On Feminisms and Mobilities: Critical Debates on Migration and Gender in Latin America (1970–2020)

Abstract

This chapter addresses the relationship between gender and migration and its articulation with some key social, economic, and political processes that took place in Latin America from the seventies onwards. The debate carried out in the following pages aims to serve three objectives. First, to offer a synthetic overview of how migrant women were thematized in the social sciences internationally. Second, to underline the correlation between these debates and the reflections raised from feminism, showing the confluence and conflicts among these fields of knowledge. Third, to point out how these issues were conceptualized by social scientists working in Latin American contexts and, particularly, in South American countries. The purpose of doing so is to emphasize the reflective imprint and critical positioning of researchers from and in the region in their exercise of rethinking the ethnocentric biases of some hegemonic arguments of migration studies. We conclude by offering our reflections on the current feminist political struggles in the Southern Cone, highlighting the importance of the debate on migrant women’s rights on the re-semantization of gender relations and theories.