International Meeting on Law and Society, Mexico City – Getting there and getting ready
Some of you may have been expecting frantic tweeting from the conference but quite honestly, These huge conferences are too intense to keep up the live tweeting, there are lots of papers in each session and I can’t keep up. Also (and the real reason I’m not even 
trying) is that I have a new very cool notebook and I adore new notebooks. There’s something about the promise of those empty pages and I love starting a new notebook with something like a conference because that means that at least the start will be exciting, inspiring and full of ideas. I’ve gone old school. I have actually been writing stuff down!
Anyway, I am at the annual Law and Society Association conference which this year happens to be in Mexico City. Here’s how I got here. Feel free to stop reading now – it’ll be me rambling on- mainly because I think me getting and then being here has the potential to hit – or completely wallop – a huge number of my anxiety triggers. Writing helps me be more aware of that and how I am doing managing anxiety, exhaustion and stress levels. In other words, this post is for me not you. You’re welcome to come figure it out with me though
I had a very long Monday yesterday, leaving the house about 5.30 to get to Manchester airport. So possible trigger number 1: Tiredness. Tiredness is funny – I still get unreasonably tired in certain situations, I find being around people exhausting (oops) but also being tired, even if not anxiety related, means I deal less well with potential triggers and am more likely to become anxious. Anyway, I thought I’d left ages so I could have breakfast there and have a nice relaxed trip but instead I spent over 90 minutes in the security queue and had to jog to the gate. Never mind, I thought I’d have enough time at Frankfurt airport to just chill out a little bit and sit with coffee. Nope, that airport is hideous and I think specially designed to fuck with people who already don’t have a sense of direction. I don’t know if I got lost or went wrong or whether it was just an idiotic and long way but I got to the gate as they announced boarding would be in ten minutes – I got to pee at least. Several triggers there: Things not going as planned, having to do something different to how I had imagined it, running late, not being in control. I was a little antsy but ok.
The flight was fine – no chance of getting any work done really, although I did read a little. Mostly I watched films though. I started, maybe foolishly with I, Daniel Blake. Hm, I’m not quite sure what to think but I’ll untangle that another time – it is however hard hitting and I cried a fair bit (it’s a film, of course I did, I cry at anything if you stick it on the telly box) – so that sorted the possible awkwardness about having to speak to the person next to me. We spent 12 hours ignoring that we were basically sat on each others knee. Trigger: Feeling forced to engage with people – didn’t apply. I then watched the new Beauty and the Beast (Don’t judge) and Emma Watson is brilliant. I vaguely thought about going back to something serious then but instead watched Sing which was quite fun but twice as long as it needs to be. I dozed off for a bit.
Arrival in Mexico brought another queue – an hour or so this time but then I was through immigration and customs. I don’t like immigration control. I don’t like that feeling of some official being in complete control of your destiny. They decide if you continue or have to turn back. I realised I find this worse when I know I can’t adequately communicate with the official. I got frustrated at myself for not keeping up with learning Spanish, for always getting so far and then dropping it. It’s not a difficult language, it just takes a bit of self discipline and I still understand much more than I thought I would but I can say almost nothing. I had an hour in the queue to get properly irritated with myself.
I was nervous about getting a taxi, I’m not normally edgy about travel. I think as a woman travelling on your own you always need to be aware of what’s going on around you and of course in same places that applies more than others. I read the safety stuff, I knew where to get an authorised taxi and all of that but so many people were so adamant about how dangerous Mexico City is and how I must be careful (how do you do that exactly? Be careful, I mean) that I’d got a bit spooked. I came out of customs, saw the authorised taxi counters, told the woman where I wanted to go, paid, found my taxi and off we went. It was fine. The thinking about it was far worse than just getting it done.
It wasn’t as busy as I expected and the journey took about 25 minutes. For the first part 
we were driving through slightly run down areas directly towards the sunset which was turning the sky a spectacular colour (and made the pollution haze quite visible). Then we turned though and the sky was less spectacular and the buildings started changing to more high rise and posh and then we were at the hotel. Alma at check in was lovely and found me a room with a big bed rather than 2 small ones which apparently was booked (University travel booked it form me and I just said to go for the cheapest) and it is also higher up so I get a bit more of a view. Well sort of
The hotel’s too posh so there was no way of avoiding the bell service – I hate not just being able to take my own bag and find my room but I was escorted by a lovely bloke who was at pains to stress that I shouldn’t just work at the conference but make sure I went out to see the beautiful city too. He didn’t get a tip because frankly I was too knackered to work it out and I only had big bills anyway I think. I’ve been feeling a bit bad about that ever since.
I managed to hang on until about 9.30 by unpacking my stuff and hanging my clothes up, checking Facebook etc and trying to check the online programme and I then collapsed into bed and slept through til 4am. I’m quite pleased with that.
I watched a selection of news channels for a bit and then went and found the gym. So altitude, jetlag and warmth are an interesting combination. I ran 2km on the treadmill – I was actually aiming for a very steady 5k but I was a puddle by 500 metres and panting like a dog on heat (sorry, not an image you needed). I gave running up as a bad job, did a quickish 5km on a bike and then hit the shower. Things not going to plan. I wanted to run 5km!
Then I had to go for breakfast. I was hoping to be early enough to not see anyone that would require a calculation of whether I know them well enough or not to do the whole ‘Hi, not I’m not being rude but no, you can’t talk to me pre coffee and I am certainly not going to sit with you’ thing. You see there are very few people I can tolerate at breakfast unless it’s pre-arranged. Breakfast is where I get myself and my brain (like we’re two separate things – weird) ready for what lies ahead. If I know I am meeting someone that’s fine, somehow that works but if it’s not planned, no no no! There’s only one person here who I’d be totally ok with (Hi Chris) in that situation. No offence to everyone else intended at all. It was fine, I was seated at a little table in a corner and understood enough Spanish to get coffee and be directed to the buffet. Win.
Next, I registered for the conference. It was still quiet so that was easy too. I had a quick flick through the programme and then decided that actually I wanted a little look outside given I hadn’t seen anything at all of Mexico City yet really.
I stepped outside for 15 minutes and then found a quiet spot to decide on the session. The programme is overwhelming. It’s nearly 200 pages! Quiet spaces are hard to find now the conference is in full swing. Going outside doesn’t help – it’s Mexico City! It worries me a little how this will play out over the next few days. My room may become my little sanctuary.
So why am I telling you this? Well this is the first major conference event I have been to since being ill. I did of course go to the Association of Law Teacher’s conference – but that was much much smaller and I was surrounded by friends. This event is a different ball game, it’s far away from home, it’s in a country where I don’t speak the language, I know very few people, it’s long and intense… This is a test as to how well I’m really doing. So I am telling you about the travel and all of that to give you the context for the next few days. Travel went well. Anxiety triggers were definitely there and I was anxious when time became an issue for both flights and I was anxious about the taxi and all of that but a manageable anxious. The same is true of this morning and going for breakfast and registration. It was all fine, I’m fine and I am excited to be here.
CRonEM Annual Conference – Reflections and Thoughts
I have spent the last two days at the Centre for Research on the European Matrix Annual Conference in Surrey. The conference was titled Sex Gender and Europe and was run in conjunction with the ESRC International Network: Unintended Gender Consequences of EU Policies. The programme is online here
I am writing this on the train home as I reflect on the last two days and just let my – rather full – mind wander. It might therefore be the case that I change my mind about the thoughts captured here, that I think differently in a few day’s time when I have slept, processed ideas and reflected further. For that I make no apologies, it’s all part of the process!
Day one was long and intense but at the same time inspiring and encouraging in the sense that it created a really productive environment for sharing ideas. As Roberta Guerrina introduced the Gender network and the work it had been doing over the last two years it struck me (not for the first time recently!) how creative, innovative and productive a bunch of people with similar interests can be when given the time and space to talk to each other, to think, to challenge and to support. The work that comes out of these collaborations have had the benefit of feedback at all levels – from basic idea to finished paper and it is amazing work for it. What that means is that the network is significantly more than the sum of its parts and this is something to really think about in research funding. Academics, or at least this bunch of academics and I suspect many others too, need to be able to engage with each other in a meaningful way over a sustained period of time to be able to produce their best work
The papers on day 1 were all great, many given by PhD students who are engaging in some really interesting work which made me more hopeful that there is a bright future for gender and EU studies. I really enjoyed Muireann O’Dwyer (University College Dublin) speaking on the EU democratic deficit and although I am still grappling with her use of some of the concepts (like intersectionality) I am sure she has tapped into something which can push our understanding forward – I am looking forward to reading the full paper. I also enjoyed Gill Allwood on the prostitution debates and whether we should construe prostitution as sex work or violence against women. While I have on occasion picked this theme up in discussions in my Law and Society module, I hadn’t particularly thought about this in an EU context but I think it might be worth re-visiting some of the worker case law involving prostitutes in the light of the discussions we had. Koen Slootmaeckers spoke about Pride in Serbia which made me think about Pride and what it means – this will continue to whirl through my head for a while because here the personal does turn into the political. I can so absolutely see the political and symbolic importance of Pride in some contexts and yet Pride is not something that I have ever particularly engaged with. On day 2 the panels related mostly to gendering the economic crisis and I found Rosalind Cavaghan and Emanuela Lombardo’s paper helpful because it pointed me in the direction of literature which will help me get my head round some of these issues more. Denise Amram presented from Italy via Skype and by outlining the legal position of married couples where one spouse changes their sex in several European Countries, she made me think about what a European Union response might be and how this might then play out in a free movement context. Wow!
The highlight for me however was Carl Stychin who gave the plenary paper on Day 1: Status Symbols: European Same-Sex Couples on the Move. The absurdity that can arise where people marry in one state, live in another, move to a third, potentially divorce…. It’s complex for heterosexual couples who usually do not have to worry about their marriages being accepted as valid (although of course, these issues could also come up!) For same sex couples these questions are even more complex. I started trying to reason this out in a paper published in 2011 but Carl’s reasoning takes this debate further and is rather more sophisticated than I managed!
So, here I am on the train reflecting on a really packed but great 2 days which were full of conversations, excitement and a mutual belief that the work we are doing is important and worth persevering with and that is something to hold on to as we all go back to the everyday grind of the academic job.
My Conversations 