Ethics of care, emotional work, and collective action of solidarity: the Patronas in Mexico

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the mobilization of the Patronas, a group of Mexican women who have fed thousands of Central American migrants over the past two decades. We argue that the Patronas’ work of feeding and caring for migrants goes beyond essentializing these women’s work as just housewives, mothers, and caregivers. Furthermore, we assert that through these care activities, the Patronas exert a feminist ethic of care that is understood as a set of practices based on trust, reciprocity, and solidarity. The Patronas’ praxis of caring for the migrants resonates with people and attracts hundreds of volunteers to join these women’s emotional and nurturing work leading these women and volunteers to participate in a political practice of solidarity. In this paper, we articulate three key findings: (1) the interplay between the Patronas’ emotional work and the ethics of care, (2) the emergence of a collective act of solidarity around the Patronas’ caring work that leads hundreds of volunteers to visit these women and join them, and (3) the kitchen as a place where the collective act of solidarity begins and where the Patronas experience their personal transformation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this study contributes to further our understanding of the interplay between Latin American women’s participation in social movements, emotional work in these movements, and the ethics of care.

Keywords:

• emotional work
• ethics of care
• Las Patronas
• solidarity movements
• women’s collective action

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Margaret Walton-Roberts for all her support, her editorial staff, and three anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Our deepest gratitude to the Patronas who generously opened their shelter’s door and shared their histories. The first author’s research time for this study began during her tenure as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the University of Southern California in the Department of Sociology and with the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Verónica Montes

Veronica Montes got her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with specialization in the fields of globalization, migration, gender, and qualitative methods. She was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the University of Southern California in the Department of Sociology and with the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. Her main areas of research revolve around Mexican immigrant communities in the US new destinations, Latino immigrant communities in the US, Latino ethnic entrepreneurship and gender and migration. Her work has appeared in Gender and Society, Apuntes, and International Review of Sociology.

María Dolores Paris Pombo

María Dolores París-Pombo (PhD in Social Sciences, Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences) specializes in migration, interethnic relations, violence, and gender relations. She works in two main empirical areas: social integration or reintegration of migrants and deportees in the northern and southern borders of Mexico, and violence against Central American migrants. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Borderland Studies, Migrations Société, Latin American Perspectives, and Migraciones Internacionales. Her most recent publication is the book Violencias y migraciones centroamericanas en México (El COLEF 2017).