Redoing Gender Relations in Transnational Lives: Ecuadorian and Senegalese Migrants in Spain

Abstract

Are male/female gender relations mainly (mechanically) done, (willing) undone, or (conditionally) redone? To what extent do social structurations, historical processes, and subjective strategies influence gender relations? This article is a contribution to answer these questions. After a short review of the conceptual debate brought about by West and Zimmerman’s notion of “doing gender,” the author’s own long-term empirical research into gender relations in the transnational lives of Ecuadorians and Senegalese in Spain is used to argue that gender relations usually stretch and shrink and are consequently displaced from their original forms by the changing aims, situations, and dynamics in which they are displayed. The main features of these displacements or shifts in the studied case (i.e., hierarchical intersectionality, dual logic, and situated character) confirm that gender relations are conditionally sustained by interactions, which produce continuous variations in their forms and issues.