Motherhood across Borders

by Gabrielle Oliveira

  Despite their presence, parents and caregivers both experienced difficulties communicating with the local school. Violeta and Tatiana went through similar struggles in Mexico and in the United States; they felt powerless to help children under their care with homework and dreaded interacting with teachers and school staff. Other mothers in this research described similar feelings. I have read countless letters from teachers and school administrators in New York City regarding children’s behavioral issues, grades, parental participation, transferring from English as a Second Language (ESL) to different classrooms, requests for children to see psychologists, and offers for tutoring that mothers either ignored or did not understand. Teachers in both systems complained about parents/caregivers, using deficit language and assuming the adult did not care about schooling. As I show here, lack of parental involvement in schooling did not mean lack of aspirations for a better education. Education was always the goal of caregivers and mothers. Constellations united over this common goal and gave each other support.

  However, the process of schooling and especially homework, extracurricular activities, and reading at home were particularly difficult. Mothers used ICTs to remain active in the education of their children, despite the distance. While I am not arguing that Skype or Facebook are the glues of transnationalism, they do play important roles as tools to remain connected. These tools allowed for real-time updates and interactions that meant more presence for mothers involved.

  It is clear that mothers have centrality in the transnational care constellation with regard to schooling and education, especially when topics involve the model of comportment or behavior. Education becomes identified with mothering. It implies both a practical situation where mothers have more years of schooling than grandmothers, so they are better suited to take charge of their biological children’s education, and an ideological adaptation to mothering in a transnational setting in which education continues to be a key dimension of child-rearing—all the more so given the broader meaning that educación has in Latin America.

  INTERLUDE 3

  Drawings

  I used a variety of methods during my fieldwork. I used drawings to elicit narratives from children who were separated from their mothers and/or siblings. I collected more than 65 drawings from children during workshops and 75 through surveys. The figures in this section are examples of how children and youth depicted their families, their thoughts about Mexico, and their impressions about the United States.

  Carlito, Aruna’s son, drew the picture shown in figure I3.2 when I asked him to draw his family. Carlito, who lives with Aruna in New York City, did not include his sisters Elvira and Kaia or his grandmother Clara in the drawing. When he finished explaining to me who was who in the picture, Aruna scolded him: “How can you not draw your sisters? How can you forget?” Carlito asked me if he could draw the family again. Later he told me, “I know they are my sisters, but they don’t live with me … and my mom cries about them all the time. Do you think they are my family?”

  Figure I3.1. Workshop in Mexico, August 2012.

  Figure I3.2. “My Family” by Carlito (age 6).

  Carlito’s brother Santino, age four, asked me to help him as he attempted to draw his family. After listening to his mother get upset with Carlito for not including the two sisters in Mexico, Santino told me: “don’t forget mis hermanas (my sisters).” He drew the characters and asked me to name them for him. Aruna looked at the drawing and told him, “well done!” Mothers like Aruna tried their best to keep their children’s memories of their siblings alive. Aruna had the names of her daughters written on the bathroom walls and constantly asked Carlito and Santino to write them and talk to them on phone. Children, on the other hand, were mostly confused by the idea of who belonged to their families and more often than not associated family with the people who lived in the same residence with them.

  Figure I3.3. “My Family” by Santino (age 4).

  Figure I3.4 shows one of the drawings I collected during workshops in two towns in Puebla. A nine-year-old named Roman created this picture. His aunt and his uncle were raising him as he had been separated from his mother for more than four years. He drew himself, his two dogs, a man, and a woman. He then told me the story behind the picture: “This is my mother Quirina … the one in El Norte … you know? But the man is Erasto, my uncle … because I don’t know my father, my aunt tells me she is not my mother and I know that. My mother sends me gifts like backpacks and books … she has babies there [in New York City] but I don’t know them … I guess they are my family.” Roman, like other children I encountered in the course of my research, had a hard time making sense of who belonged where in his family. He held on to his mother, as represented in the picture, but his uncle was drawn next to her as part of his family. His cousins and aunt in Mexico as well as his brothers in New York City were not included in the picture.

  Figure I3.4. “My Family” by Roman (age 9).

  Figure I3.5. “My Family” by Brian (age 7).

  Brian, age 7, Allison’s son, did not draw his biological mother in the picture, shown in figure I3.5. He drew his grandmother Agustina and his two aunts, Sofia and Luna. Agustina, his grandmother, had been taking care of him for more than three years. She told me, “I raised him like he is my own.” Brian did not speak with Allison frequently. One day during the week I was staying at Agustina and Brian’s house, Allison called. I was drawing with Brian on the floor while Agustina chatted with Allison on the phone. “Hijo, your little brother wants to talk to you on the phone,” Agustina told Brian. Brian looked at me, scratched his head “Quien?” Agustina replied, “Your brother, hijo, Allison’s son.” Brian got up and went to the phone, saying “Oh, Allison’s son.” Allison told me in New York she had given up claiming Brian as her own. She told me,

  The truth is I left because I thought in the long run I could help my mom and Brian by sending her money. Well, things didn’t turn out the way I hoped they would. I am losing another child now [referring to the fact that her ex-husband has custody of her daughter]. I’m scared of seeing Brian now.

  When I inquired why, she said, “He might reject me and I understand it.” Allison didn’t have a job for a while, so she did not send money home for months. She would also not call for a month because, according to her, “it is too painful to talk to my son when he doesn’t even care for me as his mother. But I understand. I did this.”

  The picture in figure I3.6 depicts the family of a young girl named Geraldine. She explained to me that the baby that her mother was holding in the drawing was herself. Geraldine exemplifies how families do stay “frozen” in time when there is migration. Her last memory of her mother was when she was very young. Her mother left Mexico when she was not yet two years old. Geraldine is older than all the siblings pictured in the drawing, but she described herself as her mother’s baby. She told me, “I still dream about my mother holding me and singing to put me to sleep … I wonder if she still sings for my brothers.”

  Figure I3.6. “My Family” by Geraldine (age 11).

  3

  Children and Youth’s Perspectives of the Other Side

  Ideas of Inequality and Sense of Belonging

  Children are both social actors and subjects of social forces; as they experience migration in their families, they have their own responses and opinions. Their experiences are central when understanding the consequences of maternal migration and family separation. In this chapter I explore the perspectives held by children and youth on both sides of the border regarding migration and family separation. I argue that transnational care constellations allow children and youth to imagine the other side of the border, and through that they are able to explore their thoughts and perspectives on material things and inequality, as well as sense of belonging and family. Their imaginaries are the vehicle for making sense of being part of a transnational care constellation. This chapter represents the uniqueness of particular data I was able to capture of dynamics between separated
siblings. Within transnational research, separated siblings’ relationships have been understudied in part because of the complexity involved in the collection of data, but also because children and youth seem to be constantly learning about where the “rest” of their families are.

  Much of my time doing fieldwork for this research was spent with children and youth. Through their photographs, drawings, poems, journal entries, Facebook messages, text messages, and other representations, I show how children and youth make sense of maternal migration and transnational families and how these ideas get translated into two main points: inequality and sense of belonging. I focus on two themes that illustrate how the children in my research make sense of migration. The first narrative concerns the existent inequality on “the other side,” which is informed by their interactions not only with family members who are physically close to them, but also by interactions across the entire transnational care constellation. Children inherently contrast their experiences to what they understand about the experiences of the “rest” of the family. Second, I focus on the narrative in which children and youth describe their sense of belonging in the family. Considering oneself part of a family remains a latent desire of children and youth, and the transnational separation heightens the craving for a family unit. Attention to these themes illustrates how children and youth use cultural values they learn and develop to build characters and realities that inhabit spaces far away from them.

  Children of immigrants “here and there” change as a result of family movements across cultural and geopolitical borders, and their interface with institutions like schools and neighborhoods changes as well. Orellana (2009) accurately describes this phenomenon: “Children and youth experience juxtapositions of discrepant beliefs and practices made visible by the movement of people” (p. 25). As Coe et al. (2011) remind us, the idea of childhood is culturally specific, and it shifts over time in response to political and social changes. Children and youth construct their own stories about what Mexico and the United States are like, about their brothers and sisters, and about opportunities, which in turn shape their ideas about migration and separation. Coe et al. (2011) bring attention to children and youth, who, as they put it, are at the nexus of family separation. In this chapter, I too focus on children and youth, as they are understudied actors in the context of international migration. Attention to their experiences reveals much about how migration shapes their perspectives of family, of inequality, and of Mexico and the United States.

  Mexican immigrant women often form new families as they settle in the new country. Even women who stay married to the same partner may have more children once they settle in the new country. Those decisions yield siblings and half-siblings who are separated across borders. The perspectives and sense-making of children and youth on both sides of the border is not restricted to news of parents; children also imagine how their siblings live and reflect on what kind of lives they have on the other side. Children in this research discussed their understanding of the reasons behind the migration of their mothers and other family members initially in light of economics: lack of employment in the pueblo, the need to work, the possibility of stable income elsewhere, upward mobility, and better living conditions. Even though there is support for the claim that employment and economic factors motivate people to leave a country (push and pull factors), children and youth I interviewed also discussed alternative explanations and justifications for parental migration. They engaged discourses they heard in both households—Mexico and the United States—and sometimes agreed with them and sometimes rebelled against them. I found the narratives created by children and youth to be gendered; girls discussed how hard it was to raise children in Mexico and in the United States, while boys talked about the hardships of going to the field and working long hours.

  According to Orellana’s research on migration, children continue to be mostly invisible outside of families and schools. They are often addressed as baggage that is “brought along,” “sent for,” or “left behind” by sojourning parents (Orellana, 2009: 15). Explorations of children’s actions, contributions, social relationships, and cultures are paramount to understanding the implications of maternal migration. In addition to understanding how children use their power within families (Dreby, 2007), it is also important to look at how children and youth express resentment or appreciation for parents and far-away siblings, and ultimately how migration shapes and influences their worldviews.

  Realities across borders may seem distant, but children and youth are constantly “crossing the border” with their imaginaries. Gardner (2012) asked, “what is it like to have a ‘home’ where close relatives live, but which one has never visited?” (p. 1) and “how is transnational migration experienced by children?” (p. 1). In order to answer these questions, the author describes:

  Clearly, imaginations and imaginings are central to the future shape of transnational social fields. In some instances this may lead to certain places becoming sites for heritage tourism, very much “over there” and conceptually different from “home,” but in others it may lead to the distinctions between places becoming increasingly blurred, especially if the children themselves do not make such distinctions, however much state boundaries or (adult) discourses of ethnic belonging insist on them. (p. 12)

  This chapter builds on the discussion presented by Gardner but includes the micro-contexts and the specific accounts children and youth give of their transnational experience. In the introduction to Minor Transnationalism, Lionnet and Shih explain,

  The transnational designates spaces and practices acted upon by border-crossing agents.… The transnational … can be conceived as a space of exchange and participation wherever processes of hybridization occur and where it is still possible for cultures to be produced and performed without necessary mediation by the center. (2005: 5)

  Can there be a transnational body? If we understand the body as a physical “space of exchange and participation,” as stated above, perhaps. More importantly: Can children and youth actively construct this transnational body? Yes, they can. In this chapter I bring children and youth to the forefront of the migration discussion and engage with them as primary sources of thoughts on migration. Concepts like inequality and family, though complex in theoretical discussions, are also everyday discussions for children and youth.

  Mirrored Perceptions

  When asked why they migrated, mothers almost always responded “to provide for my children” or “to provide a better life to those who stayed.” Children and youth responded in similar ways to the same question. Mothers justified their absence as service to others: They explained that the reason they had migrated in the first place was to be able to provide for their children. Even though they offered other explanations and justifications for leaving their children, they did not deem those explanations appropriate for a caring mother (as described in chapter 2). In an almost mirrored way, when I asked the children in the United States and in Mexico, “Why do you think your mother migrated?” the first reaction from children and youth was to explain that their mothers needed to work to support them, to provide them with a better life. Agustín (age 16), whose mother Sara had been living in New York City for almost ten years, told me: “She left so we can have a good life here.” In Mexico, caregivers and especially grandmothers reminded children every day that their mothers were away to provide for them. “This sacrifice of [your mother] being away from you,” Clarisa told Agustín, “it’s exactly for you.” In another household in Mexico I asked the same question to Daniela, whose mother Gemma had been in New York for 12 years. Daniela (age 14) responded, “I know she works a lot there, I know she is always busy running around, so I think people there work … well there is more work there, so you make more money … so that’s why you go.” Daniela’s grandmother and caregiver, Emma, also repeated to her every chance she got, “People go North for the ones they love, hija.”

  Hochschild (2013) described the experience of child
ren left in Kerala, which is similar to my findings in Mexico, “managing” their doubts and questions regarding the reasons behind a mother’s departure.

  Why, the older children recalled asking themselves, did my mother leave me when the mothers of my school friends did not leave them? Did my mother have to leave, or did she want to? Or did she leave me because I was naughty? Answers to these questions seemed to differ depending on how a child imagined a parent’s role as well as that of fathers, grandparents, friends and others … As one grown child of a migrant worker put it, “I wondered why she couldn’t have stayed back or I couldn’t have gone with her. I still wonder.” (p. 156)

  Research in global migration (Dreby, 2010; Parreñas, 2010) explains this phenomenon as the “sacrifice” mothers and fathers undertake for their children. My interviews and observations revealed a complex picture that challenges the assumption that children and youth accept this rationalization of sacrifice. For both Agustín and Daniela, for example, this explanation about why their mothers left generated confusion. The 37 youth I interviewed expressed frustration with that explanation and pressed their grandmothers for a more detailed account. These moments of frustration were usually preceded by grandmothers telling the children what to do, the children reacting to the orders, and grandmothers resorting to saying something such as, “you are disappointing your mother with your behavior.” One morning Monsterrat (age 14) confronted her grandmother: “Did I ask to be born? NO. Why is it my fault that she left … let me tell you why she left, abuela (grandmother), because she wanted to leave and go make her money and get out of this pueblo. It has NOTHING to do with me.” Agustín expressed similar thoughts when talking to his mother Sara on the phone, “You made that decision to leave … I didn’t make you, so don’t blame it on me!” Thus, even though the normative response was to say, “my mother migrated for me,” children and youth had moments of resentment, and they expressed confusion about the justification for migrating. They sometimes felt that the role assigned to them as the primary beneficiaries of their mothers’ migration was unfair.