How did Ecuador’s southern highlands come to be the region that experienced the most international emigration in the 21st century? How does the movement of persons relate to state construction? Does a migrant subjectivity exist?

Together with a complex analytical perspective – combining time, space, and movement – the author looks at responses to these three questions. She maintains that migratory processes from communities in Loja and Cañar, between 1950 and 1990, are connected with the construction by the state of these two provinces as regions on the periphery. As we understand the political dynamics of peripheral states, we enter into the experience of three generations of migrants who have tested forms of social mobility, of inclusion, and of connection with the global space beyond Ecuador. Readers of this book will find a rigorous and detailed analysis of a phenomenon that has marked the life history of many families from the south of the country.