Practices of Resistance among Young Bolivian Immigrants Working in a Brick Factory in Córdoba

PIZARRO, CYNTHIA ALEJANDRA; BASUALDO, MARÍA LOURDES; FERREIRO, MARIANA

Bolivian Labor Immigrants` Experiences in Argentina

Lexington Books

Año: 2016; p. 85 - 104

This paper examines the experiences of young Bolivian migrants who live and work in a brickyard in a peri-urban area near Córdoba city. We describe certain transnational networks that help them to tolerate their extremely poor living and working conditions. We examine these young laborers` recollections of resistance practices. Those practices are re-signified when they evoke painful life experiences and situations of stress, fear, loss and uncertainty. We focus on these memories in order to understand the emotions involved in their experiences. We base in the assumption that they are social agents capable of questioning the stereotypes of submission that are assigned to them by the host society. Besides, we show how they resist without confronting. We highlight various mechanisms of resistance such as leaving the worksites, saying ironic remarks in the brickyard and believing in contingent utopias of socioeconomic mobility and / or ethnic - racial whitening. We argue that migration experiences are contradictory because they involve experiences of oppression and the search for freedom as well as different ways of resistance.