Search

This article contributes to migration and livelihood scholarship by reflecting on global and political dimensions of livelihoods and experiences of illegalisation in Central America. Based on multi-sited ethnographic research with Nicaraguan families and their migrant family members in Costa Rica, the article adopts a translocal livelihood perspective and uses the notion of everyday politics to explore migrants’ mobility practices and nuance the role and reach of illegalisation in relatively accessible South–South migration. In conclusion, the article reinvigorates the notion of ‘everyday politics of mobility’ to incorporate the multi-sitedness, multi-dimensionality and multi-directionality of translocalising livelihoods, offering a lens for future comparison of illegalisation within and beyond the so-called Global South.

Based on fieldwork with migrants and border populations in Central America and the story of a young Congolese woman in particular, this article discusses how research participants’ use of mobile communication technology provokes a redefinition of the ethnographic field. Increasingly popular trajectory research often sets out to follow migrants, yet a focus on migrants keeping in touch with researchers at their own initiative and discretion, following them, reveals entanglements of selective on- and offline engagement and self-representation. Critical exploration of research participants’ differentiated use of digital technology for navigating a social environment that includes the researcher herself not only transforms our understanding of the field in empirical, ethical, and methodological terms, but also counteracts potentially voyeuristic and life-threatening practices of following people on the move.

In this article, we draw on the volatile complexity of African migrant trajectories in Central America to broaden the scope of transnational scholarship. These trajectories are characterised by mobilities as well as immobilities, taking shape in particular local contexts. By focusing on the interplays between displacement and emplacement that are part of these trajectories, we aim to increase our understanding of the extent to which migrants still ‘on the move’ experience both temporal embeddedness and cross-border connectedness, thereby acknowledging and unravelling transnational lives as they ‘touch the ground’ en route. To do so, we build on long-standing scholarly commitments in Central and South America and recent field research in Costa Rica. We go into selected empirical cases to discuss the dynamics of travelling, dwelling and travelling again as part of African migrant trajectories across Central America. We then explore the value of a ‘shifting’ transnational social field perspective and indicate some challenges for future trajectory research.

In migration scholarship, the migrant body has recently begun to gain recognition as a productive analytical scale for exploring politics of mobility: the highly differentiated ways in which migration is accessed and lived. However, a tendency to treat bodies as sites of gendered and racialized suffering can obscure migrant agency and differentiation as well as the ways in which migrant bodies can also be seen as sites of resistance and achievement. This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the ways in which mobility politics shape divergent migrant trajectories by putting forward a translocal embodiment perspective. The paper argues that migrant bodies constitute key sites of struggle over mobility, and that looking at migrant embodied practice in translocal context can further unravel the differentiations that shape migrant trajectories across space and time. The paper’s argument builds on theoretical notions of intersectionality, embodied cultural capital and translocality to enrich the discussion of mobility politics. Empirically, it draws on multi-sited ethnographic research with Nicaraguan families, focusing on female Nicaraguan migrants working in informal domestic employment in Spain, to explore how bodies and embodied practices matter throughout these migrants’ trajectories. In particular, the paper intends to do justice to migrant agency by exploring how bodies that are often victimized can also be considered as stratified resources of translocal negotiation. The translocal embodiment perspective put forward in the paper shows that migrant bodies constitute a multi-faceted, non-erasable component of the unsettled yet situated mobility politics that shape divergent trajectories.

The categories that define people on the move must be understood as unstable, contingent, and provisional processes. This paper contributes to a growing body of scholarship that explores the lived complexities of migrant categorization and their social implications. Based on fieldwork in Brazil and Central America, the paper investigates the processual character of categorization by intertwining temporal and spatial dimensions, focusing on specific events to understand the occasions, circumstances, and intentions that bring about adapted or entirely new categories. An eventful notion of categorization demonstrates not only how categories come into being but also how categories remain connected to particular events that are recognized or produced in response to movement. These categories stick to the identity of a subject in transit, confirming and solidifying it; however, they can also challenge the subject’s legal stability, generating new insecurities and (im-)mobilities. Resumo As categorias que definem as pessoas em movimento devem ser entendidas como processos instáveis, contingentes e provisórios. Este artigo contribui para um crescente corpo de estudos que explora as complexidades vividas da categorização de migrantes e suas implicações sociais. Baseado em trabalho de campo no Brasil e na América Central, o artigo investiga o caráter processual da categorização por meio do entrelaçamento das dimensões temporais e espaciais, focalizando eventos específicos para compreender as ocasiões, circunstâncias e intenções que geram categorias adaptadas ou inteiramente novas. Uma noção de categorização que inclui o significado de eventos particulares demonstra não apenas como as categorias surgem, mas também como as categorias permanecem conectadas a eventos particulares que são reconhecidos ou produzidos em resposta ao movimento. Essas categorias aderem à identidade de um sujeito em trânsito, confirmando-a e solidificando-a. No entanto, também podem abalar a estabilidade jurídica do sujeito, gerando novas inseguranças e (im) mobilidades.

Resumen Este artículo introductorio al dossier temático traza los conocimientos y estudios existentes sobre la actual migración africana subsahariana hacia y por América Latina, y propone una perspectiva del haciendo-lugar para su análisis. Tal enfoque analítico permite incluir y vincular las experiencias y prácticas de las personas migrantes con una mirada más estructural que tiene en cuenta regímenes de movilidad y la industria de la migración. Más allá de una victimización o esencialización de las personas migrantes africanas, así se puede llegar a una mejor comprensión de sus compromisos de corta o larga duración con los lugares en los cuales habitan o que atraviesan en sus trayectorias; compromisos que afectan y se desarrollan tanto a un nivel material como social y emocional. Abstract The introduction to this thematic dossier traces existing scholarship on current sub-Saharan African migration to and through Latin America. For analysing this migration, we propose a place-making perspective. Such a perspective enables us to illuminate the articulations between migrants’ everyday experiences and structural conditions of mobility regimes and the migration industry. Going beyond victimizing or essentializing African migrants, this approach allows a better understanding of migrants’ long or short-term engagements with the places in which they live or which they cross during their trajectories, an engagement that entails material, social and emotional aspects.

In response to the methodological challenge of embedding remittances to counter dominant development discourses, this paper aims to contribute to remittances research by discussing financial diaries in Muy Muy, Nicaragua. Based on longitudinal and integrated quantitative and qualitative tracking of migrant household practices, financial diaries facilitate explorations of the social and contextual dimensions of remittances that may help account for their heterogeneous character. In particular, the paper highlights the partiality of diaries as well as the translocal interdependency and irregularity of household practices, providing clues for integrating remittances instead of isolating them as neutral instrumental transfers. It uses the example of household debt to further anchor remittances locally, illustrating how financial diaries can expose the changes and considerations that are part of household practices, including remittances. The paper concludes by suggesting that financial diaries need a decisively qualitative framework and may be particularly useful in contexts characterised by multiple migrations.

Recently, carework has emerged as a key area for exploring the gendered connections between migrants and their families “home,” providing insight into family-level consequences of migration. However, the way carework shapes migration itself has not received due attention. Based on field research among Nicaraguan migrant families, this article explores the links between translocal carework and family migration decision-making by connecting the concepts of transnational caregiving and power-geometry of mobility to interpret fathers’ and female relatives’ carework involvement. In conclusion, the article highlights how translocal carework shapes family members’ access to mobility through ongoing negotiations of a wide range of responsibilities, indicating a possible direction for future explorations of migration.

Este articulo pretende contribuir al debate sobre los vinculos entre la movilidad y el desarrollo, explorando el concepto de desarrollo translocal. Basado en trabajo de campo en los municipios de Matiguas y Muy Muy, este analiza como la movilidad da forma a las estrategias de vida de los hogares (semi-)rurales en Nicaragua, y explora como los diferentes miembros de un hogar utilizan la movilidad fisica como una estrategia de vida. Argumenta que los habitantes de areas (semi-)rurales consideran distintos tipos de movimientos como estrategias importantes para establecer enlaces entre personas y lugares, y para alcanzar un mejor bienestar en su comunidad natal. Al mismo tiempo muestra como la movilidad se forma en una arena de poder, lo que afecta su potencial. De esta manera, este articulo contribuye a un entendimiento dinamico y multidimensional de como los procesos de desarrollo dan forma a – y son formados por – la movilidad y la interconectividad. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5377/encuentro.v0i92.785 Encuentro No. 92, 53-72, 2012 Palabras clave desarrollo translocal; hogares (semi-) rurales; estrategias de vida; movilidad; Nicaragua

This paper aims to contribute to the debate on the linkages between mobility and development by exploring the concept of translocal development, proposed in this special issue. Based on empirical field research in Matiguás and Muy Muy, it analyses how mobility shapes the livelihoods of (semi-)rural households in Nicaragua and explores how the different household members use physical movement as a livelihood asset. It argues that (semi-)rural dwellers consider different types of movement as important strategies for establishing corridors between people and places and for achieving socio-economic improvement in their home community. At the same time, it shows how mobility, like any other livelihood asset, is played out in power-ridden social relationships that affect its potential. This way, the paper contributes to a dynamic and multi-dimensional understanding of how development processes shape and are shaped by mobility and interconnectivity.

A pesar del creciente interés que ha suscitado el estudio de los procesos de migración internacional desde una perspectiva de género, la mayoría de los estudios solamente describe la migración de hombres y mujeres por separado sin tener en cuenta sus interacciones, o reflexiona sobre la cuestión del empoderamiento de la mujer a través de la migración. Sin embargo, la transformación de familias, hogares y comunidades derivada de la migración es mucho más compleja y requiere de un enfoque relacional más detallado y profundo. En este artículo intento contribuir al estudio de este tema a través del análisis de un componente fundamental de la migración internacional, que es la organización de hogares transnacionales. Con objeto de poder aplicar una perspectiva de género en el análisis de la organización de hogares transnacionales, aplicaré el marco teórico gendered geographies of power desarrollado por Sarah Mahler y Patricia Pessar. El presente estudio está basado en un trabajo de campo sobre las diferentes estrategias que utilizan las mujeres (y hombres) centroamericanos que emigran a Belice City para ‘salir adelante'. Sus historias muestran cómo las mujeres migrantes intentan utilizar su condición de mujer transnacional a su favor. A partir de sus experiencias y perspectivas, argumento que el discurso mundial de la migración internacional necesita de un replanteamiento que tome en cuenta la interacción de hombres y mujeres y las geometrías de poder en que se encuentran los migrantes.Palabras clave: migración / hogares transnacionales / género / Centroamérica / BeliceDOI: 10.5377/encuentro.v41i84.47Encuentro 2009/ Año XLI, N° 84. 6-20