Migration Policy and State Control Mechanisms: Bolivian Women Laborers Who Cross the Borders to Argentina

PIZARRO, CYNTHIA ALEJANDRA

Guanzhong

Conferencia; International Conference Migration, Ethnicity and the State; 2015

Forum Ethnicity as a Political Resource de la Universidad de Colonia, Alemania y el Centro de Estudios Urbanos de la Universidad Sun Yat-Sen, Chin

This paper shows the results of a research on Bolivian women who have crossed the international border and settled in the peri-urban areas of Argentina, especially the experiences of those women coming from the poorest rural areas of Bolivia in the context of both, the restrictive migratory legislation of the last century and the current more inclusive regulation which was enacted in 2014. I explore the way in which different state control mechanisms work and the extent to which they are implemented at the international border and within the Argentinean territory. I pose the difficulties that these women, like other marginalized groups, experience due to class, ethnic group, gender and nationality. Despite the change in the actual immigration policy of Argentina which grants the immigrants human rights, it continues to foster the control of labor migrations through state policies in accordance with the paradigm of the governance of migration. I describe from an ethnographic perspective three cases representative of the different ways in which the most vulnerable Bolivian women cross the borders. On the one hand, I point out that there still remains the feeling of fear and trauma associated with this experience. On the other hand, I refer to the agency of some of these women, focusing on their ability to sort out state control policies which regulate labor migrations.