Reproductive and care work: changes and permanence of invisibility and precariousness of migrant women’s life in Ijuí/RS and Human Rights violation

Abstract

This research investigated European and Latin American woman immigrant lives in two groups of analisys: women who migrated to Ijuí/RS in 20^th century and women who moved in the 21^st century; in order to envision the execution of reproductive and care work not only in the family space, but also in the public space, through the perception of remuneration. The research aimed to create a feminist, anti-capitalist, decolonial, intersectional study, based on biopolitical theory. To prepare the work, which has a qualitative nature, the deductive method was used, with the following procedural techniques applied: bibliographical; documentary technique, with assistance from the Anthropological Museum Director Pestana; and finally, it applies the field research procedure technique, based on a semi-structured questionnaire, conducting interviews with immigrant women. The results obtained show that women who moved in the 20th century did so by male choice, being passive in making the decision to migrate. In comparison, women who migrate in the 21st century do so because they intend to change their living conditions and that of their offspring, ratifying the phenomenon of feminization of migration. Venezuelan women suffer from prejudices of racism and xenophobia, mainly due to markers of race and class, performing reproductive and care activities as a gateway for them into the job market and acquiring a double character in the working day. The great permanence identified by the research is that domestic work still falls to women with the support of the legitimacy that patriarchy attributed to them, using concepts such as love and mothering as intrinsically feminine attributes, making women responsible for carrying out these tasks within the private space, without remuneration and without giving visibility and importance to this work as it is the basis for the capitalist production chain to continue rotating.