Gendered Mobility and Morality in a South-Eastern Mexican Community: Impacts of Male Labour Migration on the Women Left Behind

Abstract

Based on research conducted in a migrant-sending community in south-eastern Mexico, we find that male out-migration has forced women to take on labour tasks that are associated with new spatial and mobility patterns. While these patterns have potential for increased empowerment for women, they also call the women's morality into question, resulting in a policing of the women's behaviour, and a simultaneous restriction of their mobility, by themselves and others. Therefore, we find male labour out-migration has resulted in contradictory changes in women's mobility, with ambiguous results for women's gender empowerment.

Education, mobilities and migration: people, ideas and resources

“…Internal and external migration is often presented as a pathway towards upward social mobility and a means of escaping poverty, yet as Bryan Maddox (2010) argued, migration also carries risks for the poor, such as incomplete schooling and the loss of some initial advantage for the family, for example in terms of child labour or a means of livelihood. Thus, migration may be less about social mobility and more about the social reproduction of existing disadvantages within the country (Maddox 2010;McEvoy et al 2012). Maddox (2010) drew our attention to the limitations of our understanding of modernity and development, which can imply that education is only effective if it contributes to occupational mobility, increased income and possibly a break, even if temporary, from poverty.…”

“Mis hijos se quedan allá”: Estrategias cotidianas de mujeres urbanas que trabajan en el turismo de aventura en ‘Rio-Tlan’, México

“…Otro eje analítico define a la vida cotidiana como soporte de las identidades transgresoras contextualizándolas en el marco de la división del trabajo según género, las normas sociales y de otros acuerdos locales enfrentados a macro procesos de diversa índole -particularmente la económica- (NELSON, 2006;McEVOY et al, 2012); convirtiendo a la cotidianidad en un medio para dar cuenta de todas las estrategias de vida social y de desafíos que pueden parecer mínimos pero cargados de significado para, en estos casos, las mujeres que abren y conquistan nuevas prácticas espaciales.…”

Labour Migration and Gendered Agricultural Relations: The Feminization of Agriculture in the Ejidal Sector of Calakmul, Mexico

“…Some case studies have illustrated that women are not free to deviate from existing gender norms around women's place caring for children in the home for fear that other community members will gossip about their moral propriety (Dreby 2009), and therefore women can experience increased surveillance and constraints on their activities (Menjívar and Agadjanian 2007; McEvoy et al. 2012).…”

“…In the absence of husbands, however, women try to curtail their movements in public spaces, including going to and from fields, in order to avoid local gossip (McEvoy et al. 2012).…”

“…Women's supervision of male labour is viewed within the community as problematic to the moral propriety of the women, as it might require a woman to be alone with a man (McEvoy et al. 2012).…”