Editorial Introduction: Transnational Feminist Movement(s), Solidarities, and Analyses

Editorial Introduction:Transnational Feminist Movement(s), Solidarities, and Analyses Patti Duncan Sitting outside on a hot summer day in Portland, Oregon, I'm reminded of other summers in other places … long humid summers spent in Atlanta during graduate school, cooler summers growing up near the mountains of Colorado, summers spent traveling in various countries, sometimes with groups of students or to be with friends and family. Moving through time and space in these memories, I think about my mother's journey from South Korea, finding herself in the strange, foreign world of the 1970s United States, longing always for some version of home that no longer existed once she had left. I have a vivid memory of a summer during my childhood when she traveled to Korea and returned feeling melancholy about how everything there had changed so drastically. While I mostly remember missing my mom that summer, I realize now that her visit provoked a complex set of feelings for her about her place in the world. Her experiences—and my own—reflect the realities of moving between and among nation-states, making meaning of living transnationally. Themes and questions related to transnational movement/s surface throughout this issue of Feminist Formations, beginning with our cover, featuring the evocative work of Ambreen Butt. This image, "Shoaib (8)" (2018), created with watercolor with torn and collaged text on tea stained paper, is part of her series, "Say My Name." Ambreen Butt, a Pakistani American artist, engages feminist and political ideas through traditional Persian art, and is known for her drawings, paintings, prints, and collages. "Shoaib (8)" offers the name and age of a young victim of a US drone strike. All the pieces in the series are titled after children who were killed by US drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Knowing the inspiration for the image makes it all the more heartbreaking. In it, meticulously painted blue butterflies gather at the bottom while shards of blue swirl up around them, creating an effect suggestive of an explosion or a storm. Naming this piece and the other works in the "Say My Name" series after the children is significant, given that their lives and stories were virtually erased. Thus, the paintings document the names of these children, and offer viewers a way to bear witness to the violence that claimed their young lives. [End Page vii] The first article to appear in this issue is the winner of the Feminist Formations/National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) award of 2022, "Socio-Legal Empowerment for Working Women in Bangladesh" by Fauzia Erfan Ahmed, Jyotsana Parajuli, and Anna Lucia Feldman. In this article, Ahmed, Parajuli, and Feldman argue that earning income is not necessarily equivalent to economic empowerment for women in Bangladesh. In doing so, they identify a paradox in progressive development narratives stating that economic advancement does not necessarily lead to political and social advancement, and in fact the economic model of development frequently obscures various dimensions of women's empowerment. Through their concept of patriarchal deterrence, the authors suggest that the threat of gender-based violence deters many women in Bangladesh from participating in the labor force, with violence potentially occurring in the home, on the streets, and at the workplace. As they write, women's labor force participation "has little meaning if the women who work to increase the material welfare of the family, the foreign exchange reserves of the nation, and the profits of the global economy are themselves subject to the indignity of daily violence." Hence, Ahmed, Parajuli, and Feldman offer a theory of socio-legal empowerment, proposing a model that integrates social accountability and local justice systems such as the NGO-reformed Shalish, an informal justice system focused on mediation that ideally includes women jurors and feminist interpretations of Islam. As the members of our awards committee stated: "The NGO-run Shalish has incredibly innovative interdisciplinary potential as we think about restorative and transformative justice." We express our deepest appreciation to the members of the 2022 Feminist Formations/NWSA awards committee: Karma Chávez, Elora Halim Chowdhury, and Nana Osei-Kofi. And congratulations to Fauzia Erfan Ahmed, Jyotsana Parajuli, and Anna Lucia Feldman! Kai Hang Cheang, in...