AFROCOLOMBIAN CONDITIONS Transnationalization and racialization of the sex trade in the mining towns of the North of Chile

Afro-Colombian women make up a recent migrant stream to the sex market of mining cities in northern Chile. This article examines the representations of these women by Chilean men,women,and institutions. We will see how the arrival and installation of these women generate unresolved tensions in gender relations in these enclaves,where they are contradictorily perceived as both opportunity and threat to traditional gender arrangements of the region in terms of the economy,labor,marriage,and family. I posit that the stigmatization of these women and discrimination against them on the basis of race,nationality,sex,and labor conditions articulate and conflict with the heterogeneous affective and sexual experiences of mine workers,and affect the formation and reproduction of masculinity and socio-sexual contracts in the mining community.