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Why Not Stay: Chapulineras in Oaxaca and Alternatives to Emigration
Abstract
The pressure to migrate is powerful in Oaxaca, Mexico. Oaxaca’s Central Valleys region saw a rapid, steep rise in emigration to the United States beginning in the 1990s. While the rate has slowed in recent decades, and in response to demographic forces that have impacted the area, there is still a steady flow of migrants moving to destinations within Mexico and to the United States. Yet not everyone chooses to migrate. In this paper, we review the work of chapulineras (market women who produce and sell chapulines, toasted grasshoppers) and note why they stay-put. Chapulineras have created a dynamic economy that is built upon working in the local market systems which generate a great deal of wealth. The successes that the majority of chapulineras welcome means they (and their families) reject migration and build comfortable lives locally. Reviewing the experiences of Oaxaca’s chapulineras and their reticence to migrate contrasts with the expectation that most rural Oaxacans will choose emigration and leave their hometowns in search of opportunities.
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The degree to which social determinants of health differ between indigenous migrants and non-indigenous people born and raised locally is currently unknown. We compared social determinants of health between indigenous migrants and non-indigenous people from urban north-eastern Mexico. Additionally, we ranked priorities for addressing the negative social determinants of health. This was a population-based comparative cross-sectional study (n = 235 indigenous migrants and 168 non-indigenous people). A two-stage non-random sampling was carried out from June to August of 2019. Heads of households ≥18 years and those with the ability to communicate in Spanish were recruited house by house. Structural and intermediary determinants of health were identified according to the World Health Organization Conceptual Framework and priorities were ranked using Z-scores. Being a migrant indigenous increased 1.6 times the odds of low education (95% CI = 1.1, 2.4). In addition, the migrant indigenous status increased the odds of poor housing, unhealthy behaviour and low social cohesion (p < 0.05). Housing, behaviours and health service accessibility were top priorities for indigenous migrants and structural determinants for non-indigenous people. The findings show that the right to access the social determinants of health has not yet been guaranteed for indigenous communities.
The contributions of women to fisheries are often invisible, ignored, and unrecognized even though they represent 47% of the global fisheries workforce, especially in pre- and post-production activities. Poor data systems lead to incorrect assumptions about the gender division of labor in fisheries. This causes the role of women in fisheries to be overlooked. To evaluate the contribution of women in the value chain, a participatory methodology was implemented in three small-scale, fisheries in Mexico: California spiny lobster (Panulirus interruptus) fishery from the northern Mexican Pacific, penshell (Atrina maura) fishery from the Gulf of California, and Caribbean spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) fishery from the Mesoamerican Reef region. This study shows an unequal inclusion of men and women as members of the fishing cooperatives where only 4%, 5%, and 20% are women in spiny lobster, red lobster, and penshell, respectively, and in the distribution of direct jobs (1 out of 6.7 jobs was held by a woman). These results indicate limited opportunities for women to access leadership positions. However, the participation percentages increased dramatically when we considered the fishery system (i.e., both direct and indirect jobs), with women accounting for 43%, 21%, and 37% of the California spiny lobster, penshell, and Caribbean spiny lobster fishery workforce, respectively. Women represented 39% of the workforce in pre-production activities, 2% in production, 29% in post-production, and 56% in complementary to production. Women tended to participate in two or more activities at the same time, generally combining work, household, and community activities. The participation of women in fisheries could be equivalent to a second working day, and even when this effort is present in similarly in three fisheries, their contribution is yet to be acknowledged in order to incorporate women in decision-making. The analysis of the value chain and the fishery system provided a more realistic picture of the contribution of women to fisheries than an analysis focused solely on extraction. This work further analyzed the importance and degree of participation of women in fishing cooperatives and the decision-making process. Strategies to reduce gender disparity are needed to encourage inclusion of women in fisheries decision-making.
Since 1987, the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) has collected and disseminated representative survey data on documented and undocumented migration to the United States. The MMP currently includes surveys of 161 communities, which together contain data on 27,113 households and 169,945 individuals, 26,446 of whom have U.S. migratory experience. These data are used here to trace the evolution of the Mexico-U.S. migration system from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century, revealing how shifts in U.S. immigration and border policies have been critical to the formation of different eras of migration characterized by distinctive patterns of migration, settlement, and return in different legal statuses. The current era is characterized by the repression of the large population of undocumented migrants and their U.S. citizen children by an ongoing regime of mass detention and deportation and the simultaneous recruitment of Mexican workers for exploitation on short-term temporary visas. As the dynamics of Mexican migration to the United States continue to change, they will be monitored and analyzed in subsequent waves of data collection by the MMP.
Around the globe, people leave their homes to better themselves, to satisfy needs, and to care for their families. They also migrate to escape undesirable conditions, ranging from a lack of economic opportunities to violent conflicts at home or in the community. Most studies of migration have analyzed the topic at either the macro level of national and global economic and political forces, or the micro level of the psychology of individual migrants. Few studies have examined the "culture of migration"-that is, the cultural beliefs and social patterns that influence people to move.Cultures of Migration combines anthropological and geographical sensibilities, as well as sociological and economic models, to explore the household-level decision-making process that prompts migration. The authors draw their examples not only from their previous studies of Mexican Oaxacans and Turkish Kurds but also from migrants from Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific, and many parts of Asia. They examine social, economic, and political factors that can induce a household to decide to send members abroad, along with the cultural beliefs and traditions that can limit migration. The authors look at both transnational and internal migrations, and at shorter- and longer-term stays in the receiving location. They also consider the effect that migration has on those who remain behind. The authors' "culture of migration" model adds an important new dimension to our understanding of the cultural beliefs and social patterns associated with migration and will help specialists better respond to increasing human mobility. Copyright
The Question Several years ago, Julio García, a Mexican migrant in Atlanta told me, Gracias a Dios, mi esposa nunca ha tenido que trabajar (Thank heavens, my wife has never had to work). This even though I'd worked with him through his unemployment, disability and other problems, during which time he was unable to send her money. How did she make it if she didn't have a source of income? Throughout Mexico, male informants report that women don't work in the campo (fields), even though everywhere I go, I see women working in the fields. About that same time, I read in Lynn Ste-phen's 1990 book, Zapotec Women, that women took over the agricultural work during the bracero (literally, arms, for imported labor) period in the 1950s, when men from Teotitlán del Valle in Oaxaca migrated to the United States. (The men returned with enough money to buy the looms—the means of production for the "genuine American Indian rugs" so beloved by tour-ists—with designs by Picasso, Escher and lately, the Navajo). These two contradictory versions (that women don't work, and that women's work made male migration possible) led me to write the proposal this research re-ports on. 2 I asked how women manage, especially when their husband is a migrant (who may or may not remit faithfully). One of my ideas was to in-vert the migration question from asking how does (male) migration support the household back home, to ask: How does female labor support male mi-gration? This chapter has two goals. One is to describe the historical and current remunerated activities of women heads of household (jefas) 3 and the other, to look at definitions of work and ayuda (help) in the central valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico (Figure 1). Rees. "¿Ayuda or Work?" 2 The Study I designed the project to collect data from (a random sample of) female heads of household about their and other household members' activities. In 1998, we applied a survey to between 30 and 40 female household heads (total 386) in 11 (out of 121) randomly selected municipal seats (see Figure 2). 4 The survey data describe household composition and structure, work histories of the male and female household heads, current activities of all household members, land and agriculture, migration, household resources and community participation. In 1999, we carried out ethnographic inter-views with selected informants from this sample. 5 These ethnographic inter-views did not ask about informants' specific activities and income, but rather: tell us about the goat (basket, vegetable, etc.) business, How much can a person earn? What are the costs, labor and returns? Figure 1. Central Valleys of Oaxaca
Reviewing critical studies and data sources in the United States and Mexico, these authors reach consensus in the quantification of net authorized and net unauthorized immigration from Mexico to the United States as of 1996. Gauging total Mexican immigration at 7 to 7.3 million and net authorized Mexican immigration at 4.7 to 4.9 million, the net unauthorized amount would be 2.3 to 2.4 million. Noting increases to Mexican lawful immigration in the 1980s, the future demographic consequences may be considerable with an estimated one million family members of legalized Mexicans becoming eligible to immigrate lawfully. For 1990-1996, net growth in the size of the Mexico-born population in the United States was nearly 2 million through all sources, including 510,000 legal immigrants, 630,000 unauthorized immigrants, 210,000 family members of generally legalized immigrants, and 550,000 migrants who had legalized under agricultural provisions.
There is a widespread policy view that a lack of job opportunities at home is a key reason for migration, accompanied by suggestions of the need to spend more on creating these opportunities so as to reduce migration. Self-employment is widespread in poor countries, and faced with a lack of existing jobs, providing more opportunities for people to start businesses is a key policy option. But empirical evidence to support this idea is slight, and economic theory offers several reasons why the self-employed may in fact be more likely to migrate. We put together panel surveys from eight countries to descriptively examine the relationship between migration and self-employment, finding that the self-employed are indeed less likely to migrate than either wage workers or the unemployed. We then analyze seven randomized experiments that increased self-employment. The causal impacts of these programs on migration are often small in magnitude, and a negative relationship is only found when looking over time horizons of at least two years post-treatment.
Migration and "Stay at Homes" in Rural Oaxaca, Mexico: Local Expression of Global Outcomes
- J H Cohen
Cohen, J.H. (2002). Migration and "Stay at Homes" in Rural Oaxaca, Mexico: Local Expression of
Global Outcomes. Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic
Development, 31(2), 231-259.
The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico
- J H Cohen
Cohen, J.H. (2004). The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press.
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Change or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work
- A Deutschman
Deutschman, A. (2007). Change or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work. New York: Harper Collins.