Viajar nas experiências de mulheres: reflexões sobre os sentidos da mobilidade

Abstract

Based on empirical research conducted in Santa Lucia, small town located in the center of sugarcane production paulista, the purpose of this article is to analyze mobility experiences of women who traveled from Maranhao to Sao Paulo. Inspired by native expression to travel, I seek to highlight the multiple motivations and ways of giving meaning to the mobilities in the researched universe. A considerable part of migratory studies, focusing on the perspective of labor displacement analysis, restrict mobility to the sphere of labor. Otherwise, in the universe of migrations, women are seen as those who wait for their departing husbands, or as those who follow or just accompany them. I argue, based on field reports, that women actively participate in decisions and negotiations about the coming and going of families. Beyond work relations, I also highlight the projects of building individual and / or family autonomy, the dimensions associated with the acts of knowing and caring, beyond the events concerning the separations, births and diseases as the main motivations and meanings that emerge from women's narratives. The trajectories discussed here were reconstructed based on research materials composed of interviews and fragments of informal conversations, occurred during the fieldwork.