Women after migration, resilience, work, and domestic life in Great Island of Chiloe, Chile 1950-1980

Abstract

This article shows ethnographic fi ndings about the domestic life of chilotas women, wives of temporary migrants who experienced migration to austral territories of Chilean and Argentinian Patagonia. Th ese migratory displacements are characterized by the distribution of historical milestones that can be traced back to the decade of the 50's with the blight of the potato, the 60's, with the crucial stage caused by the earthquake, the 70's with the coup d'état, and the 80's, with the salmon industry which reduces considerably these southern displacements. Transnational migrations of men to diff erent places led to the domestic hierarchization, with women being a type of resilient, non-mobile migrant. Th e conceptual discussion focuses on three categories of analysis: Resilient migration, domestic work and gender relations. Th e methodological approach is qualitative, framed in the multi-sited ethnography and in the ethnography of interacted contexts (ECI), as strategies of refl ection, description, and interpretation of information.