Motherhood across Borders

by Gabrielle Oliveira

  Finally, even though families in Sunset Park and the South Bronx faced similar issues with regard to being unable to assist their children with homework and feeling the pressure of work and money, mothers in the South Bronx were unable to consistently enroll their children in after-school programs. Even though the city government assigned free tutors, these professionals did not show up, stayed for a shorter number of hours, and ultimately did not help children with homework. One day I called the tutor from a company called Champion Learning Center and told him that Aruna’s family had been waiting for him for four days in a row and he did not call to say he was not coming. The tutor profusely apologized to me and promised that it would never happen again. He told me he thought the parents did not care so it made him not care. Obviously that response aggravated me, since this man was just not doing his job. Aruna did not know if the man could speak Spanish so she did not call him. She also said, “I don’t want to cause problems or bring attention to my family, you know?” Teachers were constantly asking parents to be more involved in children’s homework, especially in the English language, but offered little to no assistance in terms of how to go about doing it. The South Bronx has great centers and organizations, but these families simply do not get around to finding them. Mothers reported that schools did not help them with referrals. I asked teachers about referrals and they told me they had given mothers plenty of lists.

  Mothers also learned to use the welfare system to qualify for child support, even though they all lived with their partners. Before social services came to check on the accuracy of the information, mothers told their children to tell the social service person that they did not have a father and that they were starving every day. Because children were US citizens, they had social security numbers and qualified for food stamps and subsidy for rent from the government. This was a reality for almost all families I interviewed in the South Bronx. In Sunset Park it was different. Mothers reported not wanting to seek help from the government as they found it to be “embarrassing.” Gemma explained to me, “If you work hard and you have work ethic you go far.” Micaela also told me, “The people that rely on government help make us look bad and give us the reputation of being bums and lazy.” Instead of receiving government help, constellations based in Sunset Park used non-governmental organizations and church-based organizations to assist them with finding work and caring for their children. In addition, families were actively working with pro bono and paid lawyers to attempt to regularize their undocumented status. Gemma’s husband told me: “I’m not afraid, I paid taxes, I paid bills, I’m not afraid.”

  The Assistance and Education Center based in Sunset Park provided families in the neighborhood with a range of social services. They had cooperatives led by women who were nannies, cleaning ladies, or assisted the elderly. They provided them with training and reference letters so they could get hired. In Sunset Park I accompanied women to pediatrician appointments, school, work, grocery shopping, and cooperative meetings. Their daily interactions with other members from the neighborhood were constant. Women who were part of the cooperatives housed by the Assistance and Education Center offered to cook food for each other when someone in the family was ill, helped care for children, and made leisure plans like lunch after church or play dates. Sunset Park showed me a distinct reality from the South Bronx that influenced how children perceived their own lives and opportunities.

  Conclusion

  Who is better off in their education trajectories—Joaquín, in Mexico; Florencia, undocumented in the United States; or US-born Mariana and Rosa? There is no easy answer to this question. What is clear is that neighborhoods and schools, gender, family income at different phases, and stability influence the kind of educational trajectory children and youth have. In fact, Maria Fernanda’s constellation shows us that equating left-behind children with abandonment is not always accurate, though the three sets of children in her constellation face completely different options for their future.

  Micro-contexts of reception documented throughout this ethnography make a qualitative contribution to community studies and census data available in each neighborhood. This sustained and close ethnography shows the importance of using a transnational lens and long-term research to better understand the paths families follow. While larger sociological studies are helpful to identify general patterns of adaptation of immigrants in the United States, they fail to focus on the local micro-context these families experience every day. In addition, responses and reactions from the other side of the border are just as important when parents make decisions about how to prioritize children and youth’s education involvement. Transnational care constellation structures matter when children and youth go through schooling experiences. Financial and emotional stability of mothers is important to the type of assistance and help children and youth receive in schools both in New York City and in Mexico. Thus, to focus solely on the lives of the so-called first, 1.5, and/or second generation is to ignore a much larger familial structure that works across borders and shapes the social and education trajectories of separated siblings. If we focus on Maria Fernanda’s story in New York City without knowing of her family needs in Mexico and how her partner, neighbors, and local schools have assisted her, what can we say about the path of assimilation she went through? Did Maria Fernanda and Florencia experience limited assimilation and are Rosa and Mariana fully integrated? Maybe, but this analysis does not help us understand why that has happened and how it influences Florencia, Rosa, and Mariana’s lives and choices.

  To summarize, Mexican migrant women in New York City were able to provide for children in Mexico and in the United States only if they were able to experience stability in their homes. Children and youth in New York City had much more varied experiences regarding schooling experiences than their siblings in Mexico, also because micro-contexts matter in this case. Teachers and schools in the Mexican pueblos where I conducted research are not equipped with many books and suffer from lack of resources and lack of teacher training. In New York City, families in the South Bronx experienced crowded schools where they felt there was very little space for parents to participate.

  INTERLUDE 5

  Camila and Stella

  Camila lived with her partner Ezequiel in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Ezequiel was from Guatemala. As previously mentioned, they owned a grocery store in the neighborhood and lived in a two-bedroom house with their three children. Camila also had three daughters, Ana (age 18), Lilly (age 16), and Stella (age 14), whom she left in Mexico when she migrated to New York in 2000. Camila described herself as a “friendless” person and told me she did not trust people easily. She wanted to talk about her story nonetheless. During my first interview with Camila I asked her to tell me why she left Mexico 12 years before. Camila had a tough life. Her husband, 20 years her senior, left her with the three girls in Mexico and came to the United States. A few years later he sent enough money for her to cross into the United States. He promised her they would go back in a year to be with their three daughters. However, when she arrived in New York City he already had a new partner and asked Camila if the three of them could live together. Camila said she felt ashamed and terrible about the situation. She went to a friend’s house and asked her if she could stay there until she had enough money to go back to Mexico. It was not the first time her husband had been disloyal. He had an affair with Camila’s mother when they lived in the same house in Mexico. Camila told me she had forgiven them both. What she worried about was the shame of returning home “with nothing.” Camila explained to me, “I could not take the shame of not being able to send money back home … after leaving my children with my mother … can you imagine coming back with nothing: no husband, no money?”

  Camila worked as a cleaning lady and at a laundry services shop; she also became part of a cooperative at the Assistance and Education Center in Sunset Park. Through a friend Camila met her husband Ezequiel and together they had three children, Antonio (age 10), Natal
ia (age 7), and Nina (age 5). The three children attended school and Antonio was in the process of applying for a private school because of his strong grades. Camila, like other mothers in Sunset Park, was able to secure private tutoring for her children and she was an active participant in school-related activities. Antonio told me his mom was always watching him and he thought that if he did not do well in school he would get in trouble. Natalia told me that she wanted to be like her big brother and earn good grades. Antonio was promised a new video game if he got into the private school he was applying to. Even though Antonio did well in school, Camila did not feel she helped him with homework or even to be a better student. The three children spoke English to each other in the home. Camila constantly interrupted them and said, “no te entiendo” (I don’t understand you) when they spoke in English to her. Like in other households, children spoke to each other purely in English and mothers felt excluded from conversations.

  The academic achievement of her daughters in Mexico was very important to Camila. Camila told me multiple times how she always thought her daughters in Mexico were very smart and capable of so much. “The problem,” she told me, “is that I can’t be there to enforce and discipline them.” Camila blamed herself for everything that went wrong in her daughters’ lives back in Vera Cruz. Her 18-year-old daughter Ana had two children already and from different fathers. Ana was a great student but since she had her first baby she was no longer attending school. Her other daughter Lilly was pregnant but had a scholarship for high school at a private school in Jalapa, the main city in Vera Cruz. Camila worried about Lilly dropping out of school, but above all she worried that her daughters in Mexico did not love her anymore. She told me:

  I have love reserved for my daughters in Mexico. I feel guilty to give all my love to the children here, so I save some for the kids there. I know deep down that my children there don’t love me as much … yo no puedo reclamar es mi culpa, yo fui quien las deje … no es culpa de ellas (I can’t complain, it’s my fault, I was the one that left them, it’s not their fault). Camila continued, They say to me, you left us, abandoned us, and then I stop them and I explain to them that I am helping them and they say “I want to be like you” mamá, someone that works hard.

  Camila has had dreams about reuniting with her daughters. She said that in her dreams she cries and hugs each one of them and they talk for hours. It was almost a last piece of hope she hung on to. One day Camila told me she was going to try to bring her daughter Stella to the United States. Camila worried that Stella, like her sisters, would also find a boyfriend and become pregnant. She told me she needed to act fast. A few months later Camila sent me a text message telling me that Stella was indeed en route to New York City. She hired a “coyote” that a friend of hers knew well and paid him half of the total price, US$2,500 in the beginning of Stella’s journey. It took Stella three weeks to cross into the United States and another week to arrive in New York City. Stella took a bus from her town in Vera Cruz to the border of Tamaulipas and Texas and attempted to cross several times. She was caught by border patrol twice, but because she was a minor she was not charged with any criminal activity. Stella was put into a temporary government foster home until her grandmother signed an authorization for release. Camila was on the edge of her seat for these weeks as Stella tried to cross. She worried that she had put her daughter in potential danger and she told me, “If anything happens to her I will never be able to live with myself.” Stella eventually succeeded in crossing and Camila paid the rest of the money to the coyote. Stella was put in a van that brought her to New York City.

  “When I saw her, I cried and cried and hugged her and thanked the Lord for her safety. I was so happy to see my baby girl.” Stella told me that day, “I was happy to see my mamá, but I’m so tired and it was so tough.” The day they were reunited I attended a small party at Camila’s house. Stella stood in the corner and asked her mother several times if she could just go to sleep. Camila was disappointed from the start and was upset that Stella was not into the party she had arranged. Antonio, Natalia, and Nina were fascinated by Stella and wanted to talk to her, play with her, and show her things. Stella struggled with English, but her siblings made an effort to speak in Spanish.

  A month later I visited them again. Even though I had wrapped up my fieldwork at that point, Camila told me she needed to talk. Since her daughter Stella arrived in New York, her husband was having privacy issues and had essentially moved out the week before. What she meant was that her husband did not feel comfortable in his two-bedroom home with a teenage girl. Camila said that he liked walking around in shorts with no shirt on and watch television and did not feel he could do that with Stella at home. Camila felt pretty strongly about her children coming first. “If he tells me it’s my daughter or him, I will take my daughter no question.” I asked if he had given her that choice. She responded, “No, but I am ready. I can sense in his actions that’s what he means. She [Stella] feels really bad and she cries. But I tell her not to cry, it’s not her fault.”

  Stella was working at the grocery store Camila opened and was dating one of the boys who worked there. Esteban was not pleased with the fact that Stella was dating another employee. She also did not speak any English yet and could barely communicate with her siblings. Stella told me she felt really anxious and she got headaches and intense chest pains that prevented her from breathing from time to time. She wanted to go back to Mexico. Stella said that because she felt good in the home where she grew up, she didn’t really focus on why her mother left. Her sisters, on the other hand, “siempre quejábanse porque la mamá no esta” (always complained about their mother’s absence). Camila interrupted her and said, “I have given more financially to them in Mexico than to the kids here! I always gave them money for birthday, school, dia de los niños, there are many women that come here and don’t send money to their children. I wasn’t one of them.”

  Months went by and school started in September. Camila did not enroll Stella in school, she told me, because of a vaccine requirement. After speaking to Camila again it became clear she didn’t have the patience to help Stella and felt that school would not be good for her, since she was undocumented. Camila told me,

  You know that saying we make plans and God laughs? I think that’s what is happening … I got Stella out of Mexico so she could be someone and have opportunities, then she gets here doesn’t go to school … she told me she can’t find her papers from school in Mexico, so I can’t enroll her … and she has a boyfriend, she put an earring on her eyebrow. Maybe she was better off in Mexico! This is very confusing to me. I try to talk to her about taking care of herself sexually, I want to be her friend.

  Stella told me she felt intimidated by school and worried about not having papers. She liked school in Mexico, she said:

  I was a good student there, I was doing well and I was going to do prepa (high school) at the best school in Jalapa. Since I got here my stepfather is always leaving because of me, my mamá cries a lot, my siblings speak English among themselves, and I feel like I have no future because I don’t have papers. I really like my boyfriend. I was promised a better school, a better life, better education here. I decided to come because they told me my degree in Mexico was not as good as a degree in the United States.

  5

  For My Mother

  Gendered Education Experiences

  In this chapter I explore why girls in Mexico performed better academically when compared with boys left in Mexico and their siblings in the United States. By “performing better academically” I mean a combination of academic performance indicated by grades, homework completion, in-class behavior, and the overall educational experience that feeds aspirations for the future. Ethnographic data for this chapter stem from interviews with 30 children in Mexico whose mothers were in New York and part of the 20 transnational constellations I followed in-depth over a period of 18 months.

  Half of them were female; their age ranged from seven to eig
hteen years old. In New York I observed and interviewed more than 37 children who were sons and daughters of migrant Mexican mothers in three New York City neighborhoods. Twenty were girls and seventeen were boys; their age ranged from four months to seventeen years old, though I only interviewed children age three and up.

  The fifteen girls observed and interviewed in Mexico had consistently better grades—they averaged above the 90th percentile within their class—when compared to the boys, who averaged a little above the 60th percentile of their class. These percentiles were obtained through interviews with teachers who talked to me about these children’s performance within the two previous years and disclosed grades for my analysis. The grades I obtained were from the 2011/2012 academic year only. In comparison, in New York City there was much more variability and in many cases boys performed better than girls in terms of academic achievement. Nonetheless, the girls in Mexico consistently outperformed the boys in Mexico and all the children in New York.