Being Wives, Mothers and Sisters in the Absence of Men: Bargaining Power of Women Left behind in ...

WORKING PAPER:

XVIII ISA WORLD CONGRESS OF SOCIOLOGY

13‐19 JULY. YOKOHAMA

Being Wives, Mothers and Sisters in the Absence of Men: Bargaining Power of Women Left behind in Indigenous Rural Oaxaca (Mexico)

María Martínez-Iglesias

Abstract

This paper analyses how men’s international outmigration affects traditionally extended gender

family dynamics in some indigenous areas of Oaxaca (Mexico). From the late 1980´s, not the

individual but the family or the household has been considered the most appropriate decision

making unit to understand how migration and development are linked. Since then, gender dynamics

in rural sending areas have been mainly analyzed in terms of marriage transformations. However,

other relevant family relations have not been widely studied. This paper highlights the importance

of including mothers and sisters of migrated men to completely understand how traditionally gender

norms and discourses, especially those related to inheritance and access to land, reproduce or

change in rural Oaxaca.

The main argument of the paper is that son’s and brother’s migration along with other structural

changes on sending societies has broken down the traditional system of protection based on son’s

inheritance. It is also argued that mothers try to build new family alliances with their daughters to

be cared in old age. In terms of marriage, the paper shows that changes in wives bargaining power

must be seen within a cultural context to really understand if women did improved their situation,

without establishing direct causality relations as women’s paid work greater bargaining power.

Key words: Migration, women left behind, indigenous extended family, land inheritance,

Oaxaca.

WORKING PAPER:



1. Introduction

What are the effects of male international migration on women left behind in rural areas? Are wives

left behind the only adult women affected by migration? Is migration shifting gender inheritance

patterns and giving land access to women? These questions are answered through the study of two

indigenous communities from which men migrate to the United States: San Miguel El Grande

(Mixtec) and San Bartolome Zoogocho (Zapotec). As long as both areas are highly dependent on

remittances, are classified as high-medium marginality areas and hold an important percentage of

female households are privilege places to understand the link between migration, rural development

and gender. These two communities belong to the State of Oaxaca which does not have an

international migrant tradition like that seen in the center-west. However, its rate of migration has

been on the rise since the 1980´s, along with the gender and ethnic diversification of Mexican

migration flows (Cerruty and Masey, 2001; Kearny, 2000; Fox and Rivera-Salgado, 2004).

Specifically, Oaxaca is the source of the highest percentage of Mexican indigenous international

migrants to the United States and it is one of the Mexican states with the highest percentage of rural

female households (INEGI, 2010).

Migration movements from the Mexican countryside have been conceptualized as both a negative

and a positive factor in the development of the sending society and the reduction of rural poverty.

On one hand, migration has generated several backwash effects: migration culture the emergence of

migrant syndrome, increased dependence on remittances, brain drain , brawn drain, decreased

agricultural production increased community inequalities and increased pressure for further

outmigration (Massey, 1988; 1990). On the other hand, migration is defined as a solution:

individual, social and community remittances can provide an alternative safety net to the

WORKING PAPER:



welfare-state or they can be invested in codevelopment projects to improve rural standards of living

(Rubenstein, 1992; UNFPA, 2005; Ratha, 2008; Vargas-Lundius et al., 2008).

Due to the increasing importance of international migration to the United States, where men are

over-represented (Deere, 2005), similar discussions have been held in relation to gender dynamics

since the 1980‘s (Palacios, 1984; Mummert, 1986). Some case studies have addressed the

empowerment of women resulting from the migration of men. As women take on new

responsibilities, marriage moves towards a more egalitarian relationship. Even in strong patriarchal

areas, the absence or abandonment of a husband can relieve the burden of a wife‘s obligations and

improve her standard of living. However, women‘s new obligations can clash with traditional role

expectations and increase the level of stress experienced by women and cause conflict with the

community and their husbands. Current debates on women left behind are trying to overcome this

dualism by revisiting and introducing new research topics (the link between migration and

inheritance shift, the emotional costs of migration, or transnational parenthood) and new research

questions: to what extend the new division of labor brought by migration empowers wives left

behind; are there other female family roles rather than wives that maybe experimenting important

changes? Is it migration the only force or the main one driving gender changes on sending society

or maybe be analyzed along with other structural changes on rural areas?

We will begin by summarizing these current debates on rural areas in migration, development and

women left behind in rural Mexico. The second section briefly presents gender bargaining models

as a theoretical framework with which to solve these issues and it shows the methods used to

conduct our research. Our two main arguments are presented and developed in the fourth section:

the need to include extended family dynamics and some dimensions of the sending society to better

understand the link between migration, development and gender. We conclude by examining the

WORKING PAPER:



extent to which these case studies reflect wider social processes in the indigenous areas of Oaxaca

and suggesting points for further discussion and research.

2. Current debates on migration, development and women left behind on Mexican rural

areas.

Before the 1990´s, families left behind did not play a central role in the migration and development

debate, as the only two analytical options considered by the optimistic and pessimistic debate were

individual or structural concerns (De Haas, 2010). Before family started to be considered the most

appropriate unit with which to understand the link between sending and receiving societies and the

balance between structure and agency, only a few case studies had focused their attention on

women left behind in rural areas (e.g. Crummett, 1986). This change paved the way for the

introduction of gender dimensions, making women more visible both as migrants

(Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994; Gonzalez et al, 1995) and as members of families from which men

migrate. Since the late 1990´s have the effects of the outmigration of men on women left behind

become a topic in Mexican migration studies (Ariza and Portes, 2007)

One of the main current debates is to what extend new sexual division of labor is related with an

effective increase on wives bargaining power. The migration of the husband tends to incite a new

division of labor within the marriage and it instigates the individualization processes of the wife: an

increased presence in agricultural work, access to paid work, and increased mobility. It has also

boosted women´s responsibilities in the public management of family affairs, controlling the

investment of remittances or replacing their husbands in political positions (cargos) within the

community (Boehm, 2008; Radel and Schmook, 2008). However, this increase in wives‘

contributions to marriage does not always go hand in hand with an increase in the bargaining power

WORKING PAPER:



of women. Social norms and practices may redefine such changes, making some women feel

trapped: they are forced to behave in a way that is harshly penalized by gender norms (Suarez and

Zapata, 2004). Furthermore, several mechanisms to devaluate the new contribution and autonomy

of the wife can be put into practice. In some areas, the wife still lives with her in-laws, who take

control of remittances from the son (Martone et al, 2011; Pauli, 2008), while the wife is

responsible for paying the migration debt with her own earnings. It is also known that the mobility

of wives left behind can be monitored through transnational gossip (Debry, 2009), and husbands

can punish women‘s ‗misbehavior‘ by stopping calling or sending remittances, or

threatening them with infidelity or with wasting money on vices such as alcohol and philandering

(Castro, 2006; Radel and Schmook, 2009). Another interesting mechanism of political control over

women has to do with substitution citizenship. When women are part of community assembly as

replacements for their husbands, they vote according to the husbands‘interests and therefore do not

exercise full citizenship. When the men come back, the wives may relinquish their role in

community decision-making. Therefore, women‘s access to public spaces such as paid work or

community cargos must be contextualized in order to understand the extent to which such access

improves their bargaining power and autonomy.

Current debates are trying to overcome previous dualism by focusing on extended family

dynamics, instead on marriage ones, to understand different outcomes of the link between gender

norms and male migration. Scholars have pointed out that conjugal relations have received too

much attention and that other significant female family roles need to be included to gain a wider

perspective of gender transformations, especially in rural and traditionally poor contexts where

extended family and female-headed households are strategic survival alliances (de la Rocha,

1999). As noted by Pauli with regard to the study of a Mexican family, ―gender relations in most

WORKING PAPER:



of the studies just alluded to are equivalent to conjugal relationsǁ (Pauli, 2008, p. 172). Including

extended family relations provides insight into the micro-processes of the control of wives after

men´s migration: mothers-and sisters-in-law may closely monitor wives left behind or invent

stories about them to control marriage alliances. However, extended family dynamics have

recently become the focus of research for other reasons. How migration has altered gender

inheritance patterns is an old topic in the Mexican migration literature (Aranda and Arizpe, 1988),

but since the 2000´s the issue has been studied from a different perspective Demographic changes

related to aging populations in sending societies raise the question about who will care for the

elderly population in rural areas when permanent male migration has eroded the traditional

elderly caregiving system based on men‘s inheritance and daughter-in-law care (Kanaiaupuni,

2000). Some scholars have pointed out that caregiving for the elderly in rural sending societies is

undergoing a transformation (Arias, 2005; 2009) and in some rural areas this shift has allowed

daughters to become heirs (Del Rey Poveda, 2007).

Another important point of discussion is how social remittances give rise to transformations in

traditional gender relations in sending societies. Several case studies have shown that the migration

of men has changed gender roles, increasing the participation of men in childcare and sparking a

desire to move away from the position of ‗check-father‘ (D‘Aubeterre, 2005; Mummert, 2005).

However, the norms of patriarchy can be reproduced inside migration networks. The point is that

too much attention has been placed on how ideas,

behaviors, identities, and social capital ―are sent back to sending communities and the role they

play in transforming sending-country social and political lifeǁ (Levitt, 1998, p. 926) and little

attention has been paid to gender changes inside rural sending communities due to women‘s contact

with the state, international institutions, NGO‘s or local women‘s organizations. The

implementation of federal programs such as Progresa-Oportunidades has brought about some

WORKING PAPER:



interesting secondary effects in Mexican rural women, including increased enrollment of girls in

school, increased autonomy of wives over their financial matters and in the education of their

children, and increased social capital due to obligatory Oportunidades meetings (Escobar-Latapi,

2000). Improvements in women‘s selfconfidence, awareness, and control over their movements and

household resources have also been reported (Skoufias, 2005, p. 61). Some scholars have found that

Procede, the federal land titling program, when implemented during the time the men are away, is

associated with increased rates of women‘s formal rights due to the requirement that individuals be

present and of legal age in order to access private land ownership (Radel et al., 2012). Some authors

have found that rural women left behind in Mexico organize themselves financially and work

collectively to gain access to land (Radel, 2011) and some

federal women‘s associations us RedPAR (Federal Network of Rural Promoters and

Advisors Women), RENAMUR (Federal Network of Rural Women), RENAMITT(Federal

Network of Indigenous Women: Advocating For Mother Land and Territory) have been founded

following the same purpose. Women also associate with one another to build structures that allow

their children to earn a living at home without taking the risks of migration (Stephen, 2005;

McCarty and Altemose, 2010). So the migration of men and social remittances from them are not

the only or primary source of the transformation of gender norms, and the family must be linked to

internal community changes in the rural sending society due to contact with the state, the market

and other institutions such as NGO´s and civil women‘s associations.

3. Research methods

Fieldwork was carried out during two research stays in Mexico and lasted a total of five months.

During community fieldwork, the primary author of this work stayed with indigenous families that

had male members who had migrated to the United States and helped the author contact other

WORKING PAPER:



families in the same situation. The main method used to carry out the research was in deep

interviews because they enable to understand the subjective world of the individual and the

community social discourses: individual and social perceptions about men´s and women´s

contributions, interests and fallback positions. In addition to conducting in deep-interviews,

sharing meals, fiestas, funeral rituals, and agricultural work or tequios (community work) with

families gave the researchers access to day-to-day bargaining processes, which were recorded in a

fieldwork diary. When possible social discourses and individual experiences has been contrasted

with quantitative data from Population and Agricultural censuses

3.1 Criteria for the selection of the studied areas

Two Oaxaca communities were selected in accordance with four criteria: international migration

of men to the USA, rural area, and classification as an indigenous community ruled by usos y

costumbres, and finally, inclusion under the medium or high marginality index. The last of these

criteria means that in the areas studied a significant proportion of people live in houses without

electricity, running water, toilets, sewers, drains or piped water supplies. The medium marginality

index also indicates that more than 25% of the population have no primary education and more

than half of the employed population‘s income is less than $260 (dollars) per month (CONAPO,

2010). Both communities are priority areas in which several federal programs are implemented

such as Oportunidades, (to promote education, health and nutrition in extremely low-income

families) and Setenta y Más (non-contributory retirement program for extremely low-income

adults).

3.2 In-deep interviews to assess gender bargaining power

WORKING PAPER:



Under bargaining models, families ―are recognizably constituted of multiple actors, with varying

(often conflicting) preferences and interests, and differential abilities to pursue and realize those

interestsǁ (Agarwal, 1997, p. 3). Bargaining outcome depends on the fallback position of each

member, the extent to which cooperation is necessary to his/her survival and how well off she/he

would be if cooperation failed (Agarwal, 1997). The assumption is

that the greater a person‘s resources to physically survive outside the family, the greater

her/his bargaining power over family resources. Bargaining power is also defined by contributions.

The person making a larger contribution to overall well-being has more bargaining power. The

same applies for interests; depending on how much value a person gives to his/her interests, the

more or less bargaining power that person has. People with a much clearer notion of what they want

to obtain from family will have more bargaining power.

Cultural norms are relevant in attempting to understand how context affects the bargaining power of

family members based on gender and age. Norms may define what can be negotiated and what is

not open to question, i.e. cultural doxa. Social norms may constrain gender alliances and who can

cooperate with, they may determine what kind of sexual division of labor is legitimate within and

outside the home, which should make family decisions, etc. Cultural norms establish how family

members should behave during bargaining processes, for example, in many contexts assertive

behavior is not tolerated in girls and women (Agarwal, 1997). Cultural norms also shape other

institutions. Paid work can provide a weaker fallback position than expected because gender

ideology underpins the labor market and most women receive low wages because their work is

considered to be less valuable. In rural societies such as those studied, women‘s relationships with

the community are essential to survival. Community provides people with a support network, but at

the same time it may impose rigid gender behavior norms on both women and men. The migration

WORKING PAPER:



of men gives rise to new questions, such as who belongs and who does not belong to the community

and whether the new sexual division of labor is acceptable – the answers to both of which have

considerable consequences with regard to gender relations. As for the federal government, its role

with regard to gender and indigenous communities is ambiguous. For example, the Mexican state

designs and implements gender programs to give women increased autonomy but at the same time

carries out actions that violate fundamental human rights (Amnesty International, 2007).

3.2.1 Women left behind: wives, mothers and sisters.

Previous Mexican case studies have focused almost exclusively on conjugal relations. For this

reason, in our study, 20 wives of migrants were interviewed with regard to their roles as both

spouses and daughters. To understand extended family dynamics, 38 mothers of migrants and four

adult single sisters that were living with their parents were also interviewed. We used Bina

Agawal‘s bargaining model, designed to measure the female fallback position in traditional and

rural contexts, to measure changes in bargaining power by means of an interview script comprised

of 38 dimensions. The interviewed women were asked about the material aspects of bargaining

power: access to arable land, access to employment or other sources of income, access to

community, access to traditional social

protection systems, support from NGO‘s and government support. They were also asked

about how their perceived interests and contributions changed after the men in their lives migrated.

Interviews were also designed to measure cultural doxa and changes in the social legitimacy of

gender norms. Scholars have shown that, especially in strongly patriarchal contexts, women may

not find ―easy to formulate any clear notion of their own personal welfare or may be confused

with family interestsǁ (Sen, 1987, p.6). When possible subjective perceptions of contributions and

interests were contrasted with quantitative data from Population and Agricultural Census,

WORKING PAPER:



specifically: Population Census (2000, 2005, and 2010), Agricultural Census (1991, 1997) and data

developed from PROCEDE-FANAR land titling federal program (2006, 2013).

3.2.2 Community, labor market and the State intervention on sending rural areas.

Several in-depth interviews were conducted in order to understand how community

membership is redefined, how community accepts a new sexual division of labor, how family

and community remittances interlink with the local labor market and how communities and

families relate to the government to enhance or diminish women‘s bargaining power.

Indigenous community authorities (7), federal program coordinators of PROCEDE-FANAR

(1) and Oportunidades (2) and the local heads of remittance institutions (2) were interviewed.

Results

4.1 Traditional family dynamics: the importance of female-headed households and

extended family alliances.

Mexican family system has been described as markedly patriarchal in structure and organization,

with formal authority invested in a male household head who exercises power over wives and

daughters (Massey et al, 2006). However it is difficult to speak of "theǁ Mexican family as if it

were only one hegemonic model. Mexico is a heterogeneous context where many cultures mix with

different forms of family organization and complex family cycles. Female-headed households (40%

in the Zapotec area and 34% in the Mixtec area) are numerous and extended family alliances are

strategic to survive in the studied areas (Censo de población y vivienda, 2010)

A review of the literature (Plaza, 2002; Marroni, 1995; Robichaux, 2005; 2007) and interviews with

WORKING PAPER:



elderly women show that the traditional family system used to be based on virilocality in the

fieldwork areas. Traditionally, only sons inherited plots close to their parents on which to build their

marital home, as well as arable land for their own agricultural production. Parents invested more

financial and educational resources in men, as they have traditionally been charged with acting as a

mediator between the family and the community and between the family and the state: Sons had to

study because they were to serve the community. And women did not have that right (San Miguel,

mother, interview number 4).

Daughters do not usually inherit, making marriage a crucial alliance in order for women to secure a

house, arable land, and access to community and traditional social protection

systems. Young women commonly leave their parents‘ home, hacen fuego en otro hogar (light a

fire in another hearth), and move to their in-laws place, ―I come to my in-laws to be their

daughter.ǁ Married/partnered young women (the son´s partner) are expected to obey

their mothers-in-law and help them in caregiving tasks:

Our son still has no home and he says: there I bring my wife. And I said: well, here is your

room. The woman comes here to cook, prepare lunch, dinner, and coffee… we ate lunch

altogether here... (San Miguel, Mother, interview number 5).

Once a woman moves in with her in-laws, what anthropologists have called a stage of friction

begins between the newcomer wife and her mother-in-law (Robichaux, 2005). Just as in marriage,

there is cooperation between wives and mothers-in-law (they exchange resources and caregiving

tasks), as well as conflict about the wives‘ workload or about care decisions. In social discourse, the

mother-son alliance gradually disappears to let the son fully cooperate with his spouse. But the

mother-son alliance is strong due to women‘s little bargaining power as wives: on the first years

WORKING PAPER:



marriage is a weak alliance characterized by the possibility of the husband‘s infidelity, abuse,

desertion or alcoholism, none of which are socially sanctioned behaviors. Hence mother‘s in-law

can control son‘s earnings and economic investment during a long time and maintain their son

alliance through inheritance to ensure being cared when they get old. In the traditional world, the

role of mother-in-law would give women access to improve financial and human resources. Being a

mother legitimizes the marriage of young wives and is crucial to building their own family

alliances, social capital, to gain independence from their husbands‘ families and to gain family

support in case of temporary or permanent marital abandonment. Even when there is no marital

separation marriages function as two independent economic units: obviously husbands provide

economic support to their families but wife and sons can usually build their own economic alliances

to maintain as much independence as possible from their husband and father. Traditionally, female

authority is acquired through the sacrifice of motherhood, as has been noted in other Mexican

contexts (Hirsch, 2002). During fieldwork, disapproving comments about gringo (foreign) wives

were used to note the qualities of a good wife: ―they cannot cook tortillasǁ; ―they can‘t handle

this life and leaveǁ.

To sum up, on traditional indigenous system young women have nearly no social legitimated

alliances to survive except marriage. As long as daughters will become part of other family and

they were supposed to get economic and social protection through marriage no investment was

making on them and young women have nearly no bargaining power on the first years of marriage:

she had to contribute with her care work and she must obey and serve her mother in-law. On the

other side, young men counted with their parents support and with a strong social legitimated

alliance with their mothers. Traditional society dynamics are reproduced and modified

simultaneously due to male migration and other structural changes on sending societies some

WORKING PAPER:



related with men´s migration and others do not.

4.2. Temporary migration: the dual alliance of men and wives diminished bargaining power.

There are several ways to migrate to the United States from the Mixtec community where our

fieldwork was conducted. There is documented temporary migration that lasts six to eight months in

which men are hired by American corporations to work at pine plantations. There is also temporary

undocumented migration to the United States undertaken mainly by men who cross the border

several times and come back to the Mixtec community. And, as described in other studies, there is

also a family migration flow undertaken in stages using community and family networks: families

move to the north, to Tijuana, and later on mainly men cross the United States border by

themselves. In any case, most mothers, wives and migrant men explain that they return to the

village after they have crossed the border several times, as sons and later on as husbands and

fathers.

In the area of Mixtec studied, most men leave for the United States for the first time at an early age.

A man‘s decision to migrate may be an individual choice, as noted by Cohen (2008), but it is

generally supported by his parents (according to our fieldwork, usually mothers), who act as

guarantors for their sons at rural banks or borrow from community members. Most migrants and

their families must go into debt to pay for the cost of migration (ranging from 15,000 to 25,000

pesos) and they migrate basically to pay individual debts, to fulfill their community obligations or

to save money. So the first times the men migrate they are part of an extended family and they send

remittances to their parents, generally to their mothers, either directly or through other family

members, mainly their sisters.

The mother-son alliance does not come to an end when the son gets married and he migrates

WORKING PAPER:



again. Typically, the son‘s wife (or partner) moves in with her in-laws, who are responsible for

her room and board. During this period, sons still send remittances to their extended families

because the cultural assumption is that the mother and son‘s interests are similar, while the

wife‘s interests are opposite to that of the migrated men. Hence it is assumed that the mother

in-law should receive the remittances or at least she should control the wife‘s use of them.

Social assumptions exercise strict control over the remittance administration carried out by

wives, while refraining from judgment about a mother‘s financial decisions. For example, some

young wives, who had separated from their husbands after years of physical and psychological

abuse, have been judged by society as women who had wasted remittances on their superfluous

needs (clothes, makeup, perfume, etc.) or as women who were not able to meet their obligations

as wives:

Sons have more trust on mothers; they manage better (…). If wife receives the remittances, she must

be under control. If she wastes her husband’s money, he sends it again to his mother. (Community

Leader, Mixtec Area).

4.1.2 Men´s migration and wives’ contributions, fallback position and interests.

Despite this apparent lack of trust, various changes in the sending society have resulted in greater

contributions on the part of young wives to their marriages and an increase of their bargaining

power. San Miguel municipality has been selected to host higher educational institutions receiving

students from the entire Mixtec area, and the community has encouraged the education of their own

younger generation by freeing students of any community cargos or work. So, younger wives have

attained more formal education than previous generations and they have higher proficiency in

WORKING PAPER:



Spanish, making it easier for them to interact with remittance institutions and with the government,

if any documentation is needed. The rules of community membership in San Miguel el Grande are

being redefined in more gender flexible terms. Men have several options to fulfill their community

obligations while they are away, from coming back to exercise cargos, to paying someone to do it

for them or being temporarily replaced by their wives in the exercise of cargos or tequios or in

participation in the community assembly. This is an important point in terms of the contribution of

wives, as husbands can rely on them not to interrupt their migration and to save money and time.

Younger generations also have new economic opportunities. Although some scholars have noted

that Mexican male migration has not enhanced paid work opportunities for women in some areas

(Aysa and Massey, 2004), this is not the case in San Miguel el Grande, where a significant number

of the women interviewed worked paying jobs while their husbands were away. Labor market

options have also increased for women, as remittances have been invested in small businesses –

family grocery shops, restaurants, call centers, pharmacies or gas stations – where women can find

low-income employment. In fact, secondary statistical sources show a significant increase in the

presence of women in the labor force in this Mixtec municipality – going from 15% in 1990 to 37%

in 2010. Along with access to paid work, the federal program Oportunidades provides financial aid

to mothers, regardless of their marital status, with children who are still studying.

Migration is an uncertain enterprise: husbands go into debt to migrate, they will probably not be

able to send remittances in the first months they are away, and wives are exposed to abandonment

or infidelity. Women work to deal with these issues, which urge them to meet the running costs of

their homes and the migration debt owed by their husbands. As marital abandonment is a

generalized social fear, wives feel they have to increase their contributions to their marriages and

they develop strategies to ensure that the migrant husband returns, such us decreasing his income

WORKING PAPER:



responsibilities as the male breadwinner. The migration of men and the paid work of women have

accelerated the end of cohabitation: remittances lead to a noticeable decrease in extended family

households and an increase in nuclear family structures by allowing an independent home to be

built more quickly in which women are subjected to less control.

However, the mere fact of living apart and taking on new and important community and family

contributions to marriage do not automatically mean equal bargaining power for women within

the family. The potentiality of paid work as a relevant contribution to marriage by assuming

part of the husband‘s debt or being responsible for family living expenses is diminished by the

cultural doxa: wives must show that their husbands are income providers and they must avoid

being the subject of rumors questioning their sexual loyalty. The paid work of women implies

exposure to contact with unknown men while the husband is away, questioning his honor and

his ability to control his wife‘s sexuality. Even cases in which the woman‘s paid work is carried

out at home in family grocery shops imply potential contact with unknown men.

Mothers-in-law, as well as other family members, exercise economic and sexual control over

the behavior of wives even when they no longer live together. Information about inappropriate

actions (real or not) can be transmitted directly through the men‘s extended family or through

migrant networks, which play an important role in reproducing gender ideology. Phone

conversations maintained while the couple is separated usually focus on sexual control and

infidelity; often wives have to explain the misunderstandings behind the gossip. In the wives‘

discourses, sexual rumors are important when men try to decide whether to abandon their wives

and children or not. In San Miguel, gossip holds a powerful social control over the mobility of

young wives.

People cannot see you talk to a man; if I were sitting with a man as we are right now

WORKING PAPER:



people are going to say, ‘you are cheating on your husband...’ (San Miguel, wife, interview number

9).

Despite wives‘ greater economic and administrative contribution to marriage, cultural doxa

still dictates various female behaviors and services (attending to husbands during meals, asking

permission to leave, avoiding being the subject of rumors, publicly obeying husbands,

refraining from yelling or publicly chiding husbands, not humiliating men in their manhood,

etc.) that are not considered to be a valuable contribution to cooperation. These are marital

duties and failing to comply with these cultural obligations may incur psychological or physical

violence against the wives who dare to ignore them – that is, culturally legitimized violence.

The traditional stage of friction between wives and mothers-in-law is used by migrant men to

build a double alliance based on the assumption that mothers manage better than wives. Sons‘

alliances with their mothers can be used as a threat to their wives through sending the money to

their mothers or giving them more information. This son-mother alliance increases the

husband‘s independence from cooperating with his wife, improves his fallback position and

increases his bargaining power, while decreasing the wife‘s ability to look after her interests. It

is therefore not surprising that young wives described the time they lived with their in-laws as

―a mess, I already went through it, finally this house is mine and I do not care what my

mother-in-law does.ǁ However, structural social changes have weakened mothers‘ and

husbands‘ position in favor of wives. These generational changes and the increased bargaining

power of wives have aroused fears in older generations. The traditional system of elderly care is

being eroded by migration and generational changes. Some of these fears are narrated through

stories in which the wife manipulates her husband in order to avoid taking care of her in-laws in

old age. Parents try to build other family alliances, giving rise to another interesting shift in the

WORKING PAPER:



position of women: daughters have become valuable to their parents and they are bequeathed

communal property.

My daughter in-law can say awful things about me to my son. And my son is against me. What am I

going to do? My daughters look after me, they care about me. Why am not going to bequeath them?

That is the reasons why parents value their daughters now. (San Miguel, Mother, interviewed

number

4.3 Agricultural land loss, the migration of sons, the empowerment of young women and

inheritance shift: elderly mother-daughter alliances

In the 1980´s, the main thesis regarding women‘s access to inheritance was related to the loss of

land value and the economic contribution of daughters. In San Miguel el Grande, rural families

are in the process of recomposing the family lifecycle due to the breakdown, loss and uncertainty

of agricultural production, which has given rise to significant migration flows from this area.

Planting allows families to save on food, but only the poorest people have a high dependence on

agriculture for survival. In fact, agricultural production has increased in the last five years from

representing $218 per household in 2005 to $529 in 2010 due to lower remittances and the

increasing price and poor quality of purchased corn (INEGI, 2005; 2010)

Furthermore, some interesting phenomena are occurring with regard to land value – it has lost

importance as an individual asset while gaining value as a family possession on which to build a

house and as a symbolic and material community possession. Fierce opposition has been expressed

against state privatization projects such as PROCEDE-FANAR and the exploitation interests of

different transnational and national companies. Indigenous communities defend communal land

rights while new gender distribution is occurring in favor of women.

WORKING PAPER:



The relationship between daughters and parents, and specifically between daughters and mothers,

has changed substantially. Daughters live with their parents for a longer time and they receive much

more economic support than in previous generations. Parents try to keep them closer and they offer

them rooms inside the house to build their marital home or give them plots to build on nearby.

When we asked women who they would turn to for help in a case of marital abuse, they said they

would go to their parents and they explained that community authorities refuse to help them,

arguing that such matters are a family problem. This change in the status of daughters is

symbolically represented by the refusal of parents to accept a daughter‘s dowry, arguing that new

marriages are modern marriages and

daughters are no longer transferred to their in-laws. This gives the daughter the opportunity to

return to her parents if she needs to. As in the case of young wives, young daughters have more

education, greater mobility, and greater access to paid work than their mothers did; they can hold

cargos within the community and they can work on manual tequios. Their contribution is similar to

those of their brothers, but with less defined self-interest than their siblings. Doubts about whether

daughters-in-law will accept caring for their husbands‘ elderly parents are beginning to be replaced

with new arrangements, and the discussion has moved from exclusively economic matters to

include caregiving concerns, in which daughters are preferred for several reasons – the alliance is

considered to be stronger with daughters than with daughters-in-law and women are preferred over

men to cook and clean for elderly people and help to bathe them.

We repeatedly heard the same utterances in our research, ―daughters are also our children,ǁ ―both

women and men work in the fields,ǁ ―daughters and sons are equalǁ. This discursive shift in

inheritance patterns to include daughters seems to be associated with several fundamental aspects

such as the loss and uncertainty of land value as a factor of agricultural production, leading to the

WORKING PAPER:



migration of men and destabilizing traditional family and community alliances; the interlink

between migration and the local market, generating new labor opportunities for young women; and

federal programs addressed towards mothers. But it is also important to highlight some internal

changes, such us the increasing educational level of the younger generations, flexible redefinition of

community membership based on gender, and the changing role of young women both as daughters

and as wives in the community.

4.2 Permanent migration: from cooperation to altruism

Zoogocho has a longstanding migration culture, which started in the 1940´s with the Bracero

Program. Over the last 15 years, this Zapotec municipality has undergone tremendous demographic

changes related to massive young male migration, which has changed the proportion of men to

women (77 men to every 100 women) and the mean age of the population (42) (INEGI, 2010).

These demographic changes are the result of two different migration flows, one related to laborers

that go to the United States and the other related to attaining more formal education in the city of

Oaxaca, but which ends up as labor migration. In the first case, unmarried men cross the border,

mainly to the city of Los Angeles. The city is home to a well-established Zapotec transnational

community so it is quite common to use community and family networks to cross and settle in the

United States. Most young men migrate without documentation, which prevents them from

returning home regularly. Consequently, migration usually becomes permanent after the man starts

a new family in the United States. Similar processes happen when men first migrate to study, but

then find a job in the city and form a family outside the village. This migration pattern is similar to

that described recently for the entire Mexican community, where individual male circulatory

migration has moved towards permanent family migration due to the agricultural crisis and the

extreme drop in land value: agricultural production per household/year reached $70 in 2010. In both

WORKING PAPER:



cases, the migration of men tends to be permanent. So, Zoogocho is a community with an aging

population and Zapotec women left behind have different characteristics from those in the Mixteca

area studied. The women who were interviewed were primarily the elderly mothers of migrant men.

The mother-son alliance has also changed dramatically: ―m‘hijo envia para el refrescoǁ (my son

sends money to buy soda) was often heard during our interviews with Zapotec women, and it means

that remittances may be sent regularly to cover daily expenses such as food and similar items or to

take care of occasional requirements such as medicines, but they are not a significant source of

income sent to invest in the son‘s eventual return. The position of mothers with regard to

remittances has changed much more dramatically than in the Mixteca area because permanent

migration of sons to the United States has broken the strategic alliance between mothers and sons.

The nature of the mother-son alliance is transformed, because the maternal contribution to the

cooperative relationship is not necessary – wives and children are not living in the sending area

with their mother-in-law or being controlled by them while the man is away. The strategic alliance

between mothers and sons, while a reliable link while waiting for men to return in the Mixteca,

becomes a relationship of support and solidarity in Zoogocho. The social position of the

mother-in-law has shifted dramatically; mothers receive few remittances, they do not have

daughters-inlaw to help them with housework or to take care of them in old age and elderly parents

have become quite dependent on migrated sons and daughters. In mothers‘ discourse, sons do not

come back because wives and children have adapted to the receiving society and they do not want

to come back. Marriage has completely replaced the mother-son alliance as the most important

affiliation. But the generational solidarity of male offspring based on the son‘s economic

contribution and daughter-in-law‘s caregiving has been eroded by permanent migration, opening up

the debate of what will happen to the elderly fathers and mothers who remain in the village.

WORKING PAPER:



4.2.1 New elderly care arrangements and their links to inheritance shift

Parents, and specifically mothers, use several strategies to attempt to make their sons return. First,

Knowing that some of their offspring have financial troubles in the States, parents offer their houses

and family businesses to their sons to entice them to come back. Since the financial crisis in the

USA in 2008, most migrants have seen their work schedules cut and their salaries reduced. This has

put a significant financial burden on migrants who cannot meet their obligations as husbands,

fathers, migrated sons and members of a transnational community. In the event of unemployment or

illness, living in Zoogocho is substantially cheaper than living in Los Angeles and elderly mothers

try to convince their migrated sons to move back to the community. But Zoogocho‘s labor market is

restricted to very low-paying, temporary agricultural work. The legal status of migrants and

Zoogocho‘s specific situation has pushed the area to invest community remittances in municipality

buildings, sport zones, patronal fiestas and the funding of a local school of music. And family

remittances that were in the past sent to build houses are now sent to support elderly parents.

Second, some mothers have placed their hopes on community obligations. They try to get their

sons elected to community cargos so they have to come back for at least a year to meet their

community obligations. The redefinition of community membership after male migration is still

rigid in terms of gender and it has become inflexible with regard to obligations and finances. Men

are privileged to be the link between the family and the community; their prestige and community

membership is linked to the fulfillment of their community obligations, to having authority in

community decisions, even if it implies a considerable financial burden or the postponement of

certain family needs.

The third option has to do with softening the criteria that privileged men over women‘s

WORKING PAPER:



inheritance arguing that both men and women are both important children. International migration

creates several distinct patterns of parent-child care arrangements related to income options and

the division of labor along gender lines. Some families decide that one brother or sister should

stay with aging parents to care for them while migrant workers provide economic resources. In

other situations, when the migrants are mainly sons, they work together to jointly hire women in

the village to take care of the elderly. Another care strategy, when the migrants are mainly

daughters, is to come back to the village in shifts of six months to one year to take care of elderly

parents. But the most common strategy is to bring the parents to the receiving society, either to

Los Angeles or Oaxaca city. In community discourse, if the migrated sons and daughters do not

take care of their elderly relatives, someone from the community will do it. The result is that these

people will leave their belongings to those who have looked after them, rather than to their sons or

daughters. Within the community discourse, inheritance is closely related to caregiving and to

financial provision, even after the elderly person dies, paying for funeral expenses and

ecclesiastical services. If no one is available, elderly care can be defined as a community

obligation and once the person dies her/his property becomes part of the community again. This is

the least advantageous situation for women who are required to care for the elderly as part of their

community obligations, but do not receive any property in compensation. However, some cases of

community and family abandonment have been seen in the households of very low-income senior

citizens.

In the context of these new care arrangements, women are granted a land inheritance as long as they

have cooperated in caregiving tasks and in providing financial support. Mothers and siblings are the

ones who seem to negotiate in order to give a greater portion of the inheritance to daughters-sisters.

However, when women are asked about the viability of directly claiming their inheritance rights or

WORKING PAPER:



complaining to the authorities if their rights are violated, most say that it is not a possibility.

Cultural norms prevent women from being assertive in their roles as daughters or sisters in this

situation, when they are hoping to become landowners. Meanwhile, receiving land places a

significant burden on low-income people who have migrated permanently. Zoogocho is ruled by a

rigid cargo system of usos y costumbres: to have land or a house means strong monetary and citizen

obligations to the community; owning land or a house is not only a means of subsistence or

production, they give access to community membership with its rights (being supported in

agricultural work by neighbors, shared festivals, community services such as water or electricity,

etc.) and its obligations (serving as citizens, participating in community work (cargos, tequio y

cooperacion). If a man is elected to hold a cargo he is forced to live and work for a year in the

village. Regardless of whether the person has illegally migrated to the United States, he has to

return or pay a replacement fee of about $10,000 to the person who serves as his proxy. When

migrated women are bequeathed with land, the situation saddles them with various new burdens:

they need a male figure to interact with the community, and the restricted agricultural labor market

exercises discriminatory practices against women, who are paid 80% less than men for the same

agricultural job. This community practice pushes some migrated families and women to abandon

the community, as they cannot face the financial cost of transnational membership obligations,

making inheriting land a burden rather than a compensation for caregiving.

5. Conclusions and discussions

This paper analyzes how the international migration of men affects women left behind and argues

that both negative and positive effects may occur in the same area. We emphasize as well that the

extended family dynamics of the sending society must be analyzed in order to understand this

paradox. Unlike Western industrialized countries, where parents are expected to be autonomous and

WORKING PAPER:



live by themselves during mid-to later life, traditional patterns of living arrangements in indigenous

communities are based on family caregiving for the elderly and a strong continuity of parent-child

economic alliances and co-residence. Nevertheless, the migration literature tends to implicitly

assume that marriage and fatherhood are the most important alliances or the only ones adult men

and women hold. In the indigenous areas studied here, women left behind are not equivalent to

wives left behind and gender analysis must be extended beyond the conjugal dynamic to understand

various family micro-processes that reproduce and change gender norms, such as the diminished

bargaining power of wives despite their greater contribution to marriage and changes in inheritance

patterns and the access of daughters to land tenure, a key resource for rural subsistence and for the

empowerment of women. Our second main argument is that male international outmigration must

be linked to other social transformations in the sending society, such as the redefinition of

community membership, the reconfiguration of the local labor market, and the intervention of the

State in rural sending communities, in order to completely understand how migration promotes or

hinders shifts in gender roles. Internal changes within the sending area, such as higher education,

paid labor, higher proficiency in Spanish or access to state programs for younger generations play

an important role in increasing the bargaining power and fallback position of young women, both as

wives and daughters. Despite evidence that women have experienced significant

generational changes, we heard wives say again and again, ―I still respect my husband.ǁ

Wives‘ greater contributions to marriage and its potential to equalize bargaining power

between the wife and husband are undermined by the men´s extended family alliances and cultural

doxa that forces women to maintain their submission to patriarchal male authority in order to avoid

harsh social punishment such as domestic violence. Transnational gossip, transmitted through

networks, also reinforces traditional gender expectations in Mexican families, despite the

WORKING PAPER:



considerable distance and contact with other gender systems.

At the same time, the migration of men has given rise to other family alliances. Traditional

generational solidarity based on the mother-son alliance is beginning to break down due to the

temporary and permanent migration of men along with the increase in the bargaining power of

wives, who may refuse to take care of elderly in-laws. Other alliances emerge instead to replace the

traditional welfare system in old age: elderly parents try to build new alliances, mainly with their

daughters (who are considered more reliable than daughters-inlaw) and bequeath them agricultural

and building plots. This shift toward gender equality in inheritance as a result of migration and

other structural changes in the sending area has increased the probability of women receiving an

inheritance in the areas studied, not as widows, the most common women access to land in Latin

America (Deere and Leon, 2003), but as daughters. These new alliances have different outcomes.

Prior academic literature on women‘s inheritance and migration indicates that the land loss of value,

increased financial contribution of daughters and mixed gender migration flows are key variables to

understanding changes in inheritance patterns towards gender equality. However, these two cases

show that other dimensions, such as the degree of land loss value, migration type, how migration

interlinks with the local labor market, how community membership is redefined, how community

accepts new the sexual division of labor and how family and communities relate to the government

should be included when analyzing indigenous communities.

This research has also given rise to several new questions and topics for debate: Are these cases

exceptional or might they be describing more widespread processes in gender-based land

redistribution in Oaxaca? Since the 1990´s several federal programs (PROCEDEFANAR) have

been implemented to convert ejido and community land into individual property. These programs

WORKING PAPER:



also gather data about the gender of community landholders and individual owners both in the

community system and in private land ownership. However, these data are not directly comparable

with the agricultural census and further research is needed to glean insight into new trends. For

example, according to the Agricultural Census, in 2007, women represented 27.1% of social

landholders (2007), while in 2013 they represent 34.8% (RAN, 2013). Another important question

to address is why other parts of Mexico have not experienced the same gender outcomes with

regard to inheritance, even when the same elderly care strategies involving daughters are being put

into place.

References

Agarwal, B., 1997. ''Bargaining'' and gender relations: Within and beyond the household.

Feminist Economics 3 (1), 1-51.

Amnesty International. 2007. Oaxaca: clamor por la justicia. Available from:

http://www.amnesty.org/es

Aranda, J., Arizpe, L. (1988). Las mujeres en el campo. Memoria de la reunión nacional de

investigación sobre mujeres campesinas en México. Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de

Oaxaca, México.

Arias, P., 2005. El mundo de los amores imposibles. Residencia y herencia en la sociedad ranchera.

In: Robichaux, D. (Comp.), Familia y Parentesco En México y Mesoamerica, Universidad

Iberoamericana, Mexico, pp. 547-61.

———.2009. Migración, familia y herencia en el campo mexicano. Available from:

http://envejecimiento.sociales.unam.mx/archivos/migr_fam.pdf

Ariza, M., Portes, A., 2007. El País Transnacional: Migración Mexicana y Cambio Social a Través

De La Frontera, UNAM-Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, México.

WORKING PAPER:



Aysa M, Massey D. Wives left behind: the labor market behavior of women in migrant

communities. In: Durand J., Massey, D. S., (editors) Crossing the Border. Research from the

Mexican Migration Project. New York: Russell Sage Foundation; 2004. pp. 172–190.

Bever, S. W., 2002. Migration and the transformation of gender roles and hierarchies in Yucatan.

Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development

Vol. 31, No. 2: 199-230.Boehm, D. A., 2008. ―Now I am a man and a woman!ǁ gendered

moves and migrations in a transnational Mexican community. Latin American Perspectives

35 (1), 16-30.

Cerrutti, M., D.S. Massey., 2001. On the auspices of female migration from Mexico to the United

States. Demography 38 (2), 187-200.

Cohen, J. H., Rodriguez L., Fox, M., 2008. Gender and migration in the central valleys of

Oaxaca. International Migration 46 (1), 79-101.

Castro, J. Y. C., 2006 (unpublished). Ahora las mujeres se mandan solas: migración y relaciones

de género en una comunidad mexicana transnacional llamada Pie de Gallo. Thesis doctoral.

CONAPO, O. (2010). Índices de marginación por localidad 2010. Available from:

http://www.conapo.gob.mx/es/CONAPO/Indice_de_Marginacion_por_Localidad_201

D'Aubeterre-Buznego, M. E., Barrera, D., Oehmichen, D., 2000. Mujeres y espacio social

transnacional: Maniobras para renegociar el vínculo conyugal. Migración y Relaciones De Género

En México. Gimtrap, AC/UNAM, Mexico, pp. 65-85

D´Aubeterre Buznego, M. E., da Gloria Marroni, M, Rivermar Pérez, M.L., 2003. La feminización

de la vida rural en el contexto de la migración masculina a los Estados Unidos en el estado de

Puebla: una perspectiva comparativa. Anales De Antropología UNAM 37 (1), 205-28.

De Haas, H., 2010. "Migration and development: a theoretical perspective. International

Migration Review 44.1, 227-264.

WORKING PAPER:



De la Rocha, M. G. 1999. Hogares de jefatura femenina en México: Patrones y formas de vida.

Paper presented in: XX Congreso Internacional de la Sociedad de Estudios

Latinoamericanos (LASA), Guadalajara, México, 17-19 de abril de 1997

De los Angeles Crummett, M., 1986. Rural women and migration in Latin America: Research

review and agenda. Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Notre Dame (USA).

Deere, C. D., León, M., 2003. The gender asset gap: land in Latin America. World

Development 31(6), 925-947.

Deere, C. D., 2005. The feminization of agriculture?: Economic restructuring in rural Latin

America. United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneve.

Del Rey Poveda, A., 2007. Determinants and consequences of internal and international

migration: The case of rural populations in the south of Veracruz, Mexico. Demographic

Research 16 (10), 287-314.

Dreby , J., 2009. Gender and transnational gossip. Qualitative Sociology 32 (1), 33-52.

Escobar-Latapí, Agustín. 2000. PROGRESA y cambio social en el campo en México.

E.Valencia, AM Tepichín y M.Gendreau (Comps.), Los Dilemas De La Política Social:¿

Cómo Combatir La Pobreza? Universidad de Guadalajara/ITESO/ Universidad

Iberoamericana, México, pp. 257-282.

Fox, J., Rivera-Salgado, G., 2004. Indigenous Mexican migrants in the United States Center

for US-Mexican Studies, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies/ University of

California San Diego, San Diego.

González Montes, S., Salles, V., 1995. Mujeres que se quedan, mujeres que se van... continuidad y

cambios de las relaciones sociales en contextos de aceleradas mudanzas rurales. Soledad

González, Coord., Relaciones De Género y Transformaciones Agrarias, El Colegio De México,

Mexico, pp.15-50

WORKING PAPER:



Gonzalez, S., Olivia Ruiz, Velasco, L., Woo, O., 1995. Mujeres, migración y maquila en la frontera

norte. El Colegio De Mexico, Mexico.

Hirsch, J. S., 1999. En el norte la mujer manda: gender, generation, and geography in a Mexican

transnational community. American Behavioral Scientist 42 (9), 1332-49.

Hondagneu-Sotelo, P., 1994. Gendered transitions: The Mexican experience of

immigration. University of California Press, California.

INEGI (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía). 2010. Censo general de población y vivienda

(Population Census), Mexico.

———. Censo Agrícola Ganadero y Forestal. 2007. (Agricultural Census). Mexico, 2007.

Kanaiaupuni, S. M., 2000. Leaving parents behind: Migration and elderly living arrangements in

Mexico. Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Madison-Wisconsin, Wisconsin.

Kearney, M., 2000. Transnational Oaxaca indigenous identity: The case of Mixtecs and

Zapotecs. Identities Global Studies in Culture and Power 7 (2), 173-95.

Levitt, P., 1998. Social remittances: Migration driven local-level forms of cultural

diffusion. International Migration Review Vol. 32, No. 4 (Winter), 926-48.

Marroni, M. G., 1995. Trabajo rural femenino y relaciones de género. In: González Montes, S.,

Salles, V., (Coords.) Relaciones De Género y Transformaciones Agrarias. El Colegio De

México, México, pp. 135-162.

——— .2000. Él siempre me ha dejado con los chiquitos y se ha llevado a los grandes. Ajustes

y desbarajustes familiares de la migración. In:Barrera, D., Oehmichen, C. (Edits).

Migración y Relaciones De Género En México. Grupo Interdisciplinario Sobre Mujer,

Trabajo y Pobreza/Instituto De Investigaciones Antropológicas De La UNAM, México.

———.2004. Violencia de género y experiencias migratorias. La percepción de los migrantes y sus

familiares en las comunidades rurales de origen. In: Torres Falcón, M. (comp.). Violencia

WORKING PAPER:



contra las mujeres en contextos urbanos y rurales. El Colegio de México/ Programa

Interdisciplinario de Estudios de la Mujer, Mexico, pp. 195-236

———.2006. Migrantes mexicanas en los escenarios familiares de las comunidades de origen:

Amor, desamor y dolor. Estudios Sociológicos Vol. 24, No. 72: 667-699.

Martone, J., Lina Muñoz, R., Lahey, Leah, Y., Gurewitz, St., 2011. The impact of

remittances on transnational families. Journal of Poverty 15 (4), 444-64.

Massey, D. S., 1988. Economic development and international migration in comparative

perspective. The Population and Development Review Vol. 14, No. 3 (September): 383-413.

———,1990. Social structure, household strategies, and the cumulative causation of

migration. Population index Vol. 56, No. 1 (Spring): 3-26.

Massey, D. S., Fischer, M.J., Capoferro, Ch., 2006. International migration and gender in Latin

America: A comparative analysis. International Migration 44 (5), 63-91.

McCarty, D., Altemose, J.R., 2010. The voices of Mexican women left behind: Responses to their

challenges. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 8 (3), 284-300.

McEvoy, J. P., 2008. Male out-migration and the women left behind: A case study of a small

farming community in southeastern Mexico. All Graduate Theses and Dissertations Paper

179. Available from: http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/179

Mummert, G., 1986. Mujeres de migrantes y mujeres migrantes de Michoacán: Nuevos papeles

para las que se quedan y las que se van. In: López, G. C., Calvo, T., Movimientos de

población en el occidente de México. El Colegio de Michoacan/ Centre d´Études Mexicaines

et Centroaméricaines, Mexico, pp. 281-298.

WORKING PAPER:



———. 1999. Juntos o desapartados; migración transnacional y la fundación del hogar.

Fronteras Fragmentadas. In: Mummert, G (Ed.). Fronteras fragmentadas. El Colegio De

Michoacán, Zamora, pp. 451-473.

———2005. Transnational parenting in Mexican migrant communities: Redefining fatherhood,

motherhood and caregiving. Paper presented at en The Mexican International Family

Strengths Conference: Building Family Relations. Cuernavaca.

Ortiz, L V., 2007. Migraciones indígenas a las ciudades de México y Tijuana. Papeles De

Población 13 (52), 183-209.

———. 2005. Mixtec transnational identity. University of Arizona Press, Arizona.

Palacios Franco, J., 1984. Mujeres y migración: Algunas reflexiones sobre la migración

México-EUA y su impacto en mujeres jóvenes. Nueva Época, Núm. 4. México:

CREA-Centro De Estudios Sobre La Juventud Mexicana, Mexico.

Pauli, J., 2008. A house of one's own: Gender, migration, and residence in rural Mexico.

American Ethnologist 35 (1), 171-87.

Plaza, R. C. 2002. Y en medio de nosotros mi madre como un dios: De suegras y nueras en una

comunidad rural veracruzana. Alteridades 12 (24), 41-50.

Radel, C., Schmook, B., 2008. Male transnational migration and its linkages to land-use change in a

southern Campeche ejido. Journal of Latin American Geography 7 (2), 59

84.

Radel, C., Schmook, B., McCandless, S., 2010. Environment, transnational labor migration, and

gender: case studies from southern Yucatan, Mexico and Vermont, USA. Population and

Environment 32 (2-3), 177-197.

WORKING PAPER:



Radel, C., Schmook, B., McEvoy, J., Mendez, C., Petrzelka. P., 2012. Labour migration and

gendered agricultural relations: The feminization of agriculture in the ejidal sector of

Calakmul, Mexico. Journal of Agrarian Change 12 (1), 98-119.

RAN (Registro Agrario Nacional) 2013. (unpublished) PROCEDE-FANAR database.

Robichaux, D. (2005). Familia y parentesco en México y Mesoamérica: unas miradas

antropológicas. Universidad Iberoamericana, México.

Robichaux, D. (2007). Familia y Diversidad en América Latina. Estudios de casos.

CLACSO, México.

Rodríguez, D. R., 2010. ―Una espera que desesperaǁ. Mujeres en hogares de varones ausentes

en una comunidad poblana de migrantes. Iberóforum Revista De Ciencias Sociales De La

Universidad Iberoamericana (10), 100-124.

Rubenstein, H., 1992. Migration, development and remittances in rural Mexico.

International Migration 30 (2), 127-53.

Sen, A.,1987. Gender and cooperative conflicts. World Institute for Development

Economics Research: Helsinki.

Skoufias, E., 2005. PROGRESA and its impacts on the welfare of rural households in Mexico

Research Report 139. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington DC.

Stephen, L., 2005. Zapotec women: Gender, class, and ethnicity in globalized Oaxaca. Duke

University Press, Durham.

Suarez, B., Zapata Martelo, E., 2004. Remesas, milagros y mucho más realizan las mujeres

indígenas y campesinas. Vol. II. Grupo Interdisciplinario sobre Mujer, Trabajo y Pobreza,

México.

WORKING PAPER:



UNFPA. 2005. International migration and the millennium development goals. United Nations

Population Fund, New York.

Vargas-Lundius, R., Villareal, M., Lanly, G. Osorio, M., 2008. International migration, remittances

and rural development. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Rome

Being Wives, Mothers and Sisters in the Absence of Men: Bargaining Power of Women Left behind in ...

Documents

Transcript of Being Wives, Mothers and Sisters in the Absence of Men: Bargaining Power of Women Left behind in ...