Exile and national identity, Chilean women in Canada

This research is about exile and national identity as reconstructed and narrated by women twenty years or more after having moved into exile. The analysis is based on the life histories of ten Chilean women, plus myself, living in Toronto, Canada. Their stories provide an excellent opportunity to problematize hegemonic and universalizing categories that tend to exclude or silence the experience and narratives of marginal groups. Based on in-depth interviews this study addresses the following questions: How these refugee women experience and perceive the 'imagined community' called nation? What happens when 'bodies', such as these Chilean women, cross borders as refugees? How does their involvement in different social spaces in Canada--social, linguistic, and ethnic communities--enter into their sense of national and gender identity? The study describes and explains how constructions of national identities have disadvantaged these Chilean women in both their country of birth and the country of asylum. Touching upon different features of their life history I map out how they construct home, community and nation from the perspective of the various spaces they occupy. The inequalities concealed in the vision of a common nationhood collide with women's sense of belonging--or being in a place that is understood to be 'home'. I argue in this thesis that these women in exile inhabit a space 'in between', a space that in territorial terms does not coincide with one particular country but falls in between two or more countries. With regard to the production of knowledge women's experience of this 'in between' space can be seen to provide a view that is situated between the global and more generalized views on 'nation' and 'national identity', commonly found in dominant discourses, and the localized singular and more specific views of those lacking this 'in between' experience. Lending voice to this lived experience provides for a more fluid representation of the concept. Exiled women's relationships with both countries are based on different and conflicting loyalties, memories and expectations. Three features appear particularly important. Memories about their past (from childhood to young adulthood) result in a longing for their homeland. At the same time, Chile (as a nation) is being subjected to a political critique. Secondly, Canada's politics of integration and a social structure of race, class and gender relations impact upon their life in this country. This forces them to negotiate and construct an identity that is viable. Finally, the duration of exile adds new uncertainties and dilemmas regarding women's life. The analysis points to the dialectical tension of having a disaggregated or diasporic identity, being partially Chilean and partially from the new surroundings. Thus 'nation', as a territorial and imagined community, once an important reference point and force in the lives of these exiled women--particularly during the days of their involvement with the national political project of Unidad Popular--does not play much of a role in their sense of identity and belonging. Other communities and forms of attachments have emerged from their new locations including projects that give ethical meaning to their life.