Motherhood across Borders Page 4
My second strategy to find participants for my research in New York City was through volunteer work in selected organizations that I knew served immigrant Latino populations. They were the Union Settlement in East Harlem and the Center for Family Services in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. In the South Bronx I visited a Mexican grocery store and restaurant where my husband had lunch every day because it was near his workplace. I became close with the owner, Doña Dora, who allowed me to “hang out” in the space, talk to her employees, and leave my business cards on the counter. Through Doña Dora I met four of the core transnational constellations in my research.
My third strategy to find participants for my research in New York City was to ask fellow researchers and friends who worked with immigrant populations if they knew anyone who would fit the criteria. Recruitment for this research would not have been possible without the help of others who introduced me to my participants. The nature of the topic is such that it was not easy to gain access into the lives of women and their children.
I conducted interviews and observations with several mothers and their children in the United States and then went to Mexico to meet their children and the caregivers of these children. I identified and recruited additional participants in Mexico through art workshops run by Universidad Iberoamerican in Puebla. There, I met children in two Puebla towns who had one or both parents living in the United States. I conducted interviews and observations with that group. Caregivers put me in contact with the mothers in the United States, whom I later interviewed. Through these many interactions, I collected five kinds of data: (1) structured, semi-structured, and group interviews conducted in Spanish with 68 children (36 female and 32 male, ranging in age from three to eighteen years); in-depth interviews with 31 caregivers and 60 mothers; and informal interviews with 36 family members, 21 teachers, and nine fathers; (2) participant observation documented through field notes with 20 transnational constellations; (3) surveys and drawings of 225 children in schools in Puebla regarding maternal remittances and education aspirations; (4) 88 children’s pictorial representations of what family, home, and the United States look like; (5) correspondence in the form of text messages via cell phones and Facebook messages via computers. Following a well-established tradition in anthropology, I changed all the names of my interviewees to protect their privacy. Table 1.1 is a compiled description of the two sides of the transnational care constellations in this study.
Recruiting participants did not come without significant rejection and suspicion. The undocumented status of participants put them in a tough spot, as they wondered what I would do with the information given. The fact that I am Brazilian and I was on a student visa studying in the United States helped put them at ease. My knowledge of soccer and Spanish was also beneficial to establishing long-lasting relationships with these families. Because I moved back and forth from New York City to Mexico, families trusted me to cross the border with small gifts, pictures, and letters for their families on the other side. They asked me to take pictures or short recordings of their sons and daughters at birthdays and celebrations. My position as a “bridge” for their communications also helped me build trust. Doing research in Mexico, although dangerous at times, proved to be a simpler task than doing research in New York City. Schedules and time were more flexible in the small towns in Mexico, where I was able to live with each family for a few weeks at a time. I went back and forth for three years, and each time I went to Mexico I was there for a minimum of three months, ultimately spending nine months in total in Mexico.
Table I.1. Description of Transnational Care Constellations
20 Transnational Constellations
New York Side of Constellations
Mexico Side of Constellations
Mothers have been in the US for 3 to 16 years
Children have been separated from their mothers for 3 to 16 years
Age range of mothers was 24 to 51
Age range of caregivers was 48 to 86
Age range of US-born children was 3 months to 12 years
Age range of children in Mexico was 3 months to 18 years (26 girls and 19 boys)
Age range of undocumented children was 15 to 18 years
Mothers were employed as domestic workers, laundry employees, restaurant workers, and caregivers
All but 1 caregiver were grandmothers
Marital status: three were single mothers, two were separated, and 15 were married or re-married
Education status: eight children (out of 45) were enrolled in school; seven dropped out (six boys and one girl)
Household income ranged from USD17,000 to 35,000 a year
Household income ranged from USD100 to 600 a year, not including remittances.
Remittances ranged from USD 0 to 1,500 per month.
During a three-year multi-sited ethnographic research project with families in Central New Jersey and Oaxaca, Mexico, Dreby (2010) used a combination of snowball and purposive sampling to interview 142 members of transnational families and recruit a total of 12 families for ongoing ethnographic research. In her research over 18 non-continuous months in the Philippines, Parreñas (2005a) interviewed 30 children with migrant mothers, 26 with migrant fathers, and 13 with two migrant parents. Gálvez (2011), in her two-year multi-sited ethnographic research, combined qualitative and quantitative methods in order to understand women’s narratives of reproduction and motherhood. She used surveys, medical records, and interviews to combine biomedical data with cultural practices of patients and their narratives. The number of transnational constellations recruited in this research thus fits within the tradition of other scholars of migration and transnationalism who have done multi-sited research.
Organization of This Book
The two main research questions this study addresses are: How do mothers with one (or more) offspring living in New York City and one child (or more) in Mexico negotiate care, educational support, and investment in their children’s education? And, how do the educational experiences and social opportunities of children in Mexico compare to those of their siblings living in the United States?
Chapter 1 explores the tensions behind the ideals migrant mothers have of caregiving and “mothering.” It addresses the question: How do ideals and practices of motherhood shape mothers’ attitudes toward their children? I discuss how ideals and practices of motherhood that may seem at odds are actually adaptations of what mothers consider to be “good” and “caring” mothers. The very act of leaving and migrating represents a “break” in the nexus of motherhood—which includes physical presence but is made and remade in order to fulfill women’s ideas of what care should be.
Chapter 2 addresses the question of how mothers negotiate and participate in the educational trajectories of children in the United States and in Mexico. It illustrates how mothers in New York City are central decision-makers in school-related issues in Mexico and in the United States, even when there is lengthy separation from the children in Mexico and language and legal status barriers with children in the United States. I argue that mothers in New York and grandmothers in Mexico go through similar challenges when interacting with teachers and school staff in both countries, as they feel like they have little power or influence to assist children. This chapter shows a “split-screen” format, comparing the experiences I observed on both sides of the border regarding school interactions. I also use data from phone calls and text messages across borders to explore how the reach of mothers in New York goes beyond formal boundaries. Thus, I show how Internet and Communication Technologies (ICT) foster regular interactions between mothers and grandmothers, between mothers in New York City and teachers in Mexico, and between separated siblings when they are doing homework and/or playing.
Chapter 3 explores the perspectives of children and youth on migration and family separation on both sides of the border. Much of the fieldwork for this research was spent with children and youth as they attended social functions, were at home, went to school, and en
gaged in other activities like sports, dances, and church. From photographs, drawings, poems, and narratives to Facebook messages, text messages, and other tools in social networks, I am able to show how children and youth make sense of migration and how these ideas shape their perspectives about their futures. I focus on two narratives that illustrate the ways young people make sense of migration: The first narrative concerns material goods and socioeconomic status, and the second is concerned with “the other side” or “where the rest of the family” is, informed by their interactions not only with family members who are physically close to them, but also by interactions within the entire transnational care constellation. I use drawings and interview data to explore how their understandings are a product of both their interactions with siblings and the information they receive from their parents.
Chapter 4 compares how Mexican maternal migration has influenced the educational experiences and social opportunities of children in Mexico and their siblings living in the United States. I answer the question: How do high levels of Mexican maternal migration influence the education, migration aspirations, and social opportunities of children in Mexico and their siblings born in or brought to the United States? I argue that some of the assumptions about quality of education and social opportunities in Mexico are complicated when compared to the lives of those who are in the United States. Data for this chapter come from interviews and observations with children, youth, and their teachers in school. I also consider the perceptions of mothers and family members regarding schooling experience on both sides of the border.
How might maternal migration influences vary by the gender of the child? Chapter 5 discusses girls’ superior educational performance as linked to the following narratives: (1) education attainment as a path to reunification with mothers; (2) over-achieving in school to live up to the expectations of mothers and hoping that academic performance will bring them together; (3) performing well in school with the expectation of receiving material gifts; and (4) school as a space to forget. Finally, I conclude with one story of reunification in New York City and the implications of transnational care constellations as a care arrangement for children, mothers, and caregivers.
The structure of this book represents the trajectory this research has taken over the years. From the starting point, which was mothers, to the growing focus on children, I try to give enough background on families so that the reader can understand the complexities of the stories. The core of the data for this book is based on ethnographic research with 20 constellations. I complement the chapters with data from interviews with 40 other mothers during the course of the three years, as well as with independent surveys with children in Puebla, Mexico. The chapters build on each other in two different ways. Some chapters address the background stories of mothers and their narratives, and other chapters introduce the voices of children and youth, who describe their side of the experience. Second, the chapters attempt to present to the reader the synchronous impact of maternal migration on both sides of the border. As noted earlier, this research required high levels of mobility and flexibility. Even though the constant back and forth and depth of ethnographic observations and interviews with families on both sides of the border can leave one confused, that is precisely how life is experienced by the participants in this study. Thus, I document the experiences of these families as they challenge steady concepts of “host” and “sending” societies, as well as assumptions behind generational mobility and the way in which parenting—especially mothering—influences children and youth’s trajectories.
INTERLUDE 1
Parallel Lives
As I sat in the small, bright, lime green room in the South Bronx, 20 women around me chatted in a lively way. Some of them breastfed, others drank tea, and a few just stared. This was a regular place for some of my research participants to go. It was one of hundreds of Herbalife1 offices spread out in the city. This particular one, near the “Intervale” stop on the 2/5 subway line, was run by a family of undocumented evangelical Mexican immigrants. The office space represented a “break” for many of these women. A break from their tiny apartments. A break from their routine of cleaning, cooking, and caring for the kids. A “safe place,” as one of them described that February day. Because almost every woman who went there had one or more children, all of the women “took care” of the kids. Aruna, Emilia, and Maya (participants in my research) were regulars. Sometimes they would spend four hours there and only leave after receiving a phone call from their husbands/partners.
During the winter the small office served as a warm space, and during the summer it was one of the few places in the neighborhood with a strong air conditioning system. The women engaged in a daily ritual. I ended up visiting three different Herbalife sites, in the Bronx, Queens, and Sunset Park. Virtually everywhere I recruited a participant she would ask me to go with her to “la batida” (the shake). They called the place “la batida” because the “ritual” of hanging out involved consuming the company’s products. First, “el agua” (flavored water) “because it helps the circulation,” then “el técito” (the little tea) for digestion, and finally “la batida,” which helps you lose weight. Not just any weight; baby weight. “Un consumo,” or this particular sequence of products, costs $5. Many of these women sold Herbalife products door to door, so they would get “un consumo” for free. There was also a big chart on the wall with each woman’s name (my name was eventually added to the chart) that followed each one’s daily check-in and consumption. After accruing ten stars, you receive a “free” product from Herbalife. Women there discussed everything from relationships with their partners to problems with teachers and schools to families they left in the country of origin. The liveliest discussions had to do with telling each other about their own childhoods and their relationships with their own mothers.
“Una tequilita Gabi?” Candela asked me as we sat in the garage of her home in Puebla, Mexico (Field notes, Mexico, May 4, 2012). Candela didn’t drink, but she wanted me to try the handmade tequila her son had brought her a few days before. As we sat there in chairs while I sipped tequila, more women joined us. When I met Candela in 2010, she gave me her “blessing” to do research in her town in the Mixteca poblana. Many of the caregivers of the constellations I was researching came to “hang out” at Candela’s house. Candela was known to be the “informal” mayor of the pueblo. She sold everything: flowers; regalos (gifts) for quinceañeras, weddings, and baptisms; tortillas; and all kinds of “agua” (jamaica, horchata, piña). The women who went there didn’t just sit around and chat, they bought and sold different products, gossiped, and talked about what “El Norte” (the North) had done with their sons and daughters. A nostalgic tone was predominant in their narratives. Memories of how “it used to be” when mothers could raise their children. Memories of when women had a well-defined place and role in society. As Tami, a matriarch raising grandchildren at 72, wondered,
How is it that we have become this type of society that allows and, more than that, needs mothers to leave their children and needs children to leave their mothers? It used to be that you could go to the city [Mexico City] and that was that. But in the last 10, 15, 20 years you have to cross the border to have a future.
Sitting around the coffee table fanning themselves, these women discussed politics and injustice and how corrupt the president was. At the end of every conversation, though, were stories and statements about longing for a period in time when their “families” were together. In the back of Candela’s house there were cans and bottles and packages of shakes, teas, and powder to flavor water from Herbalife. I asked Candela if she bought those things herself and she told me some of it, yes, but the more expensive products were sent by her daughter-in-law from Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Almost every house I visited in Mexico had one or more products from Herbalife that were bought in Mexico or sent from the United States.
In almost parallel lives, mothers and daughters sit in completely different physica
l places. They are indeed divided by a physical, spatial border. However, they share many characteristics and talk about each other. In my quest for understanding the relationship between mothers and children left-behind, I was surprised by a “child-mother” bond that did not include the small children I was researching: the intergenerational relationship between mothers and their own mothers, who were often raising some of their grandchildren in the mother’s absence. Out of the 20 care constellations I followed in my research, 17 had a maternal grandmother as primary caregiver of children left-behind. I found that maternal grandmothers’ relationships with their own daughters shaped and influenced concepts related to motherhood and care.
1
Ideals and Practices of Transnational Motherhood and Care
Gemma’s Story: “Yo la Dejé, Pero no la Abandoné.”
I did not abandon Daniela, I left her. Abandoning means that you forgot about the person, that the person doesn’t exist in your life, that you cut her out. To leave someone doesn’t change how much you take care and love her and the fact that I am her mother.
Gemma had been living in New York for 13 years. Prior to coming to the United States, Gemma, who is from the small pueblo of Tlacuales in Puebla, “se juntó” (got together) with a man named Elías. They had a baby, Daniela, who was 14 years of age when I met her. Gemma was pursuing a career in nursing when she got pregnant with Daniela. She was the only person in her family who went to high school, completed high school, and went on to professional school. Her mother and father did not know how to read and write, but that did not stop Gemma from doing well in school. Her father Rubén has American citizenship because he was in the United States prior to the 1986 Act,1 which granted amnesty and citizenship for millions of immigrants in the country. Rubén was able to extend his citizenship to his wife and three sons, but not his daughter Gemma. Regarding gaining and sharing citizenship, Rubén told me, “Women should stay and the men should go [to the U.S.].”