ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the particularities of migration-related characteristics of members of the community of ex-miners who have relocated to the outskirts of Cochabamba as compared to those of Bolivians migrating to Argentina as a whole and migrants in other countries. It discusses the migrants’ immediate origins, the mining town, in order to give ‘identity’ a more thorough grounding. Despite the fact that many miners in the mining town trace their origins in peasant communities, gender relations in the mining town are markedly different, with men having a breadwinning role and women being largely responsible for domestic duties and childcare. The chapter presents the migrants’ identities as miners, ex-miners, miners’ wives, and children of mining communities and former mining communities. The origin of the transnational community is a mining centre, located in the mountainous north-western part of the department of Cochabamba, Bolivia at around 3,800m above sea level.
