Beauty and Translation: The Analytical Purchase of Diaspora for the Study of the Venezuelan Migration Crisis

ABSTRACT Although there is a burgeoning scholarship on the Venezuelan migration crisis, few of these studies critically engage with diaspora thought. This article draws on Ipek Demir's conceptualisation of diaspora as translation to explore the analytical purchase of the concept for understanding Venezuelan displacement. I suggest that, by foregrounding ‘untranslatability’, this approach illuminates how Venezuelan migrant experiences are shaped by historical divisions and asymmetries, while also making visible how migrants exercise agency through acts of re‐signification. To demonstrate this, I analyse how the intersection of race, class and gender in Venezuelan cultural and political history resulted in particular imaginaries around feminine national identity that now, I argue, are translated in diaspora as illustrated by the case of Venezuelan women representation in Peru.