Rethinking Paternities in the Chilean Migratory Context

The reflections and results presented for this congress are part of my doctoral research about fatherhood in Chile.It may be said that the focus on transnational paternity is recent in the migratory studies scenario. In this sense Privilsky (2012) argues that these appeared approximately after the first investigations on transnational maternity driven by the sociologists Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ávila (1997) and the consequent consolidation of this subspecialty within the migration studies with the contributions of Avila 2008; Dreby 2006; Gamburd, 2000; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001; Parreñas 2001, 2005; Schmalzbauer, 2004; among others. Why is it relevant to study transnational paternities in Chile? First, there has been little exploration of paternities in the migratory context, considering that migration to Chile has increased since the 1990s (Martínez, 2003; Schiappacasse, 2008), and especially since 1995 (Godoy, 2007; Santander , 2006; Stefoni, 2005). Latin American migration to Chile has quadrupled in absolute numbers since the end of the civil-military dictatorship until today (INE, 2015) (OBIMID, 2016) and a certain parity is visualized in the statistical figures of entry of migrant men and women to this country. In this context, it is then relevant to be able to investigate whether the migration context generates tensions in the traditional gender role of men, resulting in transitions to other models of paternity. In this sense, it can be said that the study stands as a contribution to the understanding of transnational migrations and the family and that all the components of a network are relieved where different actors interact in different ways, distinguish tensions, contradictions that make to rethink models of paternity in the Chilean contemporary migration context.