| The present thesis, a part of the ethnology of globalization, documents the process of insertion of Peruvian first generation educated immigrant women into the multiethnic city of Montreal. During the last three decades of the 20th century, the markers of globalization have become more visible and have severely affected nations such as Peru, whose economic problems are multiplied by social and cultural factors as well as political and military ones, resulting in thousands of dead and missing. The stagnant contact with its weakened social links has provoked an unprecedented feminized emigration to all corners of the world. Canada and Quebec, lands of immigration, with their own history and immigration policies, has opened their doors to accept these migrants. The latter bring a cultural baggage in the form of their bodies-made-history, which mediates the insertion process, in a multiethnic society based on objective "ethnic identity" criteria and endowed with instruments regulating the social order, dividing that social reality between immigrants (the minority) and non-immigrants (the majority) characterized by ethnic boundaries and processes of inclusion/exclusion.; This social position allows us to use the "bodies-made-history" concept to speak of the immigrant women's actual experience as the site which permits for articulation; anchoring oneself; learning, mirroring and uttering social interrelationships while internalizing them and their possibilities, a reality hitherto unknown. And thus, the concept "bodies-made-history" is the thread woven through the three objectives: (1) Retrace certain historical events that, through globalization and power relations, have served to divide and to create geopolitical borders, have identified and induced changes in societies such as the Peruvian, and have formed the memory that is carried by the body-made-history of Peruvians who immigrate, since it is the body that serves as a mediator in the process of insertion. (2) Identify the historical events in Canada and Quebec that explain the ideological and political weight of the categorization used in the immigration laws and policies, sustained by scientific discourses, that are centered on difference and act as a potential obstacle in the insertion process, all this taking into consideration the perception of Peruvian women. (3) From the stories of these women, document the process of insertion into the city of Montreal, and into different social fields, such as the neighborhood, school, university, family, workplace, the sexual and the sacred, outlining membership in multiple facets of contemporary life both locally and globally. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
