Creative Labour of The Venezuelan Diaspora: Entrepreneurship, Imagination, and Precarity in Spain

委内瑞拉目前的经济危机导致世界第二大流离失所人口，自2014年以来已有超过700万人离开。由于文化、语言和历史上的相似之处，西班牙已成为一条受欢迎的移民之路。该项目将研究在西班牙的委内瑞拉移民如何在跨国移民、经济危机和全球转向非正规就业的背景下创造机会和身份。这将通过对散居国外的委内瑞拉人中的非正规劳动进行民族志研究来实现--他们中的许多人受雇于所谓的零工经济，从事出租车司机、保姆、语言学费、在S咖啡馆和餐馆兼职工作，以及通过Twitch、YouTube和TikTok等平台销售内容和商品的在线经济行为。虽然现有的关于移民和不稳定劳动力的研究集中在经济必要性上，但该项目旨在研究创造性和非正式工作是所谓的平台移民(柯林斯2021)不可或缺的一部分，如何包含跨国移民一系列复杂而多样的经历。该项目将围绕两个关键主题展开：1)创造性劳动；2)想象力和希望。这些调查路线不是详述危机或受害者，而是通过考虑社会经济背景、历史、需求和散居海外的人的多样性，使机构能够更突出地出现。这种民族志方法使人们能够在基层上看到全球权力结构和不平等等级是如何通过日常生活经验而不是抽象的分类构成的(Ehrkamp 2019)。关注创造性劳动说明了移民和东道国之间的互惠关系，并使有关移民的持久叙述复杂化。通过关注日常活动，我打算了解农民工的生活和劳动是如何在既有创造力又受限制的条件下实现的。研究问题本项目提出以下问题：1.移民如何使新形式的创造力成为可能并成为必要？2.委内瑞拉移民中新的创业形式和理念如何使现有的对劳动和创造力的理解复杂化？3.性别、种族、阶级和国籍的概念在移民后如何转变以支持创业战略？方法-本项目将实体和数字现场连接起来，以突出海外侨民空间中创造力的重要性。民族志工作和通过数字活动的屏幕外阅读展示了一系列基于物理和社交媒体的实践如何折射生活经验和身份(罗杰斯和劳埃德-埃文斯，2021年)，突出对话者塑造、发展和加强研究的力量。在马德里和相应的数字空间进行了12个多月的民族志田野工作，许多散居国外的人实际和虚拟地位于那里，民族志田野工作将追踪劳动力网络。在西班牙现有研究网络内的滚雪球抽样将形成由企业主、零工经济工作者和兼职人员组成的多样化样本，通过定性方法的组合进行，包括：在私人和公共空间进行参与者观察半结构访谈和口述历史散居海外的社交媒体空间的数字民族志共同创建数字档案这一内容将形成一个视频、音频和文本材料的数字档案，促进那些支持研究的人的持续参与(Gill 2019)。它还将突出潜在的传记和技能集，将项目与移民、劳动力和身份的更大背景联系起来，并使创造性的来世成为可能(Johnson等人。2021年)。

Venezuela's current economic crisis has resulted in the world's second-largest displaced population, with over seven million people leaving since 2014. Owing to cultural, linguistic, and historic affinities, Spain has become a popular migration pathway. This project will examine how Venezuelan migrants in Spain construct opportunities and identities in the context of transnational migration, economic crisis, and a global shift towards informal employment. This will be achieved through an ethnographic study of informal labour among the Venezuelan diaspora - many of whom are employed in the so-called gig economy, undertaking taxi driving, nannying, language tuition, working off the books in cafés and restaurants, as well as online economic practices such as selling content and goods through platforms like Twitch, YouTube and TikTok. Whilst existing research on migrants and precarious labour focuses on economic necessity, this project aims to examine how creative and informal work, integral to so-called platform migration (Collins 2021), encompasses an array of complex and diverse experiences for transnational migrants.The project will be organised around two key thematic threads: 1) creative labour; 2) imagination and hope. Rather than dwelling on crises or victimhood, these lines of inquiry are deployed to enable a greater foregrounding of agency by considering the socioeconomic context, history, needs, and diversity within the diaspora.This ethnographic approach enables a ground-level view of how global structures of power and hierarchies of inequality are constituted through everyday lived experiences, rather than abstract categorisations (Ehrkamp 2019). Attending to creative labour illustrates the reciprocal relationships between migrants and host nations and complicates enduring narratives about immigration. By paying attention to everyday activities, I intend to understand how migrant lives and labours are realised in conditions that are simultaneously creative and constrained. Research questionsThis project asks the following:1. How does migration enable and necessitate new forms of creativity?2. How do new forms and ideas of entrepreneurialism amongst Venezuelan migrants complicate existing understandings of labour and creativity?3. How do concepts of gender, race, class, and nationality shift upon migration to underpin entrepreneurial strategy?MethodologyThis project connects physical and digital fieldsites to highlight the importance of creativity within spaces of diaspora. Working ethnographically and through a beyond-the-screen reading of digital activities illustrates how a range of physical and social media-based practices refract lived experiences and identities (Rodgers and Lloyd-Evans 2021), highlighting the power of interlocutors to shape, develop, and strengthen research.Conducted over 12 months in Madrid and accompanying digital spaces, where much of the diaspora is physically and virtually located, the ethnographic fieldwork will trace networks of labour. Snowball sampling within existing research networks in Spain will develop a diverse sample consisting of business owners, gig-economy workers, and side-hustlers, conducted through a combination of qualitative methods including:Participant observation in private and public spacesSemi-structured interviews and oral historiesDigital ethnography of social-media spaces where the diaspora is activeCo-creation of a digital archiveThis content will form a digital archive of visual, audio, and textual materials, facilitating sustained engagement from those who enabled research (Gill 2019). It will also highlight underlying biographies and skillsets, connect the project larger contexts of migration, labour, and identity, and enable creative afterlives (Johnson et al. 2021).