‘I am going, with or without you’: autonomy in Bolivian transnational migrations

Abstract

Autonomy has often been seen as a precondition for achieving gender equality, yet feminist scholarship has been rather ambivalent towards it. In this article, I explore this ambivalence by drawing on the experiences of migrant women, particularly mothers, focusing on the ways in which they negotiated their mobility with their partners. By analysing women's experiences of migration within a context of multi-sited and longitudinal, itinerant ethnography, I historicise their life accounts and place them within a broader framework of social and economic structural changes. On this basis I explore the concept of autonomy, particularly in relation to the exercise of women's agency within a context of market-oriented neoliberal reforms. I also question the potential of women's autonomy for gender equality and argue that there are at least two reasons for feminist scholars to continue being ambivalent towards autonomy.

La autonomía ha sido a menudo una precondición para la adquisición de la igualdad de género, pero el ámbito académico feminista ha sido algo ambivalente hacia ésta. En este artículo analizo esta ambivalencia basándome en las experiencias de las mujeres inmigrantes, particularmente madres, centrándome en las formas en las que ellas negocian su movilidad con sus parejas. Al analizar las experiencias de inmigración de las mujeres en un contexto de una etnografía longitudinal, itinerante y multi-localizada, doy un marco histórico a sus relatos de vida y las ubico en un marco más amplio de cambios estructurales sociales y económicos. A partir de esto, analizo el concepto de autonomía, particularmente en relación al ejercicio de la agencia de las mujeres dentro de un contexto de reformas neoliberales orientadas al mercado. También cuestiono el potencial de la autonomía de las mujeres para alcanzar la igualdad de género y sostengo que existen al menos dos razones para que las investigadoras feministas continúen siendo ambivalentes hacia la autonomía.

Keywords:

• migration
• autonomy
• transnationalism
• gender
• Bolivia

Keywords:

• migración
• autonomía
• trasnacionalismo
• género
• Bolivia

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted under the British Academy for the Post-Doctoral Fellowship (2007–2010); the article also draws on fieldwork funded by the Centre for Development Studies, University of Wales, Swansea (UK) and the Department for International Development (DfID). I would like to thank Sahara Roque Rocabado, Pablo Regalsky, Leonardo de la Torre and María Esther Pozo for their support during fieldwork and Helen Hintjens, Linda McDowell, Ben Rogaly, Beverley Mullings and two anonymous referees for their very useful comments on earlier versions of this article. All errors are mine.

Notes

 1. Fieldwork in Argentina coincided with the aftermath of the Argentine crisis of 2001 and in Spain with the global financial downturn. These are explored in another article (Bastia 2011b). While reference will be made to the crisis, the focus of this article is not on the analysis of the post-crisis return.

 2. Husband and partner are used interchangeably given the custom for women and men to cohabit for long periods of time before formalising their relationship with a civil and religious wedding. Couples are accepted as de facto married once they start cohabiting and have children.

 3. The survey targeted every third household and achieved a high response rate (89.2% and 86.5%, respectively).

 4. Pseudonyms are used throughout for people and places to ensure interviewees' anonymity, except for the city Cochabamba.

 5. The main minerals include wolframite (tungsten) and tin.

 6. I identify each interview with the place and date of the interview. Because interviews in Spain were carried out in three different cities, resulting in a smaller sample in each city, I do not specify the cities so as to ensure the interviewees' anonymity.

 7. Some women from the older generation speak only basic Spanish and some people were trilingual Quechua, Aymara and Spanish speakers.

 8. The coca growing area in the Department of Cochabamba, at the time provided relatively well paid but risky temporary work in coca processing industry.

 9. One of these migrated on her own to Spain, applied unsuccessfully for family reunification on multiple occasions, then returned to Bolivia and went back to Spain with her husband.

10. The main aim of the survey was to gather data about migration trends as well as the main reasons for migration. Rather than including pre-set categories, I left the answers open and constructed the categories after having gathered the data.

11. Domestic violence is very common in the neighbourhood. Only some cases, those deemed ‘extreme’, are condemned.