Space, Time, and Gender in the Narrative Literature of Venezuelan Migrant Women in 21st-Century Latin America

This project aims to examine the literary representation of migration in the context of one of the largest migration crises of our time from a gender perspective. It analyzes narrative texts by Venezuelan women writers who have emigrated to other Latin American countries, including their personal, economic, cultural, and literary networks.

Based on the portrayal of migration in 21st-century novels and short stories, it aims to show the role that gender plays in the decision to migrate, the experience of crossing borders, and integration into the host society, as well as in terms of the options available to female migrants. In addition, it examines the extent to which the works studied expose and/or compensate for the experience of a spatial-temporal, permanently provisional in-between narrative. Although the focus is on female migrants (including transgender women), masculinities in the Venezuelan migration context will also be included. Methodologically, the project combines literary studies and narratological approaches with approaches from social sciences migration and gender studies. While previous migration research has focused primarily on the spatial dimensions of gender-specific mobility, this project aims to expand these findings to include the variable of time and to examine how perceptions of the past shape female migrants' visions of the future and how these relate to the (national) time horizons of their host country. In this way, it draws attention not only to a literary corpus by Venezuelan women authors, which is to date little known, but also to the diverse aspects of the migration experiences of Venezuelan women that are expressed in literary narrative texts and have been neglected by purely social science research methods.

Project leaders: Dr. Laura Febres and Prof. Dr. Miriam Lay Brander

Duration: October 1, 2024, to September 30, 2027