Généro y trabajo : la insercion laboral en Francia de las exiliadas republicanas espanola (1936-1956)

Overview & Synopsis

This research focuses on the labour insertion of women from the Spanish Republican exile in France between 1936 and 1956. Taking into account the analytical categories of gender and work, the aim is to examine in detail some of the issues that determined the exile experience of women who fled Spain because of the war and Franco's repression and who settled in the nearby country. For this purpose, we start from the hypothesis that the women of the Spanish Republican exile were active agents, as demonstrated by their relationship with the different activities and jobs that they had to carry out and that determined their experiences. With these perspectives, we have examined the matter of gender and work in the history of Spanish Republican women exiled in France and their labour insertion following a chronological criterion. Firstly, the representations and horizons of working women in Spain are considered, as well as the gender specificities of the Spanish Republican exile and the policies of reception and economic exploitation conducted by the French authorities.Secondly, the experiences of internment of women in different reception structures highlight the importance of the activities carried out within them. We also examine the work of humanitarian aid organisations that have operated in these spaces and also the possibilities for women to emigrate to a third country and analyse their chances of integration. Likewise, the trajectories of Spanish women in France during these years are marked, outside of the internment areas, by the need to demonstrate the possession of one's own resources by the main means: working or family reunification. Also, their fate between 1939 and 1945 was determined by their experience of the war and the German occupation.Finally, the end of the war in France meant the beginning of a new historical period characterised by the acquisition of refugee status, the renunciation of the return to Spain, and the acceleration of the integration process through key tools like work and education. From the second half of the 1950s, the composition of the Spanish community in France changed with the arrival of a new massive wave of labour emigration, in which women played a leading role.