New Female Migration Literature Written in Europe: Social Stigma Reformulation in Mujeres Migradas by Cinthya Maldonado

Abstract

This work focuses on the emergence of a corpus of contemporary migration literature written by Latin American women in Europe, especially in Spain. It describes its main characteristics and connects its origins with the increased presence of migrants and the feminization of the migratory flows coming from Latin America. From this perspective, it identifies a clear hegemony of cultural materials in these narratives and, more precisely, a detailed description of the relationships between the dominant cultural power group and the subaltern one. It also analyzes the literary presence of the social stigma described by Professor Erving Goffman (1963), which is now resignificated by the experience of these migrants. Thus, Goffman’s approach is used to examine Cinthya Maldonado’s testimony in Mujeres Migradas (2018) and prove how social stigma is reframed through the contact between both cultural power groups. Finally, it discusses how such stigma makes it impossible for female migrants to integrate into their new environment and leads to collateral physical and symbolic violences.