Global Restructuring, Transmigration and Mexican Rural Women Who Stay Behind: Accommodating, Contesting and Transcending Ideologies

Abstract

In a time when globalization has escalated the migration of groups of people there is still little known of the families and communities that stay behind. Based on over five years of ethnographic research with campesinas (rural Mexican women) in a highly migratory part of Central Mexico, this article examines the manner in which campesinas who stay behind as their husbands migrate are implicated in global processes. As a result of the movement of spouses to and from the United States new ideas, capital, bodies, and information are introduced that alter the roles and perspectives of women who stay behind. From a gendered glocal framework that links global and local processes and considers power relations stretched across various spaces and amongst gender relations, the author examines how women learn to accommodate, contest, and transcend their transmigrant state and changing ideologies. Women's integration in a non-governmental organization, reliance on family networks and cultural traditions, among others, help maintain their integrity and wholeness as single mothers, group leaders, and community participants.

En una época en la que la globalización ha incrementado la migración de grupos de personas, es poco lo que se sabe de las familias y comunidades que se quedan atrás. En base a más de 5 años de investigación etnográfica con campesinas (mujeres rurales mexicanas) en un área de alta migración del centro de México, este artículo analiza la manera en que las campesinas que se quedan atrás mientras sus esposos migran, ha implicado en los procesos globales. Como resultado de la migración de los maridos hacia y desde los Estados Unidos, se introducen nuevas ideas, capital, personas e información, los cuales alteran la función y perspectiva de las mujeres que se quedan atrás. Desde un marco global de género que enlaza los procesos locales y globales y que considera las relaciones de poder que se extienden a través de varios espacios y entre las relaciones de género, el autor analiza la manera como las mujeres aprenden a adaptarse, enfrentarse y trascender su estado transmigrante y a cambiar ideologías. La integración de mujeres en una organización no gubernamental, y el uso de redes familiares y tradiciones culturales entre otras, ayudan a mantener su integridad y entereza como madres solteras, líderes de grupo y participantes de comunidades.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by an AERA-Spencer Fellowship and the Steffensen-Canon Fellowship and Presidential Graduate Fellowship of the University of Utah. The invaluable conversations and suggestions of the reviewers and Ed Buendía, Sylvia Celedon-Pattichis, Donna Deyhle, Leslie Poynor, Frank Margonis, Glenabah Martinez, Melissa Moreno, Charise Pimentel, Octavio Pimentel, Juan de Dios Pineda, Troy Richardson, Tracy Stevens, Audrey Thompson, and Sofia Villenas transformed this article.

Notes

People's names and places have been changed to protect the anonymity of all involved.

Throughout this article I utilize Stephen's understandings and definitions of transmigrant/transmigration and translocal. ‘Transmigrant suggests a more or less permanent state of being between two or more locations, some people may spend a good part of their lives engaging in this state of being, others may live for longer periods of time in one place or another, and still others may leave their home communities only one time or never’ (2007, p. 21). ‘Translocal refers to the movement of place-specific culture, institutions, people, knowledge, and resources within several local sites and across borders—national and otherwise’ (2007, p. 65). Both are evident in Sierra Linda's case. While acknowledging the movement displayed in the translocal is not unidirectional, this article focuses primarily on the knowledge, ideas, and capital that migrants transport back home and women's responses and changes to their translocality and participation in a grassroots literacy organization.

Elsewhere I discuss the role the organization played in the women's personal and educational development (Trinidad Galván, 2005).

So as to provide her children with greater educational opportunities, Julieta lived in Sierra Linda during the school week and in her rural community home on the weekends.

The following table reflects the top seven Mexican states with over 100,000 emigrants to the United States during the period of 1997–2002.

• Table

Various studies mentioned later in this paper describe migration as a survival tactic and, in the case of the communities I worked with, nearly the whole community has chosen migration as their means of economic survival. See Suarez Orozco's (1998b) edited book for studies arguing this idea. For the purposes of this paper, survival is utilized as the authors of many migration studies define it, which is people's ability to withstand and make do. Elsewhere, I discuss more specifically what is meant by sobre-vivencia (beyond economic survival) for women who stay behind and what survival tactics and cultural practices are taken to meet their and their family's everyday needs (Trinidad Galván, 2006).

I choose to borrow Marchand and Runyan's (2000) use of the term global restructuring over globalization as it ‘allows us to analyze how the market, state, and civil society are embedded in and (re)constructed through these processes’ (p. 7). From here on I will use the former as I find it suggests movement and is a much more flexible and workable term.

Audrey Thompson, Frank Margonis, and Ed Buendía helped me to understand and develop this idea further.

See Marchand and Runyan (2000) and Mohanty (1997). The research base of these authors speaks to the dilemmas and struggles of migratory women, whose experience and exploitation certainly expand and offer insight to the discussion of global restructuring. However, as their work and that of others shows, global events are not detached from local occurrences that all women are a part of. Thus, to privilege mobile women for being ‘directly’ involved in the world economy, I believe, is to defeat a gendered glocal perspective. In other words, in light of the fact that these authors expand traditional notions of global restructuring as encapsulating more than just an economic perception, their feminist concern comes from the fact that more women are involved in the world economy as migratory labor workers.