Publication
Title
Beyond the bird in the cage? Translocal embodiment and trajectories of Nicaraguan female migrants in Seville, Spain
Author
Abstract
In migration scholarship, the migrant body has recently begun to gain recognition as a productive analytical scale for exploring politics of mobility: the highly differentiated ways in which migration is accessed and lived. However, a tendency to treat bodies as sites of gendered and racialized suffering can obscure migrant agency and differentiation as well as the ways in which migrant bodies can also be seen as sites of resistance and achievement. This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the ways in which mobility politics shape divergent migrant trajectories by putting forward a translocal embodiment perspective. The paper argues that migrant bodies constitute key sites of struggle over mobility, and that looking at migrant embodied practice in translocal context can further unravel the differentiations that shape migrant trajectories across space and time. The papers argument builds on theoretical notions of intersectionality, embodied cultural capital and translocality to enrich the discussion of mobility politics. Empirically, it draws on multi-sited ethnographic research with Nicaraguan families, focusing on female Nicaraguan migrants working in informal domestic employment in Spain, to explore how bodies and embodied practices matter throughout these migrants trajectories. In particular, the paper intends to do justice to migrant agency by exploring how bodies that are often victimized can also be considered as stratified resources of translocal negotiation. The translocal embodiment perspective put forward in the paper shows that migrant bodies constitute a multi-faceted, non-erasable component of the unsettled yet situated mobility politics that shape divergent trajectories.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Geoforum. - London
Publication
London : 2020
ISSN
0016-7185
DOI
10.1016/J.GEOFORUM.2018.05.019
Volume/pages
116 (2020) , p. 243-251
ISI
000591892200027
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 14.06.2018
Last edited 09.10.2023
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