Climate Change, Women Migrants and the Potentialities of Intersectional Analysis in the Reconquista River Basin, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract

This paper is based on an interdisciplinary and participatory action research that explores the socio-environmental strategies and climate-based local reality faced by thousands of migrant women workers that live near the Reconquista River Basin, northwest of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area. This basin is one of the most polluted areas of Argentina, housing both migrants and the largest open-air dump in the country located in the municipal district of General San Martín. As it will be described, this rather lugubrious and unhealthy work of selecting and removing garbage represents a set of socio-environmental strategies developed by women in the area to cope with the social reproduction of their family nuclei. The responsibilities of their livelihoods fall mainly on the women themselves who also take care of the children, families and neighborhoods, which implies a huge overburden. However, knowledge native to the places of origin in combination with the hard conditions of the places of destination and the different political opportunities structures in which they are inserted make these women innate leaders in their own communities. Therefore, the paper will depart from the critical implication of some global categories used to understand climate change and women migrations in order to analyze data collected in 15 neighborhoods of the Reconquista Area (RA). The aim is to propose specific theoretical and methodological tools for understanding the active role of women migrants in collective strategies of adaptation to climate change effects in localities of the Global South. Specifically, we will examine the potentialities of intersectional approach to comprehend women migrants’ agency capacity and the possibility of contributing to their better access to rights, resources and decision making through reflexive research.