Abstract

LOPEZ FERNANDEZ, Rosalía. The silenced voices of migrant and impoverished women. A study of representations of poverty in a transnational migratory context. Cultura representaciones soc [online]. 2017, vol.12, n.23, pp.30-60.  Epub Sep 01, 2017. ISSN 2007-8110.

Studies on poverty as a social construction have shown the network of discursive elements and structures that, at different times and places, promoted by various stakeholders, create and maintain different conceptions of poverty without questioning the premises on which they are articulated. In this text we attempt to address the representations of different types of poverty from a gender perspective in a transnational migratory context based on ethnographic case studies of migrant women who work as domestic workers in the city of Granada (Spain) and on their biographical narratives. This approach to the study of poverty aims to examine the constant redefinitions that the representations of poverty has suffered, the meanings they acquire for people and the influence that the migration process has in their construction. We also explore how these women resist the dominant discourses and how they affect their own representations when being labeled as “women living in poverty”, which not only refers to a mere material dimension, but also to a state associated with a number of features that imply an inferior and devalued status that stigmatizes those who are considered as such.

Keywords : poverty; biographic narratives; social representations; women; immigrant.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )