Laura Torres-Vargas Dissertation Defense

Please join us for the Laura Torres-Vargas' dissertation defense.

Venezuelan Women's Migratory Movements

Perceptions of Agency, Land, Community, And Government in Colombia, Panama, and the USA

Location: Sondheim 001 / Cart Lab, UMBC; Friday, October 23, 2026; 12 pm ET

Abstract: Migration has become a central topic in global public discourse, shaping laws, political debates, and the lived realities of migrant communities. Migratory movements are not always voluntary; they often arise from accumulated social, economic, and political pressures. For Venezuelan women, these conditions have driven migration to countries such as Colombia, Panama, and, in many cases, the United States. Throughout these journeys, Venezuelan women encounter shifting social, political, and embodied realities that reshape their sense of community, identity, government, borders, and personal agency. For Venezuelan women, these pressures have generated migration flows toward Colombia, Panama, and the United States, among other countries. Their journeys il lustrate what feminist migration scholars describe as embodied mobility: movements that transform not only geographic location but also subjectivity, identity, and relations to community and state. As they navigate documentation regimes, border infrastructures, and shifting power relations, Venezuelan women renegotiate their sense of belonging, agency, and the meaning of the social, political, and bodily self. Drawing on 40 interview cases where Venezuelan women migrated across Colombia, Panama, and/or the United States, this research found that documentation processes, power negotiations, and the formation of support networks and migratory webs, are central to how women experience the migration journey. Through interviews, counter mapping, and discourse analysis with Venezuelan women in these three countries, the study examines how external factors and social ly constructed identities -such as employment opportunities, education, gender, class, and age- shape their social relations, border and bodily experiences, and interactions with governmental systems.