REFLEXIVITY IN RESEARCH INTO RURAL WOMEN IN LATIN AMERICA FROM A FEMINIST DECOLONIAL PERSPECTIVE

AMBORT MARIA EUGENIA

Leuven

Congreso; European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry; 2018

KU Leuven

In this work we aim to shed light on the process of reflexivity involved in the construction of a qualitative research project designed to explore the labour and migratory trajectories of rural Bolivian women working in the horticultural belt of Gran La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Specifically, we pose questions regarding the way in which they represent their self-perception as women, peasants and Bolivian migrants in the narration of their life histories, and how this changes following their migratory experience and participation in a feminist organization.We begin by addressing the coloniality of power, situated knowledge and feminist epistemology, given that social relations in Latin America are strongly influenced by colonial considerations, with race and gender acting as determining factors in the construction of subjectivity. This is followed by an overview of the socio-productive context of horticulture in La Plata, Argentina, characterized by a strong tradition of migrant labour currently hegemonized by the Bolivian community. The third section problematizes the precarious and vulnerable living and working conditions of the Bolivian community in horticulture, highlighting the particular situation of women, and the various forms of violence embedded in their bodies and their lives, traversed by their experiences of gender, race and class. Finally, we carry out an exercise of reflexivity regarding the way that led us to pose these questions on race and gender, the context that opened up channels of communication and trust with these peasant women, and how the perspective of the coloniality of power allows us to generate locally ingrained and socially committed research processes.