Central American Transnational Families Headed by Single Women: Coloniality and Subjectivity in Nicaragua and Costa Rica

Abstract

This chapter analyses the subjectivity of migrant women, workers and heads of households living in San José, Costa Rica from a decolonial feminist perspective influenced by Judith Butler. Deploying life stories and ‘time-use’ diaries as methodological approaches, the research centres on eleven migrant women who devised practices that challenged their historically situated positions of victimhood. The migrant women moved towards ways of claiming autonomy in their lives, despite relationships of structural subjugation and ambivalent feelings of guilt and sacrifice.