Indigenous Communities, Migrant Organizations, and the Ephemeral Nature of Translocality

Abstract

This article reports on the current state of collective migrant organizing for two Indigenous communities in Oaxaca, Mexico. Strained relations between migrant organizations and village authorities combine with small active memberships to limit the level and type of fund-raising in support of village development and governance. These findings highlight the difficulties that communities face to maintain effective translocal institutions over time, particularly as firstgeneration migrants "retire" and a lack of new arrivals hinders organizational renewal. Este artículo informa sobre la situación actual de la organización colectiva de migrantes en relación a dos comunidades Indígenas de Oaxaca, México. Las relaciones tensas entre las organizaciones de migrantes y las autoridades comunales, combinado con pocos miembros activos, limita la capacidad de generar fondos de apoyo para el desarrollo y gobernanza de las comunidades. Estos datos enfatizan las dificultades que afrontan las comunidades para mantener instituciones translocales que sean efectivas a través del tiempo, especialmente cuando las primeras generaciones de migrantes "se jubilan" y la falta de nuevos obstaculiza la renovación organizacional. 1 The term "translocal" rather than "transborder" or "transnational" is used throughout this article to reflect the mix of international and internal migration dynamics that have influenced (and continue to influence) many sending communities in Oaxaca. It follows Stephen's (2007, 65) definition: "movement of place-specific culture, institutions, people, knowledge, and resources within several local sites and across borders-national and otherwise." In this way, it refers to ties and relations that extend beyond the village community (Greiner and Sakdapolrak 2013). through tangible means-sending monies and (sometimes) labor to meet village governance obligations or finance community projects and infrastructure improvements-and symbolically, as community norms become embedded across an expanded social field (Stephen 2007). Although scholars have long debated the impact of migration in rural Mexico (Binford 2003; Cohen, Jones, and Conway 2005; De Haas 2010), much of that work has focused on economic and social change forged through household-level remittances (Rubenstein 1992; Taylor 1999; McKenzie and Rapoport 2007). These remittances, while significant in aggregate terms, can be small at the level of individual households, appear to be declining over time, and have limited village-level impact when used solely to meet basic family needs (Delgado Wise and Rodríguez Ramírez 2014). This reality has helped to shift focus from the individual to the "collective" migrant (Moctezuma 2000)-the active migrants who self-organize to affect change in communities of origin (Orozco and Rouse 2007; Fitzgerald 2008) and, in some cases, facilitate the transfer of political power from home village to migrant community (Smith 2006; Schütze 2014). 2 While the establishment of hometown associations and other types of migrant organization i...

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“…Service often extends beyond the physical boundaries of a community to include asking migrants settled elsewhere and who are asked (or sometimes required) to invest time, energy, and resources in their sending village (Mutersbaugh, 2002). Robson (2019) captures the ways in which migration can destabilise and undermine communal commitments; nevertheless, migrants do serve, and this is captured in Cohen's analysis of cooperation in Santa Ana del Valle, a Zapotec community in the state's central valleys (1999). A migrant is persuaded to return to the village after settling in Southern California and stand for nomination to presidente municipal.…”

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“…Pese a que el estado de Oaxaca es hoy uno de los principales receptores de migrantes en retorno, históricamente no ha sido uniforme en sus patrones de migración (Robson 2019): el istmo de Tehuantepec ha sido región de recepción y no de expulsión de migrantes (Gómez 2013), mientras que las regiones de los Valles Centrales y la Sierra Norte tienen una larga tradición de expulsión a la Unión Americana (Stephen 2007(Stephen , 2016. Es en estas últimas regiones donde se centra nuestra investigación por representar zonas de alta expulsión de migrantes que ahora retornan con sus hijos menores, algunos nacidos en México y otros en Estados Unidos.…”

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“…While some youth may be keen to act upon (perceived) stewardship responsibilities, they face barriers to do so [74,83]. Some of the most significant are tied to existing cultural norms and institutions, often entrenched [83], and not always representative or inclusive of distributions of identity, power, and privilege across community memberships [53,84]. Work in Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru has already shown us that efforts to engage youth can be a catalyst for organisational and institutional renewal [64,77,85].…”

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