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Mulheres-Venezuelanas-Lideranças-Comunitárias em Boa Vista-RR: Tecendo Novos Espaços de Resistência Política e Coletiva - Venezuelan-Women-Community-Leaders in Boa Vista-RR: Weaving New Spaces for Political and Collective Resistance
Elis Moura Marques
Affiliation: Federal University of the Triângulo Mineiro, Uberaba & Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Keywords: Migratory Processes; Venezuelan Women; Gender Relations; Family Relations; Community Relations.
Categories: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Demetrios Project
DOI: 10.17160/josha.12.5.1099
Languages: Portuguese
Venezuelan forced migration has led to the international displacement of more than 7 million people by the end of 2022, of which 52% are women. It is the largest recent displacement in Latin America and, in this context, Brazil has become the fifth largest migratory destination in the Latin American region. Socio-economic conditions are deeply related to how families organize themselves in Brazil and how they work together to produce living conditions, especially in situations of impoverishment. As a strategy for confronting social exclusion, community organizations have been set up in occupied spaces, in which Venezuelan women have taken on the role of community leaders. Historically, gender relations have operated in women's lives, producing social and gender inequalities, asseverated at the intersection with other social markers. However, in the experience of social exclusion, mobilizations of claim, resistance and confrontation led by women also arise dialectically. Understand how family and community relations are woven into the experiences of Venezuelan migrant and refugee women in Brazil is to take an intersectional feminist stance that aims to break with the concealment of the oppressions they experience. In view of this scenario and the need to contribute to the construction of localized knowledge, a qualitative exploratory study was conducted, from which two studies were derived. Study 1 aimed to understand the collective experiences of Venezuelan women community leaders in Boa Vista/RR. Study 2, in turn, aimed to understand the experiences of Venezuelan women community leaders in Boa Vista/RR, especially how family relationships are being woven in the face of the migration process. Three cisgender Venezuelan women who lead Venezuelan migrant communities in Boa Vista/RR participated in the research. A single semi-open interview script was used to obtain the information, composed of questions related to the study's objectives 1 and 2. The questions included the social and identity profile of the participants and their migratory, family and community experiences. The data was interpreted using a constructive-interpretative analysis and based on an intersectional feminist epistemological position. In study 1, it was identified that social and gender inequalities operate in the articulation of women as leaders by impeding access to the labour market and keeping them mostly in the communities, corroborated by their association with domesticity which mobilized the extension of family care work to the community. The community confrontation they led was produced by the need to resist social exclusion, articulated from an ethical relationship of care, but also sustained by the engendering of gender relations. In study 2, it was identified that social and gender inequalities are intensified in the experiences of Venezuelan women as they are made doubly responsible for family and community care work, dialectically producing the construction of community networks and psychological suffering. The impacts produced are engendered in the overload of exclusive care management in the face of the reduced support network characteristic of migratory contexts, but mainly by the inefficiency of the public authorities in confronting gender inequalities and, therefore, social inequalities.