“MY HEART IS ALWAYS THERE”: THE TRANSNATIONAL PRACTICES OF FIRST-GENERATION MEXICAN IMMIGRANT AND SECOND-GENERATION MEXICAN AMERICAN WOMEN

Abstract

In the growing and varied body of work on transnationalism, questions remain as to the relevance of the symbolic and affective characteristics of transnationalism, its liberating aspects, the ways it is gendered, and the significance of transnationalism in the lives of the second generation. Through the analysis of 40 qualitative in-depth interviews, this article contributes to these questions by examining the transnational practices of first-generation Mexican immigrant women as well as those of the second generation. It argues that although women in this study engaged relatively infrequently in transnational practices, particularly the second generation, the transnational ties that they maintained contributed social and cultural resources that assisted women in navigating their United States-based realities. The article also discusses the gendered dimensions of these practices, including the symbolic ways women of both generations rely on their transnational space to raise their children, the ways transnationalism extends the first generation’s caregiving work across borders, and the ways cultural resources available for the construction of women’s ethnic identities are gendered. The findings from this study suggest that embeddedness in a transnational social field can have both liberatory and non-liberatory dimensions.

Key Words:

• transnationalism
• Mexicans
• second generation
• immigration
• gender

Notes

I wish to express my gratitude to Caroline Brettell, Abel Valenzuela, Jr., and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.

This research would not have been possible without the generous support of the Social Science Research Council’s International Migration Program (with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), the National Science Foundation (Grant No. SES-0222495), the W.K. Kellogg Fellowship in Health Policy Research, and at the University of Michigan: the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and the Center for the Education of Women.

1. The second-generation women in this study were not related to the first generation.

2. In this sample, three women had migrated between the ages of 13 to 17. These women, according to Rumbaut’s (1991) classification, are technically of the 1.25 generation; however, their experiences were similar to those of the first generation, more so than they were to those of the second, and thus I considered them as first generation in the analysis.

3. I thank one of the anonymous reviewers for bringing this point to my attention.

Aranda, Elizabeth M. 2005. The emotional experiences of migrations and settlement: Puerto Rican middle-class migrations. Unpublished manuscript