Migrant Women’s Bodies in Transit: From Sub-Saharan Africa to Spain in Real Life and Film

Abstract

[Abstracts] The purpose of this chapter is to focus on African women’s bodies in transit from West Africa to Spain, in view of Gerardo Olivares’s42 pioneer film on the topic, 14 Kilometros (2007). Although the protagonist Violet’s journey does not speak for all African migrant women’s passage to Spain, it is my intention to highlight and analyze certain experiences that female migrant subjects share—even before the actual journey starts—as well as to address specific gender-oriented issues, such as prostitution or sex trafficking, that assault them throughout the duration of their excruciatingly painful voluntary or forced self-exile. In this sense, I would maintain that for the African women in transit, whether real or fictional, the journey of migration to Spain is written on their bodies. Finally, throughout the chapter I comment on and establish a parallel between the transatlantic slave trade and contemporary human trafficking and migration subjects.