Transnational Household Economies, Guerrero-New York.

This paper analyzes data from surveys on transnational household economies, family units which have migrants in the US remitting funds back to their relatives in Mexico. The twofold goals of this paper are to analyze this data using social scientific theories and to contribute to the fields of migration and economic sociology. The data comes from ethnographic work and ethnosurveys done in New York and in the Mixteca region of the Mexican state of Guerrero, in the towns of Huamuxtitlan and Tlapa in 2004. This paper seeks to explicate transnational household economies, the contexts in which they occur, and to articulate these bi-local household economies. The analysis starts by reviewing the growing importance of remittances and the relevant literature on migration. We will contrast our findings with common theories and conceptions about migration. A methodology appendix and some of the quantitative data obtained from the ethno-surveys and recommendations for non-profits are also available in sister papers. This study focuses on a relatively recent migrant community, one which offers an excellent site both to study the kinds of processes that interest us. The Mixteca region of Guerrero has a great deal of recent emigration, which means that a disproportionate percentage of its migrants are remitting to their families. The migrant destination, New York City, offers a good community infrastructure on which to build and remittances exemplify another kind of international capital flow in the middle of the global capital of the financial world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]