| dc.description.abstract | In this dissertation, I examine representations of Andean diasporas in film, literature, and a variety of other cultural texts, from a comic strip to a cooking show. To contextualize my readings of these cultural representations, I draw from the ever-expanding interdisciplinary fields of Migration Studies, Transnational Studies, and Diaspora Studies. The plethora of social science research in these fields is complemented by close reading of artistic texts that pose their own questions about shifting migrant identities, transnational lives, and diaspora-homeland-host country relationships. Each of my four chapters focuses on the representation of one segment of host country labor markets into which members of Andean diasporas have inserted themselves—or, in the fourth chapter, in which they have been forcibly inserted through trafficking. Each chapter, then, employs a different lens to probe questions about diaspora members’ experiences, their evolving connections with their countries of origin, and their ambivalent reception in their host countries. In Chapter 1, I explore images of Andeans working in food preparation in Argentina, and the surprising way in which diaspora food and foodways become laden with weighty questions about national identity. From that migration trajectory within the Global South, I turn in Chapter 2 to the feminization of migration on a South-North migration corridor driven by the globalization of carework. I consider representations of Andean women who engage in carework in Spain, their experiences of transnational motherhood, and the lives of those left behind. In Chapter 3, I explore music and dance performance of Andean diasporas on a global stage, looking at questions of authenticity as they intersect with possibilities of income, recognition, and connection. In the final chapter, I examine conflicting representations of the trafficking of Andean women to work enslaved in the global sex industry. I probe the complexity of narratives of trafficking and rescue in which victims may become traffickers and rescuers may be less than heroic. I conclude by looking at directions for future study, particularly the gaps left when the cultural representations in widest circulation are those produced by natives of host nations, not members of Andean diasporas themselves. | |
