Analysing Ethnosexual Boundarying in Postcolonial Migration Contexts. the Case of Colombian and Brazilian Women in Spain and Portugal

From an intersectional, decolonial and transnational approach, this research addresses three decades of migrations of Colombian and Brazilian women to Spain and Portugal. In the Iberian countries, nationality has become an ethnosexualization device that dictates the very particular ways in which migrant women are imagined, seriously conditioning their socio-occupational opportunities.

Departing from a multi-situated ethnography carried out between 2017 and 2022 in São Paulo, Porto and Madrid, and including in-depth interviews with forty Colombian and Brazilian migrant women, from different social/racial backgrounds, and with different positions in the migratory cycle; this research furthers the concept of “ethnosexual boundarying”.

We track the women´s migration/life trajectories from origin to destination contexts to analyze how gender, race and class intersect under different shapes and across different spaces and temporalities, affecting their development. In doing so, we aim to understand ethnosexual boundary work in Brazilian and Colombian women´s postcolonial migrations while overcoming methodological nationalism.

Policy restrictions imposed on the poorest and darkest women force them to undertake risky strategies to materialise their migration projects, such as resorting to trafficking networks to cross Iberian borders. Once in destination, they enter the precarious and unregulated labour niches where body plays a predominant role -such as prostitution, care work, hostelry and aesthetics-. And they often marry Portuguese and Spanish men to get residence and work permits, which are more easily obtained when signing a sexual contract with a national citizen. The survival strategies displayed by Brazilian and Colombian women disclose how race and gender enable the violence executed against migrant women in the transnational/postcolonial space. boundary work, the reproduction of colonial identities, and the expansion of sexual markets in the former metropoles.