“WOMEN IN MOTION: EXPERIENCING MIGRATIONS IN

FEMININE”

Natalia Fernández-Díaz*

We tend to forget that migration is a chapter of a human story that

brings as a consequence inequity within the family, in terms of
wealth, occupational status or access to education, to work or to
knowledge. According to a recent UNIFEM report “almost half of the
world's 200 million migrants are women. They migrate to work, to
reunite with their families or otherwise find a better future”.
Theoretically the process of migration would give some opportunities
to women to explore initiatives and assume the sacrifices of all that
process, but the truth is that sometimes women are pushed into
leaving their home country by deep gender inequality and feminized
poverty. Today we will talk with some women who intend to share
their achievements and frustrations as migrants.

In our patriarchal social system there is something worst than being a

woman, and that is to be a divorced woman in a foreign country.
Chinese women in Barcelona, for instance, complain about their
situation of total vulnerability: once they have divorced, they loose
the right to see their children again. It is a separation in a radical
sense that, in general, causes permanent emotional turbulences and
it does not help very much neither to social integration nor to a
healthy survival. But those are simple examples of the enormous
difficulties immigrant women have to undergo.

Lili He is too young to get married or to suffer the consequences that

divorce has for other Chinese women. However her life in the
wonderful Western is, so far, an inventory of distressing experiences.
“I come from a town called Wen Zhou, in the province of Zheng Jiang.
I am 21 and I came here when I was 18, because my mother asked for
a family reunification. We sell clothes…We were told that it was very
easy to earn money here, but there are a lot of municipal norms, you
are not allowed opening your shop on Sunday, you have to work
hardly and you don’t receive so much money…In my town I went to
college, but here I have no time to study, I have problems with the
language and I spend hours and hours playing in front of my
computer…In my country I had my friends, we could go everywhere
at night, everything was happier there…In China men pay for
everything: here you have to pay fifty-fifty and at the end that is a lot
of money…but I guess that I will stay in Barcelona”.

Lili He is a good example of endogamic society that exports its model

of norms and behaviour to other countries, causing a lack of
adaptation that usually leads to alienation. Personal expectations and
the implacability of reality meet in conflict, with no chances of
reconciliation and no space for hopes.

The experience of Herminia Ordenes, 53 years, currently living in

Spain is quite different. She is a double migrant and in her discourse
there are lights as well as shadows:

“I left Chile when I was 20. It was due, on one hand, to political
problems and also because I fell in love with a Canadian man. In
Canada I was married 11 years; we had two children. I could finish my
studies as a social worker and worked for 14 years at a house for
emigrants.
Sometimes I went to Chile to visit my family, but my adult life as a
woman was in Québec, a city I deeply love, because of its quality of
life, because of its people…In Canada I have actively participated in a
Chilean association…We concentrated on keeping our culture alive.
However I had a burn out because of my work…
I went to Cuba several times, and I had the opportunity of living there
for about 8 months, teaching French to Cuban people. After that I
came back to Québec…I met a Spaniard via Internet, we get married
and I arrived in Barcelona”.

At the end she thinks that the country she had chosen for her life, her
future and her attachment was Canada. “I have memories of Québec,
I remember very good people with sense of delicacy. They are
respectful with environment, and with other people’s rights. Nature is
everywhere”. She becomes more critical when she points out social
prejudices and how difficult they make adaptation: “I believed that
everything would be easier in Barcelona, but it wasn’t. It is difficult to
obtain an acknowledgement of my certificate of studies and I felt
discrimination in the context of my husband’s family…They think that
I am here because of his money… I have to suffer a stigma as a Latin
migrant and that’s all”.

She cannot avoid a reflection on loneliness and migration: “The

immigrant is always alone. In my opinion, immigration is just a
process for the rest of your life”.

*Ph.D. in Linguistics. MA in German Language, MA in Human Sexuality

and MA in Philosophy of Science. Translator and Professor.