The silenced voices of women, migrants and the impoverished. A study on representations of poverty in a transnational migratory context

Abstract

Studies of poverty as a social construction have revealed the network of discursive elements and structures that, at different times and places, and promoted by different actors, create and maintain different conceptions of poverty without questioning the assumptions based on the which are articulated. Based on an ethnographic study carried out together with migrant women who work as domestic workers in the city of Granada (Spain) and from their biographical accounts, this article aims to address the representations of different types of poverty from the gender perspective in a transnational migratory context. This way of approaching the study of poverty seeks to examine the constant redefinitions to which representations of poverty are subjected and the meaning they acquire for people, as well as the influence that the migratory process has on their construction. It will also inquire about how these women resist dominant discourses and how these affect their own representations since being labeled as "poor woman" not only refers to a mere material dimension, but this state is associated with a series of characteristics that involve an inferior and devalued status that stigmatizes those who are so considered.