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‘We're Better Off Outside Our Country’

Diasporic Ecuadorian Women in Spain Since the Mid-1990s

estheR Cuesta is a PhD student of Comparative Literature in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research centers on the documentation and study of Andean women's oral and written diasporic narratives. Her essay ‘Guayaquileña (In)Documentada: One-Way Ticket to My Diaspora(s): A Testimonio’, in Techno-Futuros: Critical Interventions in Latina/o Studies is forthcoming in 2007. Address: Program in Comparative Literature Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Massachusetts, 430 Herter Hall, 161 Presidents Dr. Amherst MA 01003-9312 USA [email: ecuesta{at}complit.umass.edu]

Increasing sociopolitical and economic instability – stemming, in part, from the adoption of neoliberal policies – has compelled at least two million (2 percent of total population) Ecuadorians to migrate to the United States and member states of the European Union in search of jobs and a means to survive. It is estimated that more than half a million Ecuadorians live in Spain, and constitute one of the largest immigrant national groups in this country, alongside Moroccans. Women, who have often migrated without their families, make up half of this diaspora.This transdisciplinary study is based on interviews with Ecuadorian women in Spain and Ecuador, and informed by feminist methodologies. It situates the epistemological standpoints of women from (lower) middle and professional classes within recent Ecuadorian migrations, while analyzing the impact of Ecuadorian women's migration to Spain on the sociocultural life of Ecuador, as well as on key aspects of Ecuadorian women's lives in Spain. Despite the discrimination, racism, and xenophobia that Ecuadorian women experience abroad, most agree that they are ‘better off living outside of Ecuador’.

Key Words: Ecuadorians • migrants • women • Spain

Journal of Developing Societies, Vol. 23, No. 1-2, 113-143 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0169796X0602300208


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