El vuelo corto. Mujeres y migraciones en la Edad Moderna | Ofelia Rey Castelão

Ofelia Rey Castelao Imagem Unidade de Mulher e Ciencia Xunta de Galicia
Ofelia Rey Castelão | Imagem: Unidade de Mulher e Ciencia – Xunta de Galicia
1Women’s mobility and migration and their role as migrant workers in host societies is a topic that only recently has been acknowledged by the scholarship on migration history and started to receive some attention. However, it still remains a rather understudied matter not only in this sub-field of history, but also in labour history. El vuelo corto. Mujeres y migraciones en la Edad Moderna (or The Short Flight. Women and Migrations in the Early Modern Age, in English) by Ofelia Rey Castelao is an important contribution to enrich the knowledge of the international academic community.

2Firstly, this study examines the relation of women with mobility as well as migration and work, beyond the classical approaches to the study of the topic that either portray women solely as dependent migrants in the context of family mobility and migration, or as victims of male migration and seasonal mobility. Rey Castelao does that in two different ways. On the one hand, the author looks at women as active historical agents in these processes of displacement, namely as migrant workers engaging in short- and long-distance migration with either a seasonal, temporary or permanent character. On the other hand, Rey Castelao reconstructs the trajectories and experiences of women as historical actors that not merely endured the consequences of male migration and temporary mobility but that had agency and actively looked for solutions and tried to take advantage of the new circumstances in which they found themselves in. Leia Mais