Moving: The Transformation of the Organization of Residential Relocation during the 20th Century

Our presentation explores women’s experiences of residential relocation (moving) and the transformation of the social organization of "moving work" within the United States. We use the oral histories of older women and historical archival materials to describe the coordinative work women do with others to move and to explicate the changing relations within the transportation/housing enterprises. Guided by Smith's mode of inquiry, institutional ethnography, we demonstrate the ways in which relocation activities are organized and have been restructured through the coordinating efforts of families, employers, agents within the household goods moving and storage industry, and the work of other transportation and public officials over the 20th century.