Guatemalan young domestic female workers in Soconusco, Chiapas: Their experiences and imaginaries (original) (raw)
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Global Processes and Local Lives: Guatemalan Women's Work and Gender Relations at Home and Abroad
International Labor and Working-Class History, 2006
In this paper I address an important aspect of the link between the larger process of globalization and work. I focus on how globalization has affected the lives of Guatemalan women of different class backgrounds and ethnicities in Guatemala and in Los Angeles, through an examination of the link between paid work and household work. Data for this article come from eighty-six in-depth interviews with indigenous and ladina women and from ethnographic field work I conducted in Los Angeles and in two regions of Guatemala. There are certain aspects of earning an income among the women in this study that emerge in both contexts, perhaps due to the demands of contemporary capitalism on workers around the world. My observations indicate that whereas the experiences of women and femininities are played out in the context of global economic relations, they are experienced differently in diverse sites and within the same context by individuals of different class and ethnic backgrounds. Thus, experiences of globalization through work are very much localized; they are historically and culturally situated and interact with broader processes in dissimilar fashion.
Migrant mothers and divided homes Cienfuegos
While migration is a phenomenon characterized by extensive amounts of data world-wide, migratory flows have been adopting new fonns in recent decades, in terms of both direction and composition. The direction has shifted from "north-to-south" in overseas migration to one of *'south-to-north" in labor migration in the context of recent globalization. In terms of composition, migratory flows have ceased to be predominantly masculine, with increasing numbers of women who migrate mainly to cities in search of better opportunities (Martinez, 2008;.
The relationship between migration and gender roles has received increased attention in recent decades but most of the literature has focused on transnational migration while the relationships between transnational and internal migration, and gender roles and internal migration have not been widely studied. In this paper, I analyse internal migration as a ‘transborder experience’. I argue that indigenous women from Zegache who engage in internal migration to Mexico City pose greater challenges to ‘traditional’ gender roles in their community because their experience as single young women navigating Mexico’s capital and their reliance on female social networks allow them to obtain social legitimation by claiming migration experience and courageousness. I contrast migration to Mexico City with transnational migration. Although transnational migration challenges, to some extent, existing gender roles, women from Zegache who migrate transnationally often do so as part of couples and within gendered social networks.
In the Absence of Men? Gender, Migration and Domestic Labour in the Southern Ecuadorean Andes
Journal of Latin American Studies, 2012
Female heads of households in the migrant-exporting community of Jima are using remittances to employ domestic workers. As both workers and 'mistresses' originate from the same mestizo peasant class, these new labour relations do not reflect embedded class inequalities, but are rather emerging as a new mode of distinction between newly-prosperous households and those for whom migration has been a less successful strategy. This lends a temporal fragility and fluidity to household relations, as worker and employer seek to define their roles and establish hierarchies. Employers negotiate these tensions not only to reduce their own burden of labour, but also because domestic workers are a symbol of social mobility and help enhance the reputation of migrant men. Thus, while men are physically absent, they continue to inform the reorganisation of the Jimeño household, and there is little to suggest that gender roles are being realigned in a structurally significant manner. situated in the rural community of Jima (2,600m), located in the el Austro region of the Southern Ecuadorean Highlands, I approach this question through the lens of domestic labour relations, and explore the new care relations being created as a result of increased, remittance-based, prosperity. Specifically, I look to demonstrate that the newly-prosperous wives of migrants utilise remittance income to reduce their own burden of care labour by employing both live-in and casual domestic workers, and that, through these changing practices, they constitute themselves as both members of the leisure class and as household managers. I ethnographically explore the subtle, and often contradictory, manner female heads of households manage their relations with their workers, highlighting how they seek to bring them close through incorporating them into the home while also creating boundaries of distinction. 1 I am not, however, suggesting that the female kin of successful migrants are ceasing to labour in its entirety; rather, I contend, some use the opportunities that male migration presents to engage with new fields of labour, including the direction of household and construction affairs.
Luchadoras: Central American Women Navigating Border Externalization in Mexico
2018
Author(s): Sanchez, Yesenia | Advisor(s): FitzGerald, David S. | Abstract: This thesis looks at the ways in which Central American migrant women confront and navigate violence in their home countries and the migrant controls in Mexico due to border externalization. It analyzes the techniques of self they use- the strategies and actions they take when they decide they must leave, throughout their journey and at their current location. This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork and 16 semi-structured interviews with migrant women from NTCA that took place between September and December 2016. I conclude that women embark in this odyssey to protect their children and themselves from the unbearable violence of gangs and poverty.
The relationship between migration and gender roles has received increased attention in recent decades but most of the literature has focused on transnational migration while the relationships between transnational and internal migration, and gender roles and internal migration have not been widely studied. In this paper, I analyse internal migration as a ‘transborder experience’. I argue that indigenous women from Zegache who engage in internal migration to Mexico City pose greater challenges to ‘traditional’ gender roles in their community because their experience as single young women navigating Mexico’s capital and their reliance on female social networks allow them to obtain social legitimation by claiming migration experience and courageousness. I contrast migration to Mexico City with transnational migration. Although transnational migration challenges, to some extent, existing gender roles, women from Zegache who migrate transnationally often do so as part of couples and within gendered social networks.