Analysing Island Change Through Infrastructures of Social Reproduction

Abstract

This paper explores through a case study of Tórshavn, Faroe Islands, how the expansion of an urban environment that seemingly should accommodate women's everyday lives continues to be shaped by gendered challenges. Based on 13 life history interviews with elderly female residents, the analysis shows that (i) urban change is constituted by gendered, embodied, relational, and infrastructural practices of social reproduction, and that (ii) life in this island city is made in place and in movement through relational practices that cross borders. Furthermore, (iii) the life history approach shows the importance of temporal depth for grasping infrastructural urban change across time and generations. Finally, (iv) by bringing island studies into dialogue with social infrastructure scholarship, this paper yields a dual contribution: (1) recognition for invisible labour in islanded urban life, and (2) expanding the relational understanding of social infrastructures.