Motherhood across Borders

by Gabrielle Oliveira

  When we returned to Aruna’s home, she called her mother in Mexico. Clara did not pick up the phone. Aruna called her four times in a row. An hour later Clara called back and Aruna put her on speaker phone so I could hear. Clara said, “Elvira wants to speak to you.” Aruna got excited for a second and then immediately became concerned.

  Clara put her Elvira on the phone. Clara prepared Elvira to tell Aruna how she felt about Aruna. Elvira started saying “yo no te quiero, tu me abandonastes” (I don’t love you, you abandoned me). Then Aruna lost it, “I did not abandon you, I didn’t leave you in the street with no food. I send you money and gifts, abandoning is different, it means I forgot about you and I didn’t.” Elvira gave the phone back to Clara, who told Aruna, “Are you happy now? We have to go.” Clara hung up. Aruna was really upset during the phone call and sobbed. Carlito, who was there too, started crying and told me: “yo lloré porque Elvira no quiere mi mamá” (I cried because Elvira doesn’t love my mother). I asked Aruna if her mother was bitter about her departure; Aruna responded:

  She is bitter for something and not for other things. She makes my daughters not like me and she put her on the phone because she didn’t want to talk to me anymore. Nothing I ever send is good enough for my mother, she thinks the store Children’s Place is terrible, and she demands brands like Nike. Yo atraso mis niños en la escuela (I delay getting my children to school) when I have to deal with her demands.

  When I met Elvira in Mexico, Kaia and Clara they were very suspicious of my presence. Because I was Aruna’s friend, Clara thought I had some hidden agenda that included telling the girls about Aruna and how much she loved and missed her daughters. Clara agreed to be interviewed after a few days. She told me she was teaching Aruna a lesson on life: “She should have never left her nenas here. And now she is off having more and more children with another man. Why? I wasn’t good enough mother for her?” Clara complained constantly about the lack of financial support and gifts from Aruna. I asked Kaia and Elvira if they wanted me to bring anything back to the United States for the boys. Both girls asked me to take pictures of them and show them to their hermanitos (little brothers). The statement caught my attention, as I had been instructed not to refer to them as their brothers. Clara quickly corrected them: “your little cousins.”

  Aruna’s story shows us that not all mothers in this research had a positive relationship with their own mothers prior to leaving. Aruna’s story elucidates how a negative relationship with the caregiver can harm the relationship between the mother and children.

  2

  Transnational Mothers and School-Related Decisions

  Brianna lived in Jackson Heights, Queens with her husband Ronald and her newborn baby, Junior. She had three daughters in Puebla, Mexico. Brianna had been in the United States for four years, and since getting pregnant with Junior she had not worked. Brianna called and sent text messages to her daughters and her own mother in Mexico several times a day. She sent them pictures and uploaded images onto her page on Facebook throughout the day. Brianna’s second daughter, Ashley, was in fifth grade at the time we met. She was an excellent student and always received great grades. In the last few months before finishing fifth grade, Ashley began complaining to her grandmother, who she called “Mamá Leila,” about her teacher. During my first visit to Puebla, Ashley talked to me about her teacher José. She said, “He points his finger at me all the time, everything is always my fault for him. I hate him, he is rude.” School was out of session during the time of my first visit, so I did not meet José until my next visit. I spoke to other teachers in the pueblo and to Ashley’s grandmother, Leila. Leila explained to me, “[José] is one of those teachers that is very rude … he doesn’t like when girls do well. But who am I to say anything? I didn’t even go to school.” Lilia, Brianna’s cousin who also taught at the school, told me, “he is … traditional … it’s hard because he has been at the school for so long.” Eventually I did sit in on a few of José’s classes at the public elementary school he attended, and he had no issue sharing his complaints. He explained to me, “Kids nowadays have this sense of entitlement. I don’t know if it’s more freedom, more money from parents, more TV or more El Norte talk. They need to be put into their place.”

  This situation was not restricted to Ashley only. I have found that teachers in schools in other states of Mexico criticized familial arrangements where mothers were not present to “take care” of their children. A teacher in Vera Cruz openly told me in front of children with migrant mothers, “for them it will be harder for them to learn … without the mother it will take longer.”

  A few weeks later, after I returned to New York City, I was at Brianna’s house one afternoon when her phone rang. It was Ashley. She said, “Mamá, I am not going to school anymore, I hate my teacher.” Brianna tried to calm her down and immediately asked her if she had asked “Mamá Leila” to intervene. Ashley said she asked Leila, but Leila said that there was nothing she could do and that she did not feel comfortable going to the school and fighting with anyone there. Brianna told Ashley she was going to talk to Leila about it and she would take care of things. After they hung up the phone Brianna told me, “These are the times I have to control myself and not jump in the plane and go back. My daughters need me to take care of their lives. It’s the one thing I want them to do … the one thing, you know? Go to school, get an education and get a good job. Have a chance in life! And then I am not there! Ay! Me pongo loca (I go crazy)!”

  Later that day, Brianna called Leila and asked her to speak with a cousin who worked at the school as a teacher. “Talk to Lilia, she will help you,” Brianna told Leila. Leila was in her seventies and she complained about feeling tired.1 Leila told Brianna, “Why don’t you solve your children’s problems, hija? I do the best I can, but I tell them you are their mother, you know?” Brianna responded that she would. An hour later, as I sat on Brianna’s bed holding her baby, she called the school’s principal: “Is Fidel around? This is Brianna … Brianna Osorio … Ashley’s mother.” She looked at me and pushed the speaker button so I could hear. I put Junior in his crib so I could take notes. After about one minute a man came back to the phone: “Yes, can I help you?” Then Brianna began:

  BRIANNA: I am calling you from New York. Do you remember me? We met before.

  FIDEL: Yes, I remember, yes.

  BRIANNA: Listen, you will have to do something for my daughter. This teacher is causing her a lot of trouble and I am getting very upset.

  FIDEL: I know … I know señora, but what do you want me to do? We have one fifth grade class and only four months left of classes.

  BRIANNA: You have to do something. Move her. Move her from this class … No me importa! (I don’t care!)

  FIDEL: And put her where? If I have to move every student that complains, señora … then there is no more school.

  BRIANNA: Mr. Fidel. You know my family owns land around the school. We help you with parties and everything … that’s how you know me. You don’t want me to talk to my cousins and my uncle there, do you? We are Osorio … my dad was the president of the town 20 years ago!

  FIDEL: Listen, I will see what I can do. This is a difficult situation.… There are only a few months left. Can you talk to your daughter? We have to be fair with students.

  BRIANNA: I will call you every day until you solve this problem … sale? (Ok?).

  FIDEL: Let me see what I can do [very frustrated tone].

  They exchanged greetings for each other’s families and finished the conversation. After they hung up, Brianna called Ashley and told her not to worry about the future because she had spoken with the principal. Two days later, after continued pressure from Brianna, the principal called and told her they had found a solution. They were going to have Ashley sit in the classroom with sixth graders, but her homework and tests would be the same as fifth graders. Lilia, the teacher and cousin of the Osorio family, had come up with the solution and Brianna was happy about it. She felt accompli
shed as she told me, “this is to show people that it doesn’t matter how far you are from your children, la mamá es la que hace las cosas para sus niños, punto (the mother is the one that does things for her children, period).”

  Making decisions at a distance may not be anything new for most people, since many families around the world live apart. However, undocumented migration presents an additional challenge to families because mobility across borders is highly restricted, costly, and dangerous. The prospects of reunification are minimal and all members of the constellation feel the emotional toll of separation. All of the women in this research had started families in the United States and found it really complicated to commit to going back to Mexico now that they had US-born children. Part of their justification for staying in the United States was the idea that US-born children would have a better social outcome because of their education opportunities in America. In light of the transnational care constellation as a means to understand how migration reorganizes familial ties, this short vignette illustrates the centrality of mothers in education-related decisions—a responsibility that travels with mothers across borders.

  Gender has been a key to understanding dynamics in transnational families. In her study of Filipino left-behind children, Parreñas (2005a) notes that mothers who migrate are expected to perform the caring and emotional work typically associated with their maternal role. In the case above, even though Brianna’s bottom line, as she explained herself, was to make sure Ashley stayed in school and had a positive schooling experience, she took on the emotional of work of “taking care of things” for her daughter and honoring her role as the mother. The facility with which Brianna could call her daughter’s cell phone, her mother’s house, and the school adds a layer to caring across borders that allows mothers to “solve” issues and problems in real time. When Leila told Brianna “you solve your child’s problem,” she directly communicated that expectations do travel across borders and do not diminish or become less important because of physical distance. Brianna understood that because she had a cell phone with competitive service rates, she could call Mexico pretty frequently and there was no excuse for her not to resolve this issue promptly. It was astonishing to witness, in one day of field work, three different phone calls (to Ashley, Leila, and Fidel the principal) and the hopes for a solution develop. If Brianna had tried to move her daughter to a different classroom in their school in Jackson Heights, the response may well have been quite different.

  Out of the 20 constellations I observed during this research, 15 mothers had had experiences intervening in school-related activities in Mexico. However, only half were successful in changing or influencing the local reality of the schools in their towns in Mexico. Nancy, a mother in the Bronx, grew frustrated with the fact that her son Marcos did not feel safe going to school in a small town in the state of Vera Cruz. Nancy told me she tried calling the principal of the school with no success: “It’s hard because I know who the principal is and he is friends with my cousin, but he makes empty promises. He told me he was going to call the police to say that kids were being mugged on their way to school, but I don’t believe him!” Two other mothers complained about safety concerns: Camila, whose three daughters complained about safety when walking to school in the state of Vera Cruz, and Mayra, who was convinced that her son Rodrigo, who lived in Pachuca, Hidalgo, was being targeted by others in school because they knew he received remittances. Both Camila and Mayra persisted in trying to solve their children’s issues in Mexico. Camila explained to me, “Here everything is taken care of; there is the police, the social worker, the teachers, the nurses. Everyone is involved in making decisions for your children. In my town in Mexico, if we don’t pressure teachers and school staff, who knows what will happen.”

  Communication across borders resembled everyday conversations parents have with their children who are physically close to them. I witnessed many transnational discussions about curfew, boyfriends and girlfriends, illnesses, and separated sibling rivalry in which mothers performed the role of “counselor” and “friend” to their children in Mexico. However, when the issue was schooling and education, the authority of mothers became prominent. Yet, as I show in the next section, mothers had more difficulty asserting their influence over the schooling of their children in New York City. Since this research was multi-sited and I traveled back and forth between Mexico and New York City multiple times over the period of three years, my approach will be to describe the parallel experiences of the women in these constellations.

  * * *

  Constellations are split across physical and emotional borders. Relationships across borders are accompanied by distortions of perceptions, roles, ideas, and morals. In order to understand the implications of migration and physical familial separation for mothers, caregivers, and especially children, one must look at how care constellations organize, divide labor, and co-share tasks transnationally.

  One central feature of transnational maternal labor entailed engaging with the educational opportunities and experiences of the children in Mexico and in New York. The mothers interviewed often justified their decision to migrate in terms of providing a “better life” for their children; this better life depended in part on what the mothers perceived to be a better education. Though this is a normative response, and though the women eventually revealed myriad [what they consider to be] less noble reasons for migration, it is clear that, for the women, providing an education made the process of “leaving” legitimate and thus acceptable for the members of the constellations. This chapter exemplifies how transnational motherhood both in practice and in ideas crosses borders when the subject involves the care and well-being of her children. In addition, I show how caregivers in Mexico and mothers in New York City have parallel experiences when trying to actively participate in children’s lives.

  I argue that mothers in transnational care constellations have a central role as decision-makers in school-related activities “here and there.” Even though the ways migrant mothers undertake their duties and their levels of comfort and confidence vary as they perform tasks in the United States and “virtually” in Mexico, they both take on and are assigned the authority role in the lives of children on both sides. School-related discussions about academic performance, homework completion, respect and politeness in classrooms, aspirations to continue in school, and so on, are central to the communication that takes place across borders.

  Maintaining this transnational role of authority was not always easy. Mothers struggled to maintain the position of authority and central decision-maker with their children in New York City. They described feeling particularly vulnerable given their legal status, lack of English language knowledge, and limited knowledge of how the school system works in the city. Further, caregivers in Mexico, who often had never attended school, described their role in helping their charges as limited and potentially damaging; they expressed concern about not knowing how to help children with homework and not feeling competent to interact with teachers during parent-teacher conferences.

  Members of these constellations are not connected “neatly” or “evenly”; nonetheless, they are connected. To demonstrate, I will first discuss how mothers in New York City are central decision-makers in school-related issues in Mexico and in the United States, even when there is a lengthy separation with the children in Mexico and language and status barriers with children in the United States. Second, I will argue that mothers in New York and grandmothers in Mexico experience similar challenges when interacting with teachers and school staff in both countries. Third, I will show the critical role Internet and Communication Technology (ICT) play in transnational mothering, particularly as mothers make education-related decisions. ICT fosters regular interactions between mothers and grandmothers, between mothers in New York City and teachers in Mexico, and between separated siblings doing homework and/or playing. To understand the implications of ICT on both sides of the border is to understand the para
llels between separated lives.

  Mothers as Central Decision-Makers in School-Related Issues

  Mothers in this study understood their central role in school and education issues as both imperative and expected of them by other family members. In their own way, the mothers in this research project sought actively to be engaged in the education of their children in order to, in their words, secure a better future for them. In doing so, they constantly and actively shared tasks and duties with caregivers in Mexico, relying on those caregivers for enforcement and feedback.

  Much of the literature on mothers’ educational achievement asserts that mothers’ school involvement and children’s academic performance are heavily correlated (e.g., LeVine et al., 2012; Sawyer, 2010). Even though physical presence of mothers is a well-known argument for better school performance of children and youth, Mexican migrant mothers’ central role in the education decisions of the children they left in Mexico is celebrated and expected. Grandmothers and children in Mexico expect the participation of New York–based mothers in their schooling activities. In New York City, even though mothers shoulder the responsibility of education and school-related decisions of their sons and daughters, they experience hardships when it comes to participating in local school activities. This chapter builds on the previous one to examine how members of these transnational constellations face struggles, and in many cases overcome them, when trying to make decisions about schooling, which for them means making decisions about the type of education their children will receive.