The reconfiguration of subjectivity and of intersubjective relations in migratory processes: A case study

Abstract

The time–space upheavals that characterise so-called globalization have been translated into virtual flows, the flow of objects, and population flows with differentiated impacts within the strata of the population. This paper studies a Mexico–United States migratory circuit in which the analysis focuses on the way in which subjectivities and social identities are destructured and reconfigured in a peasant population of indigenous origin that has been forming a transnational community with migrants established in Long Island, New York. The reconstruction of a structural framework and a transnational culture becomes a substratum that allows for the emergence of new social subjects such as grandmothers, autonomous women, and young people. The psychic dynamics of losses and appropriations, of unresolved ambivalences, interact with the sociostructural processes. The US–Mexico border, a cause of physical, emotional, and symbolic rupture, appears as one of the axes of comprehension for transforming the subjectivities and the intersubjective networks. A dialogue is attempted with a psychoanalytic and sociopsychoanalytic approach, which is vital in these contexts.

Keywords:

• migration
• subjectivity
• intersubjective relations
• transnational community
• loss
• ambivalence

Notes

¹Paper presented in the XVIth International Forum of Psychoanalysis. Athens, October 20–14, 2010.

²Common land (ejido) is a form of land ownership that resulted from the Mexican Revolution. It refers to lands that were expropriated from the plantation owners (hacendados) and given to the peasants as collective property; until 1992, this land could not be sold.

³According to the population census of 2005, Coyula has a total of 6410 inhabitants, and another 2000 Coyuleños live in the USA. Of that number, around 1500 live in The Hamptons. The Hamptons has, according to the US census of 2000, 88,048 inhabitants, of whom 9188 are Hispanic and 1650 are Mexican, most of them from Coyula. It is unclear from the US Census whether those residents on the census are permanently residing in The Hamptons or whether the number includes the population that goes there only on vacation or at weekends.

⁴There is a group of Pentecostals in Coyula that obviously do not share Guadalupanism but do resort to healing/witchcraft practices. In The Hamptons, however, there is no record of “Protestant” Coyuleños.

⁵The song and dance of Xochipitzahua is part of Nahuatl culture and can be seen in various regions of the country, in the Northern Mountains of Puebla, in Hidalgos's Huasteca, and in Tlaxcala.

⁶Migration, among other phenomena, has put into question methodological nationalism – as Ulrich Beck (1998) points out – that has naturalised the nation-state as the “normal” space in which social life takes place.

⁷The image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, an icon that historically has brought together the Mexican population, is taken on a race with a torch from Mexico City to Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York. It goes through nine Mexican states with migrant populations and 13 states on the USA's east coast, covering a trail of 5000 km and lasting 69 days. The Virgin crosses the border “as an illegal” and reaches Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York on December 12th.

⁸Between 2000 and 2003, Mexican migrants were violently attacked by the inhabitants of Farmingville, Long Island, a population located one hour by car from New York City and a similar distance from The Hamptons.