Participatory planning across borders: Mexican Migrant Civic Engagement in Community Development (original) (raw)
Related papers
This paper addresses the changing agendas of US-based hometown associations (HTAs) in rural Mexico and the impact that these changes have on local government decisions to finance community development. The evidence that is offered in this paper confirms that local governments at the subnational state, municipal, and village levels are interested in maintaining the economic attachments of emigrant populations. These governments have created innovative state–society partnerships to reduce conflict with HTAs, maintain loyalties, and preserve the flow of remittances. Thus, one of the objectives of local governments is to sustain migrant collective remittance efforts in those sending regions that already have a critical mass of US-based HTAs that demand government funds for development. The inclusion of organised migrant voices in community development debates has the potential to increase transnational democratic participation. However, when the allocation of public funds is based on an approach that privileges diaspora-driven demands, this generates inequalities between international migrants and stay-at-home communities because it forces local sending communities to find HTAs across borders to solve infrastructure needs. As new hierarchies of place-based citizen participation become more prevalent, the voices of stay-at-home communities risk being ignored by local government officials.
Migrant Organization and Hometown Impacts in Rural Mexico
Journal of Agrarian Change, 2008
The interaction between migration, development and rural democratization is not well understood. Exit is usually understood as an alternative to voice, but the Mexican experience with cross-border social and civic action led by hometown associations suggests that exit can also be followed by voice. This article explores migrant impacts on hometown civic life, focusing on voice and bargaining over community development investments of collective remittances that are matched by government social funds. The most significant democratizing impacts include expatriate pressures on local governments for accountability and greater voice for outlying villages in municipal decision-making.
Ties that bind: transnational community-based planning in Southern California and Oaxaca
International Development Planning Review, 2010
Much of the community-based planning literature focuses on the development of collaborative social relationships in small territorial communities. It is argued that the collective action that is foundational to such planning is based on closed social relationships, trust and the ability of participants to control or punish potential defectors. The article examines how community-based planning and the social relationships that underlie it emerge and are maintained transnationally. The research focuses on immigrants from Oaxaca, Mexico, who have relocated to Southern California and established hometown associations. The associations remit money to their pueblos of origin for community-based planning. The article examines (1) how social networks and the relationships of trust upon which they are built connect immigrants in California to their pueblo of origin, (2) how these social relationships that facilitate community-level collective action are maintained across transnational spaces and (3) the potential of such collective action for broader social and political transformation in Southern California and Oaxaca.
Migration and Development, 2014
Migrant organizations are part of everyday associational life in the US. These organizations range in size and scope with interests that include the home and host country. In particular, one form of migrant organization, the Latin American hometown association (HTA), has taken as part of its purpose to aid in development and civic projects within their sending communities. HTAs have identified problems in the home country and take the initiative in solving the problem at hand which has at times allowed them to circumvent the government. Overtime, this ability to solve problems has granted migrants new political access in the home country. The work by HTAs has pressured the government to act on creating new policies that guide how it implements development projects to communities in need. This paper addresses how Latin American HTAs work towards transnational mobilization. Some attention is also given to the critiques of HTA organization.
Migrant Remittances and the Mexican State: An emergent transnational development model?
2009
While economic migration from Mexico to the United States has a long history, the recent expansion of the remittance economy driven by migration is causing rapid transformation of both the built environment and society in rural Mexico. Many Hometown Associations (HTAs)-or clubs that represent a particular hometown in Mexico-collectively finance public buildings in small Mexican villages. Recognizing this major source of funding for development, the Mexican federal government created the Tres Por Uno (3x1) program in 2001. In this program, migrant remittances sent through clubs in the U.S. are multiplied by municipal, state, and federal Mexican funds for regional development. 3x1 and HTAs are strategically linked, as 3x1 both motivates migrant organization in the U.S. and incites the Mexican government to act on behalf of rural Mexico. On the surface, this relationship appears to be beneficial to both parties, as migrants receive support for building projects and the Mexican state can achieve development targets with minimal investment. However, I argue that this nascent model of development-what I term the Remittance Development Model (RDM)-challenges the role of the state in improving municipal spaces, and institutionalizes migrant ambivalence associated with remitting as a way of life. The RDM, investigated through ethnographic research, policy data, and site analysis, also produces complex, ambiguous results for migrants, their families and their home communities, who must balance new kinds of freedom and agency with familial fragmentation and changing social norms.
From Public Works to Political Actions: Political Socialization in Guerrero Hometown Organizations
Latino Studies, Vol.11, 1, 55-77, 2013
Abstract: This article argues that Mexican migrants have become politicized through participation in hometown organizations. It traces the increasing organiza- tional complexity of hometown associations (HTAs) from the state of Guerrero formed in Chicago since the late 1980s and the parallel development of Mexican government programs in response to migrants’ growing economic and political strength. As migrants negotiate with government officials to take advantage of matching funds for public works in their natal villages – currently institutionalized in the Programa 3x1 para Migrantes – they become more aware of how power structures work and how to engage them to their own advantage. As a result, some migrants now participate in explicitly political activities – both in Mexico and the United States – campaigning for candidates, lobbying for migrants’ rights or even seeking political office.
Traversing the Border: Community-Based Planning and Transnational Migrants
Journal of Planning Education and Research, 2013
Transnational communities transcend national borders in order to act collectively, despite geographic, economic, and political challenges. Oaxacan migrants exemplify how community organizations mobilize beyond the local scale to facilitate community-based planning in the United States and Mexico. The article brings together contributions from scholarship on collective action, governance, and citizenship to analyze community-based planning. It analyzes how Oaxacan migrants modify norms and customs about community service and indigenous governance in relation to community-based planning in both countries. The findings expand our understanding of how community-based planning is scaled up and embedded in transnational processes and relationships.