On 19 January 2021 Leyla Méndez Caro presented her doctoral thesis to the UAB: “Corpolugaridades y contrapaisajes de la nación. South American migrant women and the disputes for being in camps in Antofagasta, Chile”. Inter-University Doctoral Programme in Gender Studies: Culture, Societies and Politics, Inter-University Institute of Gender and Gender Studies. Thesis supervised by Diego Falconi Trávez and Anna Ortiz Guitart.
The objective of this research is identify the networks of places and corporalities (subjectivities) in the process of displacement and subsequent habitability in campamentos for South American migrant women living in the city of Antofagasta, northern Chile. The analytical core focuses on the relationship between corporality, gender configurations, coloniality and space/time. Thus, this work analyses the discourses of coloniality and racialization that circulate around the processes of land grabs and occupation of spaces and set out to reconstruct places of memory about the history and uprising of the camp to narrate otherwise, the resistance and subversions present in their corpolugaridades. The co-laboradoras of this research were South American women born in Chile, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Some of them have indigenous and afro-descendant backgrounds. Their ages are between 14 and 60 years. This work considers a qualitative approach and the semiotic-material space of research is developed from a proposal called body geographies. This proposal takes different phases and techniques of production and creation of information, mainly articulated with the creation of corpo-spatial stories. The analysis of information contemplates discourse analysis of coloniality in dialogue with a narrative approach that make visible micro-resistances around living in campamentos. The main findings warn of historical dispossession and multiple oppressions mediated by a matrix of racialization and coloniality of gender. Also, in this context, complex forms of organization and habitability emerge. These are based on networks of solidarity and care within the campamentos that challenge the processes of socio-spatial segregation and processes of otherness and securitization driven by the national states.