaged with the growing body of mobility theory in limited ways; by the same token, mobilities studies have taken a somewhat narrow and sometimes uncritical view of work, labor, and empl…
Gendered circuits of care in the mobility regime of Alberta’s oil sands
This article examines the gendered circuits of care found in the fly-in fly-out arrangements of resource extraction zones. In the oil sands of northeast Alberta, Canada, tens of thousands of workers commute long distance between far-flung households and local work camps for rotations of one week or more. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted from the unique vantage point of work camps, we attend to the gendered relations and identities of ca…
Blood and desire
In this article, we use narratives of cultural identity among U.S. parents of children adopted from China to conceptually explore the ideas that underwrite socially intelligible kinship. Although these narratives address the cultural heritage of the child, we find that they also perform a kind of social labor. The ways adoptive parents respond to the "culture question" (their children's birth heritage) also speak to family identity in relation to…
Re-working mobilities
Over the last decade, an increasing number of geographers and other social science researchers have deployed the insights of the new mobilities paradigm to study work, labour, and employment. These insights include attention to the meanings, practices, and politics of work-related movement as well as to multiple spatial and temporal scales and types of im/mobility for and at work. In a review of this literature, we find five different vantage poi…
Racialized Choices
The transnational, transracial adoption of children provides the opportunity to explore how race binds and differentiates kinship and national belonging, especially when considered in relation to options for adopting both at home and abroad. More specifically, the reasons white parents give for choosing to adopt from China reveal how the normative white, American family is constructed through discourses of foreign and domestic, Asian and black. I…
Managing liminal time in the fly-in fly-out work camp
Fly-in fly-out (FIFO) work camps are built and organized to ensure that long-distance rotational workers are fed, housed, and mobilized in sync with the pressing yet unpredictable rhythms of resource extraction. Positioned thus ‘betwixt and between’ the complex relations of work and life (Johnsen and Sørensen, 2015), the work camp is a generative yet hitherto neglected example of the temporal operations of permanent liminality (Bamber et al., 201…
Fort McMurray, Wood Buffalo, and the Oil/Tar Sands
Introduction to the Special Issue
Adoption in a Color-Blind Society
It goes with the job”
Constructing childhood at the boundaries of the nation
This article analyzes and compares two instances of national border crossing that involve decisions about children from China: children whose Canadian relatives have applied to adopt them, and unaccompanied children who seek refugee status. Discourse analysis of interviews, hearings, and official documents in the two cases demonstrates how the 'innocence' and 'best interests' of children are produced through three specific forms of knowledge: age…
A multi‐scalar critical analysis of return migration policies in Mexico
Services and resources for migrants returning to Mexico are necessary to ease their transition and “re‐integration” into home communities. Policies that do not have a holistic approach can result in serious implications for the social, political, cultural, and health of returnees, receiving families, and communities. This research critically analyses return migration policies in Mexico drawing from the intersectionality‐based policy analysis fram…
"Where is Fort McMurray? The Camera as a Tool for Assembling "Community
In response to the global mythology spawned by visual representations of Fort McMurray, Canada, this article examines a critical, collaborative youth project that sought oblique entry points to prevailing storylines of “community” and to what it might mean to live in the shadow of one of the world’s largest resource extraction complexes. Building on visual methodologies where participants are encouraged to produce representations of home and plac…
Belonging in an Adopted World
Adoption across Borders
Racialized Choices
The transnational, transracial adoption of children provides the opportunity to explore how race binds and differentiates kinship and national belonging, especially when considered in relation to options for adopting both at home and abroad. More specifically, the reasons white parents give for choosing to adopt from China reveal how the normative white, American family is constructed through discourses of foreign and domestic, Asian and black. I…
Outsiders within
Book Review| July 01 2007 Outsiders within: Writing on Transracial Adoption Outsiders within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah and Sun Yung Shin. Sara K. Dorow Sara K. Dorow Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2007) 26 (4): 100–101. https://doi.org/10.2307/40543208 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search …
Adoption in a Color-Blind Society
Blood and desire
In this article, we use narratives of cultural identity among U.S. parents of children adopted from China to conceptually explore the ideas that underwrite socially intelligible kinship. Although these narratives address the cultural heritage of the child, we find that they also perform a kind of social labor. The ways adoptive parents respond to the "culture question" (their children's birth heritage) also speak to family identity in relation to…
Childhood Redux
Adopted Territory
Belonging in an Adopted World
"Where is Fort McMurray? The Camera as a Tool for Assembling "Community
In response to the global mythology spawned by visual representations of Fort McMurray, Canada, this article examines a critical, collaborative youth project that sought oblique entry points to prevailing storylines of “community” and to what it might mean to live in the shadow of one of the world’s largest resource extraction complexes. Building on visual methodologies where participants are encouraged to produce representations of home and plac…
Fort McMurray, Wood Buffalo, and the Oil/Tar Sands
Introduction to the Special Issue
Constructing childhood at the boundaries of the nation
This article analyzes and compares two instances of national border crossing that involve decisions about children from China: children whose Canadian relatives have applied to adopt them, and unaccompanied children who seek refugee status. Discourse analysis of interviews, hearings, and official documents in the two cases demonstrates how the 'innocence' and 'best interests' of children are produced through three specific forms of knowledge: age…
Putting mobility theory to work
Although the "mobility turn" has captured the critical imaginations of researchers studying an array of topics, its possible contributions to analyses of the spectrum of employment-related geographical mobility have only begun to be defined. Studies of work have engaged with the growing body of mobility theory in limited ways; by the same token, mobilities studies have taken a somewhat narrow and sometimes uncritical view of work, labor, and empl…
Re-working mobilities
Over the last decade, an increasing number of geographers and other social science researchers have deployed the insights of the new mobilities paradigm to study work, labour, and employment. These insights include attention to the meanings, practices, and politics of work-related movement as well as to multiple spatial and temporal scales and types of im/mobility for and at work. In a review of this literature, we find five different vantage poi…
Gendered circuits of care in the mobility regime of Alberta’s oil sands
This article examines the gendered circuits of care found in the fly-in fly-out arrangements of resource extraction zones. In the oil sands of northeast Alberta, Canada, tens of thousands of workers commute long distance between far-flung households and local work camps for rotations of one week or more. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted from the unique vantage point of work camps, we attend to the gendered relations and identities of ca…
Managing liminal time in the fly-in fly-out work camp
Fly-in fly-out (FIFO) work camps are built and organized to ensure that long-distance rotational workers are fed, housed, and mobilized in sync with the pressing yet unpredictable rhythms of resource extraction. Positioned thus ‘betwixt and between’ the complex relations of work and life (Johnsen and Sørensen, 2015), the work camp is a generative yet hitherto neglected example of the temporal operations of permanent liminality (Bamber et al., 201…
Reinforcing, negotiating and resisting gender norms among reunited couples in Mexico
This article examines the reunification experiences and gender dynamics of reunited Mexican couples post-migration, and the intersections that shape those experiences. In 2021, we conducted a critical ethnographic study guided by intersectionality theory in Veracruz, Mexico. We interviewed women who stayed behind (n = 20), return migrants (n = 12), health care providers (n = 6), and community leaders (n = 12). Data was analyzed using thematic ana…
It goes with the job”
A multi‐scalar critical analysis of return migration policies in Mexico
Services and resources for migrants returning to Mexico are necessary to ease their transition and “re‐integration” into home communities. Policies that do not have a holistic approach can result in serious implications for the social, political, cultural, and health of returnees, receiving families, and communities. This research critically analyses return migration policies in Mexico drawing from the intersectionality‐based policy analysis fram…
The morphing subject
Sociology (17 works) · Political science (11 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Child Welfare and Adoption (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Geography (5 works) · Mining and Resource Management (5 works) · Social science (5 works) · Anthropology (4 works)