Narrations of authority and mobility

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Narrations of authority and mobilityNinna Nyberg Sørensen a;Finn Stepputat a

a Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen V

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To cite this Article Sørensen, Ninna Nyberg andStepputat, Finn(2001) 'Narrations of authority and mobility', Identities, 8:3, 313 — 342To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2001.9962695URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2001.9962695

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Narrations of Authority and Mobility

Ninna Nyberg S0rensen and Finn Stepputat

Women and men use local experience and experiences gained elsewherewhen they embark on migratory projects to reconfigure social spaceand practices back home. To explore this claim, the authors argue thatwe must analyze the relationship between mobility and authority,especially how experiences of mobility bestow authority on the mov-ing subjects. This argument is illustrated by an examination of threedifferently situated narratives from which two interrelated fields ofanalysis emerge. One field is related to how authority is perceived inrelation to control. The other field is related to the kinds of experience thatare produced through acts and narrations of movement and how theseexperiences become articulated to provide authority to individuals. Theauthors conclude that movement may subvert and / or reproduce author-ity, just as authority may be both a source and an effect of movement.

Key Words: Guatemalan Refugees, Dominican Migrants, Mobility, Authority

This essay is exploratory. We are interested in exploring the differentways women and men use local experience when they embark onmigratory projects, and how they use experiences from elsewhere toreconfigure sodal space and practices at home. A concept central toour exploration is authority. On the one hand, we look at the author-izing other, the persons or institutions with whom, and within which,movement is negotiated. On the other hand, we look at the authoriz-ing self, the ways in which people construct themselves in terms ofmovement, how they inscribe themselves in particular spaces, andhow they—by having moved and lived elsewhere—confer a certainauthority upon themselves. As such, the aim of our exercise is toexamine a number of critical issues concerning the relationship

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314 Ninna Nyberg Serensen and Finn Stepputat

between mobility and authority, especially the micro-dynamics ofsocial relations within a globalizing context.

Our exploratory endeavor makes use of narrative material fromtwo migratory situations among Guatemalan refugees in Mexico andDominican migrants in Spain. Conventionally, the distinct movementsinvolved would be categorized as refugee and migration, but for thepresent purpose we will bracket these categorizations and insteadsearch for the ways in which the moving subjects and their movementare authored and authorized in the narratives. As Lefebvre, Foucault,and de Certeau have shown, space as well as movement are sociallyconstituted, and the movement of bodies through space thereforeinvolves relations of power.1 The categorization of movement is onetechnique of power that produces difference between, for example,refugees and migrants. We nevertheless take as our point of departurethe assumption that international conventions and politics are nomore important than other sources of differences in defining migrantsand refugees. Movements across borders may be categorized by statesin ways that differ from the self-other definitions. Thus, while we donot assert that migrant and refugee experiences are identical, wemaintain that the "causes and consequences of displacement cannotbe understood in isolation from the meanings that are reinforced,contested and created through such massive movements" (Shami1996:10).

Narratives offer insights into the social fields people traverse insituations of mobility. They entail accounts of an "individual's move-ments through life, geographical as well as social, economic, orcultural, in such a way that they portray a sense of coherence reflect-ive of the narrator's sense of self" (Olwig 1999:269). At the same time,narratives are cultural constructions in the sense that they need to"conform to established notions concerning a credible and accept-able life in the socio-cultural milieu with which the narrator identify"(Olwig 1999: 267). In addition, narratives have the potential ofbringing experience in different locations into one single field, and forcondensing categories, boundaries, and encounters (S0rensen 1998).This field may encompass a variety of experiences of movement, butwe suggest that these experiences always will be organized in relationto specific authorized and authorizing discourses. Our approachinvolves an attention to authority as the legitimate exercise of power,but also, and more broadly, an attention to authorship.

In using this double notion of authorization, we highlight thehegemonic processes that construct "common discursive frameworks,"


Narrations of Authority and Mobility 315

which come into play when people engage in any form of migration.As coined by William Roseberry, a common discursive framework isa "material and meaningful framework for living through, talkingabout, and acting upon social orders characterized by domination."Such frameworks provide actors with discourses or common ways oftalking about social relationships that "sets out the central termsaround which and in terms of which contestation and struggle canoccur" (Roseberry 1994:361). The state is able to impose certain waysof framing and naming, but it is not necessarily able to force peopleto accept or use the terms. Nevertheless, such common frameworksprovide a "language of contention" through which subjects cancriticize and engage in negotiations with these authorities.

Our essay is divided into three parts. To set the theoretical contextfor our argument, we start by briefly evaluating the limitations andpossibilities in transnational theorizing. While we have found muchinspiration in the transnational approach, we find it inadequate toaddress certain types of migratory experiences. As Karen Olwigrecently has argued, "the fact of crossing state boundaries may bequite insignificant in comparison to, for example, the crossing ofsocial boundaries" and political border crossing may not constitute"the most central aspect of migration, nor does... all border crossingnecessarily involve a national border" (Olwig 1997:113,116). Thus,from the outset, we do not make distinctions in terms of theindividual motivation for movement (which is the basis for the refu-gee/migrant distinction), nor do we distinguish in terms ofnational/transnational social fields. We nevertheless maintain thatmovement always articulates power relations, and that those (non-state) social boundaries that Olwig mentions may well be related indifferent ways to the nation-state construct.

In the second part of the essay we present three narrations ofmobility from which two different but interrelated fields of ana-lysis emerge. One field is related to how authority is perceived tocontrol, that is, to channel, hinder, enable, or enforce movement.The other field is related to the kinds of experiences that are producedthrough acts and narrations of movement and how these experi-ences become articulated to provide authority to individuals.While such social science exercises obviously impose our concep-tual categories on people's experiences, we do not intend to removethe voices of the individual narrators. Rather we wish to elucidatehow we go from the material—represented in lengthy extracts—toour own position.



In the concluding section we pinpoint some of the competingdiscourses and interpretations of mobility and authority emanatingfrom the narratives. We then turn to some broader methodologicalquestions related to the use of narratives in the study of everydayprocesses of movement.

THEORIZING MOVEMENT

Transnational approaches are manifold and include the transna-tionalization of culture and identity (e.g., Hannerz 1992; Sutton 1987),the effects of transnational migration on the nation state (e.g., Basch,Glick Schiller, and Szanton Blanc 1994; Kearney 1996), the effects oftransnational migration on cultural change and development in thesending communities (e.g., Georges 1990; Gardner 1995; Guarnizo1996), and emerging transnational political grassroots mobilizations(e.g., Kearney 1995; Smith 1994).2 Most proponents of transnationalismargue that migrants interact and identify with multiple nations,states, and/or communities, and that their identifications and prac-tices contribute to the development of transnational communities ora new type of transnational social space (Fletcher 1999; Rouse 1991).Accordingly, migrants continue to have, or are given, a certainauthority by their nation-states of origin. Likewise, the migrantsrecognize, or at least articulate, the authority of this nation state.

The extent to which intensified transnational flows of people arecounteracted by a multiplication, redefinition, and greater enforcementof nation-states and their geopolitical borders has nevertheless beensubject to divergent theses about how power works in and throughthe movement of people. Robin Cohen argues that while nations are"extended and unconfined from the viewpoint of the sending areas,[... migrants] appear as minorities, often quite weak and relativelypowerless minorities, in the countries in which they find them-selves" (Cohen 1997:137). Likewise, Michael Peter Smith holds thatthe erosion of the nation-state's "boundary-setting capacities" isopposed through these states' attempts to erase the new politicalspaces and "move politics back to terrains they currently dominate"(Smith 1994:32).

In her analysis of the U.S. immigration policies, Roxanne Lynn Doty(1996) points to the "double-writing of statecraft" in order to explainsuch ambiguities of state practices in regard to migration. She takesthe (international) boundary between the "inside" and the "outside"as an essential marker of a society "inside" that is governed by a



seemingly fixed and natural central authority. Unauthorized bordercrossings threaten this imagery, but through official regulations of theconditions of undocumented border-crossers, the state simultaneouslytransgresses its own foundations (the imagery of the territoriallybounded society and the state as its representation) and reproducesthem through this "double-writing of statecraft" (1996:179). Workingin various realms (employment, education, health, etc.) these practicesproduce differences between authentic and unauthentic nationalsubjects, that is, produce "internal exclusions" (1996:184). Lynn Dotyargues that "illegal migration presents an occasion for practices ofstatecraft that reproduce... the power and authority of the state"(1996:185). These practices are all the more effective if they have noapparent source. Thus, Lynn Doty regards the widespread anti-immigrant sentiments as "state-craft from below" in which "authen-tic citizens" engage in governmental practices that reproduce theterritorially bounded identities as natural and given (1996:185).

While we have found much inspiration in the transnationalapproach and its focus on the nation-state, we would like to take ourconsiderations beyond the crossing of national boundaries andwiden the perspective to include a broader spectrum of movementsin which people engage. Here, we are inspired by Katy Gardner(1995), whose work represents an attempt to connect movement andpower on household and community levels. She argues that migra-tion theories often are over-generalized and fail to deal adequatelywith the heterogeneity of mobility and the meanings individuals andtheir communities give to it. In her ethnographic study of migration-related transformations in rural Bangladesh, she develops a"geography of power" including both the power between places(e.g., the power of the former colonial métropole vis à vis the "under-developed" "independent" nation-state of Bangladesh) and powerrelations between people. In the power between places, migrationoften becomes a metaphor for power and advancement, "for all thatis wrong with home." Thus, " . . . power relations are increasinglyexpressed geographically, whereas previously they were expressedin terms of work and access to land. Places are not simply sources ofincome, they are also idioms for power relations, ways of declaringoneself and ones household more sophisticated, more knowledge-able, and more wealthy than others" (Gardner 1995: 272). She dealswith power relations between people by emphasizing polarization.Differentiation is not only economic but also related to socio-culturalpositioning (while some people have access to foreign countries and


318 Ninna Nyberg Serensen and Finn Steppu tat

thus foreign sources of power, others do not). It is in this sense thatwe will argue that movement may be seen as bestowing the movingsubjects with authority.

Gardner uses the household as the analytical unit for her analysis.Whereas households most often are defined as isolated entities(whereby wider social links are marginalized), Gardner develops ahousehold definition based on a distinction between residential andproperty-holding groups. She understands the household as a set ofrelationships and transactions, whereby geography becomes lessrelevant. Rather than rigid bounded localities, home and abroad arefluid categories that are dynamically interrelated. Since home iswhere the social group is located, it can be recreated abroad. Like-wise, relationships and control over resources can transcend locality.

Here we are approaching a central concern of ours. While we donot consider authority to be place-bound, we wish to consider howthe production of power and authority are related to movement,and, more specifically, how movement is controlled or contained,even at a distance. In the words of Doreen Massey, we should recon-sider the modern time-space compression in terms of the socially differ-entiated effects of mobility in order to develop a "politics of mobilityand access." Mobility, and control over mobility, both reflects andreinforces power, not simply through unequal distribution of powerand control but also through the fact that the mobility and control ofsome groups can actively weaken other people (Massey 1994:150).

While we endorse Massey's will to explore the "politics of mobilityand access" we would like to take her considerations of differentialsin mobility beyond the economic question of access to resources andinto the technologies and logics of mobility control. Massey explicitlytalks about how mobility and control of mobility reflect and reinforcepower. We would like to extend the question beyond considerationsover access to resources and ask if the dialectics of movement andcontrol of movement may be a source of authority per se. This is togeneralize Lynn Duty's suggestion that illegal migration is an occa-sion for practices of statecraft that reproduce power and authority.Thus, we may ask if movement in general is an occasion for authorityto be articulated, denied, embraced, and spoken about.

NEGOTIATING MOVEMENT

In order to explore the potential of the approach outlined thus far,we will analyze three narratives told during previous fieldwork



among Guatemalan refugees in Mexico, return migrants in theDominican Republic, undocumented Dominican migrants in Spain,and others involved in the negotiation of movement. None of thenarrative examples is a life history or story-telling (intended fora public domain) in the strict sense of these genres. They are allsituated in a research environment in which we, as researchers, haveasked certain questions, in particular questions related to mobilityand migration histories. However open-ended our questions havebeen, the perspective is partial and the telling motivated (Abu-Lughod 1993). Still, although these persons have been asked to talkparticularly to our concerns, their tales have made their own turns.In this sense they are travel stories, or spatial practices that organizeplaces through the displacements they describe (de Certeau 1988).

So far, we—and most of the literature—have concentrated onexploring place rather than movement. In the following, we want toexplore what happens when we foreground mobility in the analysisof people's narratives.3 While the narratives are individual state-ments of mobility experiences, our focus on individual migrantsdoes not imply a return to individuality. The tradition of everydaylife research suggests that "a relation (always social) determines itsterms, and not the reverse, and that each individual is a locus inwhich an incoherent (and often contradictory) plurality of suchrelational determinants interact" (de Certeau 1988: xi). We havechosen the three narratives because of their exemplary nature. Whilethe narrative statements cannot be subjected to quantitative analysis,they represent stories we have heard more than once. Seen from thisperspective, the individual narratives serve to bring a differentcomplexion on our more generalized knowledge of migration.

PEDRO'S NARRATIVE

The first narrative example stems from an interview with anexperienced community leader among the Guatemalan refugees inSouthern Mexico in 1988. The interviewer (FST) had known andspoken with the leader, don Pedro Mendoza (PM), for several monthsbefore he finally asked him to tell how he managed to obtain landand form a cooperative in the "virgin" tropical lowlands of Ixcân,a part of Guatemala where highland peasants settled from the late1960s onwards. During the 1970s, Ixcan became the stronghold ofa Marxist guerrilla movement. In an attempt to destroy the movementand regain control of the area, the Guatemalan army committed



a number of massacres in 1982, which led to the flight of most of thesettlers.

Don Pedro's narrative draws upon three cases of negotiated move-ment. The first is the struggle and movement involved in the settle-ment in the Guatemalan lowland, the second is the flight fromGuatemala to Mexico, and the third is the movement or change thatis perceived as necessary in order to leave the "limbo" of life in arefugee settlement.

SETTLEMENT

As a young man, don Pedro was talking with the evangelical priestin his hometown about how to improve life in the town, how to"jump the barrier" of malnutrition, sickness, and misery. The priestgave him the "impulse" to attend some courses:

They just took me to some courses, some courses to learn how to do;perhaps I am poorly finished (mal acabado), I don't read or write, butI made the effort to take these people to Ixcân First I organized, we didthis nocturnal school, we sought the root [to the problems], what I call thepeasant's open wound (la llaga), we sought the open wound of the peasantbecause I feel that this is what hurts him (le lastima). And how good that[the government] listened, they gave us land to distribute to these people,and we called the organization the Asociaciôn Monte del Olivo, taking ittoward the evangelical, the first church, the second Bible The peopleappointed me for President because of my experience.

After having analyzed the problem together with his people andorganized the association for the acquisition of land, he went to theNational Institute for Land-Transformation, INT A, where he talkedwith an inspector who was doing political campaigning for theruling party. The inspector said:

"Look Pedro, do you need land?" Yes I do, and we are determined to goto the North [Ixcin]. In the North there is land; and we are determined todo more than that. Yes. And he called the engineer Beteta... [andexplained to him that] here we have the associate of an association, a com-mittee of neighbors who apply for land. You can find them some land, butfirst they have to go and see if the land suits them. "Good," I said. When Icame back I united the people. Everybody came and I told them that weare going to go to Ixcân, yes.. .

In this case, the authorizing entity is first of all the government,because the movement is linked to the acquisition of national land.But for the government, the moving subject is not a person but an



association, or a committee, with a representative. As don Pedro severaltimes emphasizes, the organization is necessary in order to commun-icate with the governmental authorities. And the mere fact of beingan (authorized) organization gives them certain strength in their firstencounter with land squatters upon their arrival in Ixcân: "Theyasked us where we were going and we said that we were going to ourland. We're an organization. Did you think you were going to takeour land? You cannot, it's ours (...) and they started to ask permis-sion to stay." Since the state had authorized the move of don Pedro'sassociation, the members embody state-authority when encounteringother people who have moved beyond state control in the wilderness.

But also the community has to support the organization andauthorize the movement. When explaining how they managed therepeated travels to and from the land in Ixcân in order to claim it, tobuild huts, to measure and mark the land, and to plant the corn, donPedro talks about the "contributions" as the essence of organization:"Money is collected, what you have to do is to give a contribution; ifthere is no contribution, there is no organization." This does notmean, however, that the "community" is a fixed group. Rather themembership waxed and waned with the difficulties of the movement,from 80 to 5 to 116 persons and so on. But the legally authorized asso-ciation and its representative remain the subject.

Elsewhere in the conversation, don Pedro explains what it takes tobecome recognized as the representative of an association that isauthorized to go to the capital and receive goods from a relief organ-ization. The authorizer in this case is the local priest, who mediatesthe contact, but the discourse, as refracted in don Pedro's narrative,is clearly nationalist. Having served three years as a policeman in thecapital, Pedro is familiar with this discourse:

There [in Ixcân], following orders from the priest, all representatives haveto be married and Catholic. "I am Catholic and I am married," I said tohim, "and I don't think I have any penal antecedents, and I am a citizen,I have all my identifications, these I have and the law prohibits me not tohave. So, yes, I am a citizen and I have as much right as you have, so whatdo you say?" "Well, I think if s all right," he answered.

Finally, don Pedro's narrative contains a section where he talksabout his wives and their consent or disapproval of his constantmovement on behalf of "his people."

All my life I left my family; sometimes I left them when they were ill, inorder to fulfil my assignment. The only thing left for [my wifej to do was



to cry. Yes, my [present] wife has suffered. Morally, she has suffered a lotbecause of me constantly going to the town[s], and she still does. Only onSundays I come back, and she receives me with love, and she never asksme "Where were you when the night caught you?" She can only cry andafterwards she'll tell me that she suffered this and that, and I'll buy hersomething. 1 don't know why I came to like so much [working for thepeople in spite of] being scorned by the people. I don't know... I am poorand I have always worked for groups, never for myself, I don't enrichmyself. We've always had to live as poor people, but my wife does notdemand anything from me. It was hard to find her. I've had seven wives,but the others were very demanding, and they were right... but with thisone, it's all right (bien tranquilo).

The communal obligation and prospect of progress bestow meaningto don Pedro's travels, but he has to negotiate the travelling as wellas his authority within the family. In his own account, travellingpotentially threatens his authority within the family, not leastbecause he is absent without making money, at the same time as hisposition as a community leader depends on the experience gainedthrough travelling to the towns.

Two boundaries are crossed in this narrative: One is the boundaryof the locality where land is not available, where poverty thereforeimposes rough conditions on the peasants, and where the authorityof the Elders limits the possibilities for a younger generation of mod-ernizing leaders such as don Pedro. This boundary also marks thedifference between being present and absent in the everyday life ofthe family. The other boundary appears when don Pedro talks aboutthe first couple of times they travelled to the tropical lowland, wherethe conditions were very unfamiliar to the highlanders. Don Pedrotalks about how they suffered "the first entry," as if they had crosseda physical boundary between the civilized world in the highlandsand the wilderness of Ixcân, the "interior," where the state as yet hasno authority. Rather, the association becomes the vehicle of stateauthority when they "enter" the interior, claim their land, andestablish their authorized settlement.

THE EXIT

A short time after our arrival in Ixcân, the problems began. A couple ofgringos came and explained that there was oil in [nearby] San Lucas.Shortly after, I met two people from [the guerrilla movement] EGP—thisI have never told anyone before. They said that a road would soon reachus and that the road would bring good and bad things to us, "but you haveto organize in order to defend your rights." A few days later the helicopter



of the oil company was brought down close to our village and that waswhen the repression in Ixcän started. The army came and began to botherme because I was a leader. In the end, I had to meet Saturdays andMondays at the garrison in the Centre, 6 km away, in order to get a permit.Several years passed like that before the army finally left. It was toughbecause on the way to Centre I was held up by the guerrillas who thoughtI was an ear/informer (oreja) for the army because I went so often to thegarrison.

When the guerrilla movement started to challenge the authority ofthe government, the army arrived in Ixcân and started to exercisecontrol over the population, first of all by limiting the physical move-ment of the leaders, the people with "experience." In the narrative,don Pedro carefully positions himself between the contendingauthorities, while his revelation of secrets bestows authenticity to thenarrative. As Pedro mentions, the army left briefly, but soon theyreturned with a new strategy. They ordered people to stay put;movement was considered subversive. The army massacred entirevillages suspected of being guerrilla supporters and organized civilpatrols in the remaining villages.

In 1981, first Santa Maria Tzejâ and then [our village] were burned. Wefled into the wilderness (el monte) and made a hut. One day, when I wentto get some water, a companero warned me; they [the army] had burned thehuts again. After a long time I found my family and we gathered some 70families. Most of them decided to leave. I stayed because I wanted to findone of our Elders. We found him undernourished—ra, ra, ra [gasping] youknow—and stayed with him for a month before we went to Mexico.Therefore, we came late.

What don Pedro did not mention was that the guerrillas urgedpeople to leave the villages and come and live in mobile villages inthe wilderness. Later, the guerrillas permitted the refugees to "crossthe line" and enter Mexico. In some cases, they accompanied therefugees. Most of the refugees went in large groups led by a mayor,the representative of the cooperative, the political officer or anotherauthority. Pedro's last sentences—about the undernourished Elder—is perhaps a response to a sustained rumor in the refugee settlementthat accuses don Pedro of being one of those who returned to theabandoned villages in order to dig out the valuables that people hadhidden in the ground under the huts or outside the villages beforefleeing.4

Don Pedro's narrative is authored in a highly politicized refugeecontext: Endorsing the anti-governmental discourse, he blames the



army for the incidents leading to the flight while concealing relationsto the guerrillas. While the common refugee narrative depicts flightas a natural and largely un-reflected reaction to the experience ofviolence—a narrative that is common in early refugee theories aswell (cf. Kunz' 1973 theory of the "kinetics" of refugee movements)—individual accounts suggest that even this movement is negotiatedand authorized by community and household-level authorities andby the guerrillas as well.5

TRAPPED

During the same conversation about the past, don Pedro brings upthe present situation of the refugees, which was marked by twoproblems, the problem of establishing a livelihood in exile whilebased in the refugee settlement, and the problem of getting back toGuatemala and the land in precious Ixcân. The two problems weresomehow conflated in the frequent questions about what to do, inexpressions reflecting indecision ("we are of two hearts") andexpressions reflecting a feeling of being stuck ("we'll never makeprogress" or "we'll die here"). During the conversation, don Pedrotries to put the interviewer in the position of a helper to help him ana-lyze the problem, a position that is similar to that of the evangelicpriest from his past: "After the short time you've been here, [can youtell me] what is it that we really lack? Because I think that one thingis training (capacitadôn)... or how is it?... is it the same to raise theconsciousness (conscientizar) as to train (capacitor)?" Don Pedro con-structs the present situation as analogue to the situation before theysettled in lowland Guatemala. He has the idea that they need to makean analysis, to organize and to produce some kind of change in theirway of thinking and acting in order to improve their situation inMexico or go back to Guatemala. But going back to Guatemala asa refugee represents a particular kind of problem:

PM: Sometimes I think about my patria and I feel like weeping over whatI have suffered and the happy moments I've had, because I've also hadsome moments of happiness, but the more I think, the more I want to goback, to be there, but I have to study how I can go back... I'll dare to askyou a question: If you were in my place, what would you do in thissituation?... What would you do to change, if there is a need to change?Because I can only be good [in the eyes of the government] if it suited meto reconcile myself and go back.

FST: Does it suit you?



PM: Well, if I don't reconcile, I will not be able to change. I would haveto go on being an exile and being against what I am against... becausewithout the reconciliation I feel trapped, because as you said the last time,I offended the one I left [the Guatemalan government], and I offended theone where I came [the Mexican government], so I am really lost. Whatwould you do?

FST: I cannot answer... I hardly yet understand how you feel.

PM: Because it's impossible to know it, but I do feel like that and thereforeI liked very much the last time we met, when you pointed out to me that Ihad offended two governments, those there and those here I am insidethe states of asylum, and then, in order to go back, what should I do, whatdo I do? I don't find the way, I don't find the words that a new personshould say, a new creature. How?... It is like the man who came to Jesusand asked how to become reborn; he had to renounce the old, that is torecognize why you're in asylum Now I ask myself and I begin to exam-ine myself, what is my offence, where did I offend it [the government],why am I here? I don't think of looking in the Bible [for answers] becauseeven reading the Bible you'll find some texts where it says that it is goodeven to take up the arms, in the psalms, I think, therefore I am thinkingabout this, I am thinking.

FST: To offend the government is not to offend thy neighbor, the govern-ment is not your neighbor.

PM: Ah, very good, this is precisely where I needed a clarification,because—and this is what escapes my understanding—if the governmentis my neighbor I'll have to do everything I possibly can. Oh yes, now it'sall right, this is what I thought, it is not my neighbor.

Like many other people, don Pedro is struggling with the notionsof state and government, often conceived of in a personalized form.Thus repatriation and reconciliation become difficult moral questions,although security, politics, and practicalities are involved as well.Back in 1988, official (authorized) repatriation was only possible ifthe refugees submitted themselves to the control of the Guatemalangovernment (in practice, the army and dvil defense patrols). Reportstold that the army had succeeded in blaming former guerrilla support-ers for having caused all the suffering, and therefore the governmenthad forced the army to punish them. Being in exile, the refugees wereautomatically defined as subversives by the Guatemalan government.Don Pedro and a majority of the refugees, supported by the guerrillamovement, rejected the governmentally authorized repatriation andstayed in Mexico.

Don Pedro's narrative suggests that the implications of bordercrossing for identity production are perceived of as profound when



border crossing is inscribed in a context of national politics. For donPedro, this movement would require reconciliation with the govern-ment and the army, which would require a rebirth for him, becauseof his political principles. If he did not subscribe to the refugee labeland returned incognito, the consequences would be minor. In factmany refugees moved back and forth across the national border, butthey could not re-establish their state-inscribed entitlements (ascitizens) in this way.

When the majority of the refugees finally returned to Mexico (from1993 to 1997), they had formed an organization and negotiated theirreturn on their own terms with the government: "return is resistancenot resignation" was the slogan of the organized return. Unlikeillegal migrants, who subvert authority by silently crossing theborders, the refugees confronted authority and crossed the border asopenly as possible. In the end, organization proved to be the way forthe subjects to authorize the move, to leave confinement. The organ-ization—the committee, the commission, the association authorizedby government as well as community—is the means of negotiatingmovement and a formula belonging to the common discursiveframework of state and civil society. Or as a refugee once asked: "Wecannot naturalize as Mexicans?... Not even if we form a smallgroup"? Don Pedro himself never returned.

CILEO'S NARRATIVE

Our second narrative example stems from an interview with Gfleo,and took place in La Vega, the Dominican Republic, in 1997 to wherehe had returned in 1992 after a sixteen-month stay in Madrid, Spain.At the time of departure, Gfleo was studying law at the University inSantiago. He was married, had a baby son and another soon to come,and was worried by the prospect of having another child withoutsufficient financial means to support his family. When his brotherscalled from Madrid and told him that jobs were available, he decidedto join them.

The interviewer (NNS) had been told by some of Gfleo's friends inMadrid, that he, perhaps, could tell her "another and less positiveversion" of the migration experience. Gfleo agreed over the phone totell his story. After a few informal talks, Ninna was picked up at thebus station, and in Gfleo's brand new car taken to an up-marketrestaurant where he talked for two hours. During the interview.



Gfleo revealed that this was the first time he had talked about hisexperiences in Spain.

Gfleo's narrative contains several versions of mobility in whichDominican society, migration, and identity are negotiated. The firstis about the general Dominican belief in migration as the way to"progress"; the second is about the experience of being "denied" bythe colonial "mother country"; and the third is Gfleo's refusal to talkabout Dominican-ness in the singular, since there are good and badmigrants, and good and bad ways of expressing Dominican culture,both expressed with clear reference to gender. This version alsocontains his re-evaluation of the "myth of migration."

MIGRATION AS PROCESS

Gfleo left the Dominican Republic at a moment when "everybodywanted to go abroad." In 1990, the Dominican diaspora amountedto close to two million people, who had left at different times sincethe early 1960s. The mass exodus of Dominicans—and the visiblegains of successful migrants back home in the Dominican Republic—had contributed to the establishment of a veritable "migrant cul-ture" or what we will call a locally authorized version of progressthrough migration, to which Gfleo turned in a moment of economicneed:

The reason why I went abroad, or to Spain, was that... this has alwaysbeen the criteria, here in Santo Domingo, that the person who goes abroad,generally to the United States... he has more progress, faster progress,than the one who stays At this moment, my only thoughts and pre-occupations were that my improvement could be fast... by going to aforeign country.

Thus, in Dominican society, sodal mobility is associated withspatial mobility, directly linking migration with the modernistnotion of progress. Therefore, the migrant can be conceived of as aperson with ambitions and lack of patience (with a state that fails todeliver progress). Since migration is authorized by the surroundingsociety, a certain confidence is engendered in the migrating subjects,who can leave without fearing a loss of personal authority withintheir local community. Still, potential migrants needed social net-works through which their migration could be organized. With thetightening of U.S. immigration policy in the late 1980s, would-bemigrants had to present substantial financial funds or to qualify for


328 Ninna Nyberg Sorensen and Finn Stepputat

family reunification. In 1990, however, several ways of subvertingstate control had been created:

People began to move to Spain because of difficulties with [obtaining] thevisa. The United States closed for visas, to get one you had to find anenormous amount of money, to get to Spain you didn't need a visa... andwell, it became fashionable to go to Spain (entonces ahi se puso de moda),a fashion that lasted four or five years All those who didn't have thepossibility to go to the United States... saw their possibility to go to Spain,many times believing that in Spain they could get the visa to go to theUnited States When I went to Spain there were no visa requirements,and when I arrived, my brothers were awaiting me.

Gfleo had brothers awaiting him in Spain. He entered as a tourist,found housing and employment through personal networks andlater married a Spanish girl-friend to avoid deportation.6 Although atourist is not allowed to work or to stay for prolonged periods oftime, Gfleo never considered himself "illegal." Border control, visarequirements, work permits, and the prospect of deportation weresimply to be overcome by migratory tactics.

EXCLUSION

But Gfleo was confronted with other borders, borders that werenot as easily transcended as national frontiers.

I, in particular, will never leave Santo Domingo again for any other place.I will never go back to feel foreign. [In Spain] there were persons whom Iconsidered to be Franquistas. When I was working in a place, they stayedbelow talking. They said, "these damned foreigners, they're all homosex-uals" (estos extranjeros del diablo, mariâmes todos), do you understand? Andall this knocked you out every day; you knew that you were not acceptedwherever you went.

Coining from an urban middle-class background—where hischocolate brown skin was categorized as white—being categorizedby the Spaniards as foreign (they only saw un negro y un extranjero),not a real man (but a homosexual) and lumped together with otherDominicans of different (lower class) backgrounds, made Gfleoreconsider the "myth of migration." He decided to return.

[Upon return] my cross-road experience ended {termina mi travesia)... andfrom there and forwards I found myself with a big psychological trauma,a big trauma whenever I talked about Spain It helped me know some-



thing; it helped me understand that what I searched for in Spain was whatI already had here. That in reality I had abandoned what I had alwaysdreamt of And in order to progress one does not necessarily have to goabroad; on the contrary, here, if one works hard and does one's best tomake good things, one can progress much more than the one who hasgone abroad.

We detect two very different notions of movement in Gfleo'snarrative. One is about the myth of migration. This myth has played,and continues to play, a central part in the everyday construction ofnotions of progress in Dominican society. In this myth, migrantsrepresent everyday heroes or heroines, that is, if they fit the myth byproving themselves successful, either abroad (sending home news oftheir progress) or upon return (by being able to show proof of theirprogress). While Gileo's initial movement is inscribed in the com-mon discursive framework of migration, his return is not. Conse-quently, his narration of return takes quite a different form. In orderto re-construct authority, Gfleo has to re-constitute himself as a non-migrant. What he is and what he has gained is not because of migra-tion, but because of hard work back home. Authorization of thisnarrative is nevertheless closely linked to the migratory experience.To be able to punctuate the myth of migration, Gfleo had to goabroad. The experience of racial, gendered, and employment-relatedexclusion was a shock and was not anticipated by the commondiscursive framework in Gfleo's circles.

AUTHORIZING AND DE-AUTHORIZING MOBILE SUBJECTS

Finally, Gfleo's narrative has a section in which he talks aboutDominicans who go abroad. He talks about good and bad Domin-icans, and constructs differences between various mobile subjects:

. . . because there are persons who most certainly go to Spain or to anyother country with very bad habits. And they spoil a place, includingmaking other people conceive of our culture as their culture. And that'snot really our culture, or say, for example, the Dominican way ofdancing... the women who go to Spain... the majority... Dominicanwomen have a way of dancing which is the way prostitutes dance. That'snot the way a Dominican woman dances, if you dance like that you comefrom a barrio...

The people with "bad habits" who go to Spain and discreditall Dominicans in Gfleo's narrative turn out to be female. When



asked to expand on the subject, Gfleo denied that the differencebetween good and bad habits has anything to do with socio-culturalbackground:

.. . It is not a question of class, or region, if s about education... becauseto some persons the place they come from doesn't matter. If it was a ques-tion of class you could say, bueno, the persons from Gbao should be moreboisterous (bulloso) than people from the city, who have experiencedeconomic mobility and who live in a place supposed to be moredeveloped. City people should be more educated man people from thecountryside. And then the opposite occurs The peasant from La Vegaor Cibao is much more educated than townspeople. More than peoplefrom the city...more sympathetic (receptiva), more devoted (carinosa),more educated, maybe without having studied, but they are above in allmatters Thus, when this type of persons goes to Spain, they go towork Now, if you employ a person who originates in a barrio of thecapital, you know that you are not going to employ any good [person],because this person arrives only to listen to loud music, to drink a lot ofbeer, a lot of rum, to have social intercourse with prostitutes.

In this extract, gender, class, and rural / urban background are con-structed in terms of their mobility within and beyond the Dominicannation. A moral constructed in Gfleo's story is that women become"like prostitutes" when they leave domestic confinement. While thereturn re-authorizes and re-installs in the national—and male—order of things, it simultaneously de-authorizes mobile female sub-jects outside patria(rchal) control.

El Cibao, where Gfleo originates, is the most prosperous part of theDominican Republic. Though specific places in Cibao, like Santiagoand La Vega, have experienced increased urbanization in the last 30years, people from these places continue to define themselves inrural terms. The area has profited enormously from New York-bound migration. Contrary to migration from other parts of theRepublic, more men than women have migrated from Cibao andmore men have been in charge of the migration process. When large-scale Dominican migration toward Spain began in the late 1980s,most migrants took off from the southern border provinces of thecountry. The great majority was and continues to be women.

MARIA'S NARRATIVE

The last narrative example stems from an interview with Maria,a woman who came from one of the southern border provinces of the



Dominican Republic. In Spain, she obtained employment as a live-inmaid for a Spanish family. The anthropologist (NNS) met Maria inspring 1996 in Madrid. Later that same year, she visited her in herhome village.

While in Madrid, Maria always presented herself as a singlemother. In the home-village, she presented herself as her mother'sdaughter. The very opportunity to meet, talk with, and listen toMarfa in different contexts provided an important background forour understanding of the complex web of institutionalized authoritythrough which Maria moved. Her narrative reveals two cases ofnegotiated movement. One is about migration as a family strategy tomake ends meet at home. Another is about possible ways to leave theconfinement of family authority.

MIGRATION AS A FAMILY STRATEGY

Maria went to Spain in 1992. At the time of departure she waspregnant with her second child. She left her older daughter with hermother. Two months after giving birth to her baby in Madrid, Mariawent back for a short visit. When she returned to Spain, she had toleave the newborn baby with her mother as well. Maria explains herfamily situation:

M: I have always lived here, in my house, in the house of my mother... . Until the time I left, I have always lived here. I have two children, mymother has ten. While I'm away, my children stay with my mother; she isthe one who helps... takes care of them.

N: And the children's father?

M: I am not married.

N: Divorced?

M: Eh, I am single.

N: And their father?

M: Eh, he walks around over there [in the village].

Maria then explains how her migration decision was taken:

It wasn't my decision; it was a family dedsion. Bueno, we were thinkingthat... above all my parents thought... that to send me there was.. . orsay, to put straight the family's economic situation. Thus, we made... wemortgaged a small piece of land (hipotecamos un conuco) and after thatI went... they sent me. . . because it was them who took the decision, well,we all decided that I had to go to be able to contribute a little more.



From the first to the second extract, Maria's language changedfrom an active to a passive mood. In the second extract, the "I"became "we" and the "we" became "they." Although power anddecision-making rarely are held in any person's hand, here theauthorizing entity was first and foremost the extended family.

How I went? It was organized, well you know that... there, when theygive the residence permit to persons, these persons can send for a daugh-ter or her mother, whoever. Then, this woman who came, she claimed meas her daughter and took me there. I went with [falsified papers]. Yes,I still have these papers, until... I am thinking of putting them in order(areglarlos) because I thought of bringing the children, I am thinking of get-ting my papers straight. [In my papers] I have... I have another age, butmy name, I kept my name, only my surname is, my age and my surnameare wrong. One has to be younger than 18 [to be claimed by an adult withresidence permit].

NNS: Did you have to pay for this favor?

M: Yes, I paid her 800 US dollars, it's a business transaction.

NNS: This woman is from Vicente Noble?

M: Yes, she is a little... distantly related, but almost family (pero un pocofamilia mia).

The crossing of national boundaries between the DominicanRepublic and Spain was made possible through various sorts ofnetworks. These networks were quite lucrative, and often organizedby hometown people. To our surprise, these networks were spokenof openly. And to most people from the village, migrants and non-migrants alike, the term illegal was reserved for those who have nopapers at all (most often the people who go to Puerto Rico in yolas,small fishing boats). Overstaying a tourist visa or entering a foreigncountry with falsified papers was considered legal. Certain powerswere vested temporarily in different people, for example, by con-structing the brokers as casi familia, almost family. This could alsobe read as a form of subverting the categories of those who seek tocontrol migratory movements.

Later in the narrative, Maria explained how her life in Madrid wasorganized. Since the purpose of her migration was to send backmoney, she made arrangements to maximize her income.

I work as a housekeeper and earn some 80,000 pesetas a month, thatequates to some 8,000 [pesos]. It's a family house, I work as a live-in maidand can only leave the house on Thursdays, on Saturdays after dinner, and



Sundays all day until Monday morning when I come back. [In my time off]I live in a flat... because I have a relationship with a Spaniard... I norm-ally send 30,000 pesetas to my family every month, and save the rest. Idon't have a lot of expenses, no, almost no transport expenses, because asI have this [Spanish man] He picks me up at the house; he covers myexpenses, or that is, I don't spend my wages, no.

Maria's family in Vicente Noble was keen on keeping not only thetransnational family unit together, but also on keeping Mariatogether with her Spanish boyfriend. To them, he was not only a jointplayer in the process of legalizing Maria's status but even more aguarantee of low living costs in Spain and a continuous flow ofremittances.7

LEAVING CONFINEMENT OR RE-PLACING HOME?

That migration is organized and controlled within the householddoes not mean that there is necessarily agreement over the decisionstaken. Nor does it mean that ideas of duty remain the same overtime. In the following extract, we read both a contestation and pos-sible renegotiation of family control.

We are engaged. We haven't married yet, but we are thinking aboutit That's why I sit on the fence. That's why now, when we get marriedand I change my legal situation and this... because I... to go back andfight once more for this... I have to hurry back here, and that's very con-venient because I thought of staying a time [in Spain] without going back[to the R.D.], to go back later on and build myself a house [in the R.D.] andthen bring my children with me [to Spain].

Though confined by family networks, long distance social control,and an ideology of family obligation, Maria was making her own—somewhat contradictory—plans. One followed the script of the mythof migration, including building her own house in her native village.Another brought her children to live with her in Spain. The lattermight spell an end to family authority. As in don Pedro's narrative,organization might prove to be the way to enable her to change thedirection of her movement, not over a state boundary but away fromfamily confinement.

[Before my departure] I was member of a youth club. In Spain, I am organ-ized as well, I am the vice-president of an association... we have aroundtwenty members. For the time being we fight for... a home for singlemothers and we have discussed making it and so on. We have talked withsome institutions there, and we are expecting to get an answer... to see if



we get the home. If not, we are thinking of renting an apartment or ahouse, to put the children there until we succeed in getting what we want.We work with an association in Aravaca. Well, we are still not workingwith them, but we plan to work with these people... since they havepeople... working in the municipality.

NNS: Have you ever worked with other Dominican organizations inSpain?

M: Yes, eh. . . we don't have much contact, because once... we were goingto commemorate Lucrecia, the Dominican girl who was killed in Spain.So, we asked for help at the Dominican Embassy, but [this Dominicanassociation] went and said that we were not legal, that we were not reallygoing to celebrate the anniversary of Lucrecia, that we only wanted themoney for ourselves. Dominicans are like that...we don't mixbecause... they are there, but they don't work where the Dominicansare... or say... if you want to make a Dominican activity, you have to goto Aravaca, to make the activity in Aravaca, because the Domestics, wecannot pay a ticket to go into Madrid to participate in an activity.8

Leaving the confinements of family obligations back home and thedomestic sector abroad could easily be read as Maria's acceptance ofa modern ethos of individuality, as well as her submission to Euro-pean forms of life. Such an interpretation would nevertheless under-play the "dynamic nature of ties to the homeland" (Gardner 1995). InMaria's case, it seems that while she was working toward freeingherself from family control, other village ties were being re-createdin Madrid. Her narrative suggests that the implication of bordercrossing for identity production cannot be detected solely from thecrossing of national boundaries. By opposing the large Madrid-based Dominican organization, based on a particular definition ofDominican-ness, and creating a new association based on villagewomen and village values, Maria and the women with whom sheorganizes created ways of maintaining their homeland identitieswhile abroad.

CONCLUSION

The three narratives reveal that gender, age, class, ethnic, religious,and other identities are defined and circumscribed in terms of theirmobility within and between nation-states. At the same time, theseidentities are negotiated and reworked in specific processes of move-ment. This is perhaps most evident from a comparison of Maria'sand Gileo's experiences. Maria commented not only on Gfleo's view



on independent female migration, but also on the classic assumptionin the academic literature on migration and immigrant incorporationthat women from Third World backgrounds follow (their) men toWestern-world destinations and remain socially and culturallyencapsulated in their new locations (for a critique, see Morokvasic1984; various contributions in Anthias and Lazaridis 2000). Giléo,rather than Maria, seems to be the one who experienced confinementabroad, whereas Maria was more encapsulated in social obligationsback home. Simultaneously all three cases suggest that confinementcannot be reduced to either locality, but functions across boundariesin various forms. Thus, women's experiences may challenge thehegemonic view of gender roles and relations in migration (White1995), and by consequence challenge our concepts and methodolo-gies; so may migrants' associational/organizational practices. Inboth don Pedro's and Maria's narratives, however, we are remindedthat we cannot expect grass-root organizations to be progressive/transgressive per se. While such organizations may represent agroup of subordinated people—land squatters in the Guatemalanwilderness and domestic workers from the poorer (and darker)layers of Dominican society—all members of the constituencies ofsuch organizations may not feel themselves included in (all of) theassociational practices.

Our analysis reveals that movement simultaneously can be seen assubverting and/or reproducing authority. Authorization, on theother hand, is both a source for and an effect of movement. It is strik-ing that the three narrators strive to represent themselves as actorswho make a difference through movement, as persons who achievegoals (on a personal, familial, or community level). Don Pedro, forexample, represented himself as the (poor but devoted) leader whohas guided his people on their long Odyssey toward prosperity,dignity, and security. Throughout the narrative, he continuouslyreproduced his position as a travelling mediator between "hispeople" and the authorities in different spaces. Gfleo representedhimself as the well-educated, individualist, middle class man whosurvived and learned from the migration experience, emergingstronger and more self-confident on the other side of it. And Mariawas first of all a daughter who assisted her mother, and secondly amother who took care of her children; the fulfilment of both positionsrequired movement. Simultaneously, she was striving to establishherself—both through migration and organization—as an independ-ent woman.



In order to legitimate their movements, all three narrators drawupon different registers of authorized discourse. These discoursesborrow their authority from, for example, the techniques andvocabulary of state and bureaucracy. The narratives refer to docu-ments, official categories, and organizations, but the ways in whichthese are used are not necessarily prescribed officially. For example,Gfleo and Maria did not consider their movement illegal, eventhough their migration was facilitated by subversive practices ofoverstaying a tourist visa or entering Spain through family reunifi-cation with fictive kin. Authority was also drawn from "popular cul-ture," for example, from the myth of prosperity through migration,and from the idea that movement authorizes by the very experienceit engenders, be it holding a leadership role, being re-installed in thenational (and masculine) order of things, or providing the familyback home with a house of their own, hereby drawing on the moraleconomy of kith and kin for authorization.

Our comparative approach to migration as a source of authoriza-tion also has revealed the significance of various practices of controlthat officials, families, and local communities assert on those whomigrate. Throughout the narratives, we detect elements of the"authorizing others." Here it is useful to employ de Certeau's dis-tinction between strategies and tactics in order to differentiatebetween different registers or domains of practices. De Certeaudefines strategies as practices of surveillance, that is, organizationsof space and subjects that render movement visible. Tactics, on theother hand, refers to practices that rely on non-visual senses andcapacities, such as timing, rhythm, intuition, and trickery; practicesthat enable subjects to move within the field of vision of the enemy(de Certeau 1988: 29). In the present context we may talk aboutstrategic practices of control and de-authorization of movement thatinvolve documents, ID-cards/visas, physical border control, enclo-sures, legal categories and rights, and systems of entitlement (e.g.,access to public sector resources in integration programs, refugeecamps, resettlement or repatriation schemes). The strategic practicesmay also include surveillance by proxy, that is, the long distancesocial control exercised through migrating family members or, as inthe case of Maria, through the care-taking of her children andperhaps even more so through the active promotion of her relationto a Spanish man. In these cases, the authorizing others are on theone hand the state/governments, and on the other hand, family andcommunity members.



The tactical practices of control and de-authorization of movementwould include, for example, the gossip about what don Pedro did inthe jungle when "his people" fled Guatemala, or the questions hiswife could have asked about his whereabouts "when the nightcaught him" on his travels. Another de-authorizing tactic is construct-ing women migrants as—if not prostitutes—then at least lackingthe right national culture. Such tactics resemble Lynn Doty's (1996)concepts of internal exclusion and statecraft from below in domesti-cated form. Both kinds of practices rely on discursive means andrefer to a moral complex of meanings. The authorizing myth of spatialmobility as a legitimate means of achieving social mobility (throughaccess to land, higher wages, or markets) seems to pertain to thesame class of phenomena. The authorizing others in these cases are"the people," the spouses (or other family members), and an abstract,non-localized and de-subjectified entity ("they," "one," "you") par-allel to the social science notions of society or popular culture.

As an increasing number of people have become unable to securea livelihood in their conflict- or poverty-ridden countries of origin, anew scholarship has developed concepts intended to capture howand why migrants and refugees locate and actively maintain socialrelations over large distances. Transnational theorizing has exam-ined how participation in transnational migration reshapes thespatial ordering of everyday life and the ways in which globalprocesses penetrate the local. These studies have highlighted thechallenges contemporary transnational migration poses to ideas ofthe nation-state, citizenship, gender, and local community, but thesetheories have not fully explored the diverse ways in which peoplecreate meaning in their mobile lives.

In addition, the transnational perspective offers an entrance to amapping of concrete linkages between people and places. But it doesnot necessarily tell us much about how movement produces or rein-forces authority. As noted by Michael Peter Smith, one of the fore-most critical problems facing ethnographic accounts in the currenttransnational times is that "everyday life" is not a fixed object ofinvestigation. We must "free" our association of the "everyday"from its association with purely local phenomena (Smith 2001:117).When people narrate their experiences, they relate to the widerworld. Their narratives generate insights into the significance ofmovement in their lives and bring the competing discourses andinterpretations of mobility and authority into the realities we areseeking to grasp.


338 Ninna Nyberg Serrensen and Finn Stepputat

Whereas the three migratory experiences we have presented hereprobably would not qualify as transnational in the sense of givingevidence of ongoing and simultaneous participation in the social fieldsconfigured by two or more nation-states, we will argue that anattention to authority and authorship in migrants' narratives addscomplementary insights to our understanding of the significance ofmovement in people's lives. We would not suggest substitutingmacro-theoretical reflection for micro-sociological engagement withnarratives only. This would negate the significance of most of theresearch the two authors of this essay normally conduct. Rather, wesuggest that a narrative methodology offers valuable guidance intowhere to search for new insights and what more we need to includein our analyses.

While writing this exploratory essay, and searching for exemplarymaterial, we have been struck by the somewhat a-historical relationbetween mobility and authority across cultures, geographies, andhistories in people's narratives. What can we learn from mobilitynarratives and the ways in which mobile subjects from differentplaces and in different times have sought to gain status and authorityfrom the experiences they have acquired elsewhere? How does thisfit into the unsettling observation that migration can so disengagemigrants from their home societies that some individuals are neverfully at home after travelling (White 1995)? What of the fact that withall the talk about the rapid and massive movement of people asmarking contemporary globalization, most of the world's people arenot able to travel at all? Rapport and Dawson have noted that peoplewho live their lives in movement make sense of their lives as move-ment. If so, how will the world's poor and immobilized ever be ableto make sense of theirs?

NOTES

Ninna Nyberg Sarensen and Finn StepputatCentre for Development ResearchGammel Kongevej 5DK-1610 Copenhagen [email protected]

NINNA NYBERG S0RENSEN and FINN STEPPUTAT are senior-researchers at theCentre for Development Research in Copenhagen. Ninna Nyberg Sørensen (CulturalSociology and Anthropology) has worked extensively on transnational migration inthe Dominican Republic, the United States, Spain, and Morocco. Her latest publication



is Work and Migration: Life and Livelihoods in a Globalizing World (forthcoming Routledge)which she has co-edited with Karen Fog Olwig. Finn Stepputat (Geography andCultural Sociology) has worked on state formation, armed conflict, displacement, andpost-conflict reconstruction, mainly in Mexico/Guatemala. His most recent publicationis States of Imagination. Ethnographic Explorations of the Post-colonial State (forthcoming,Duke University Press), co-edited with Thomas Blom Hansen.

Acknowledgements: We are grateful for financial support from the Danish Council forDevelopment Research enabling the collection of field material presented in thisessay. We are also grateful for the insightful comments and suggestions we have hadfrom our colleagues, Dr. Fiona Wilson, Dr. Henrik Remsbo, Dr. Thomas Blom Hansen,and Dr. Karen Fog Olwig. Finally we would like to thank Dr. Nina Glick Schiller andthe anonymous reviewers for their editorial suggestions.

1. See Stepputat (1999) for an elaboration.2. For an overview, see Smith and Guarnizo (1998),3. We have chosen to present extracts of much longer tape-recorded stories. Part of the

context is given in our own words.4. The rumor appeared at a moment when don Pedro, who was the president of the

refugee cooperative, stood accused of corruption.5. In the Guatemalan case it seems that women's narratives in particular reveal polit-

ically unauthorized details about the flight which reflect their marginal position inthe field of national politics.

6. An agreement both wives knew about and, according to Gíleo, accepted.7. During María's stay in the village, her father and brothers used a lot of energy to

keep her away from her children's father with whom Maria continues to have amutual love-relation. The anthropologist came in handy when secret meetings hadto be arranged.

8. For a description of Aravaca, see Sørensen 1998.

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Narrations of authority and mobility

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