Motherhood across Borders

by Gabrielle Oliveira

  Be really good in school so that one day you can write me telling me about how you are doing and even if I don’t receive these letters know that every day that I live is dedicated to you. You will see that your mother will never lie to you and one day you will clearly understand why it is worth for us to be separated now.

  I send you a lot of kisses and a big, long hug.

  Tu Mamá,

  Yuli

  Conclusion

  Millions of people in the world today live as part of transnational care constellations. In order to understand children and youth’s care and education experiences in Mexico and in the United States, researchers must view them as part of these transnational care constellations. If children have difficulty learning or speaking the host country’s language, if parents or caregivers don’t seem enthusiastic about children’s schooling, or if children with immigrant parents are performing well in school, teachers, researchers, and policy makers must ask themselves—who is involved in the care of these children and youth? Who is making the decisions regarding their education trajectories? And how does the other side, where part of the family remains, influence behavior, decisions, and experiences? I have posited that immigrant Mexican women with children in both Mexico and the United States remain a part of their offspring’s lives, especially with regard to education and schooling. As a central figure in these constellations, mothers along with caregivers link separated siblings and their different realities in a way that makes children and youth interact with the other side. In a world where people are constantly on the move, we still have a lot to learn from how communication across borders takes place and what kind of influence these distant realities have on one another.

  In the African proverb made so popular by Hillary Clinton, “It takes a whole village to raise a child,” the village becomes blurred and borderless when we try to understand who is involved not only in raising the child, but also in educating the child. Where is the village in a transnational perspective? It becomes the transnational care constellation where separated siblings are connected through their mothers and their imaginaries, where migration and the narratives that come with it are a latent topic in children’s everyday lives and contribute to how they perceive their schools, their homes, and their families.

  This book has explored the ways in which maternal migration shapes the lives of children who are part of transnational care constellations divided between Mexico and the United States. It focused on the reconfiguration of family relationships in the wake of maternal migration; each chapter describes how these changes have shaped children’s lives on both sides of the border. Levitt and Glick-Schiller have argued that central to the project of transnational migration studies and to the scholarship on other transnational phenomena is a reformulation of the concept of society:

  Our analytical lens must necessarily broaden and deepen because migrants are often embedded in multi-layered, multi-sited transnational social fields, encompassing those who move and those who stay behind. As a result, basic assumptions about social institutions such as the family, citizenship, and nation-states need to be revisited. (2004: 4)

  Through the use of transnational care constellations I have “broadened” and “deepened” our analytical lens on migration. I broadened it in the sense that I looked at both sides of the border where families are, and I deepened it as I focused on the people involved in the micro-contexts of caring for the children here and there. This book has aimed to revisit assumptions of motherhood, caregiving, and family structure by looking at how transnational practices shape and influence the lives of children.

  This volume has shown that the influence of migration cannot be understood by looking at only one side of the border. Children’s lives and experiences are an important, yet often overlooked, part of migration phenomena. Indeed, when we examine their lives, we find that caregiving practices and arrangements that derive from maternal migration particularly shape and influence children’s experiences of education and schooling. Mothers’ expectations and educational investments vary according to children’s location and mothers’ financial and emotional stability. In addition, the gender of the child plays an important role in how expectations of education and schooling unfold. As we have seen, academic achievement and education experiences differ for separated siblings in Mexico and in New York City, and assumptions of “better” schooling systems are complicated when we look at the micro-interactions and everyday practices of families. By focusing on the lived and relational dimensions of maternal migration as experienced by members of “transnational care constellations,” this research contributes to the existing migration scholarship by illuminating how transnational migration and people’s mobility shape the lives of children and youth “left behind,” “brought over,” and “born here.” By arguing for the importance of attending to children’s lived experiences of familial separation and participation in care constellations, this research provides a nuanced analysis of migration’s many facets.

  I focused on micro-contexts “here” and “there” in order to show how everyday realities are shaped by these transnational relationships. For example, economic and sociological arguments of migration build on assumptions of why people migrate and leave out important distinctions that are not just anecdotes or caveats, but rather the reality in which millions of people live and organize their family structure—transnational care constellations. Transnational families face many of the same challenges as immigrant families: adapting to a new culture, learning a new language, locating suitable affordable housing, seeking jobs, and adjusting to the educational and larger societal systems. In addition, transnational families face physical separation accompanied by communication facilitated by technology. As Schmalzbauer states:

  Although transnational families are not a new phenomenon, there are critical differences between the transnational families of the late 20th and early 21st centuries and earlier forms. Contemporary transnational families survive in a world in which communication and transportation technology makes it easier for families to stay connected. (2004: 1318)

  My data show that even though some things may be easier, communication is also strained by filters in social media and expectations that are built around what is shown to the other side. Transnational care constellations are unique in a sense that separation exists alongside the desire to maintain family ties through this system. Part of the definition of transnational motherhood is the idea that women have of “being here” and “being there” simultaneously. Mothers in this research showed how they operated outside the here/there dichotomy by crossing the border with their care, fully acknowledging their positions within the care constellation, and using Internet and Communication Technology (ICT) to fulfill their roles. Migrant mothers were constantly faced with challenges regarding how to negotiate care and educational investments for all of their children. They understood children in Mexico to be the beneficiaries of their sacrifice and thus expected more from them.

  Ideas and Practices of Transnational Motherhood

  Women borrow emblems and ideas of motherhood from Mexico, their home country, as they become transnational mothers in New York City. The ideal of motherhood, as others have noticed, is deeply associated with ideas of sacrifice for one’s children. However, women have other desires and motivations to migrate that appeared to be hiding behind the justification considered legitimate by family members and themselves: providing for the children.

  In a review of the literature of migration, it becomes clear that the primary reported motivation for people to leave their homes and go to a different country is economic: migration as a personal and sometimes “household” decision to increase economic gains through family separation. Even though from a rational choice perspective this may be a feasible explanation, migrant mothers not only had particular economic reasons for migration, but also focused on being able to provide in order to further their children’s education. As demonstrated in chapter 2, the economic e
xplanation does not fully account for the stories of migrants who are women and mothers who have children on both sides of the border. Discussing push and pull economic indicators for why people move is inadequate, as it does not question the motivation of this group of individuals and consequently how mothers’ mobility shapes the lives of children and youth on both sides (beyond the impact of remittances for those who stay and being first- or second-generation for those who are in the United States). I focused on how intergenerational relationships among women have contributed to constructions of the ideals behind caregiving and thus transnational motherhood. The ideas of “the good mother” influenced how women in this study took care of their children. Justifying migration as an act of sacrifice provided a comforting explanation for many women. Personal desires fed motivations to migrate; however, they were quickly suppressed by the perceived duty of how a mother should care for a child. Women were not contradicting ideas of motherhood learned from their mothers in Mexico; they were using those concepts to create new forms of mothering from afar.

  As we have seen, one of the ways parenting from a distance is enacted relates to education and schooling-related decisions. Migrant mothers took on the role of decision-makers in school-related decisions for their children “here” and “there” while—in almost parallel experiences—caregivers on one side and mothers on the other side struggled to participate in the lives of children they physically cared for.

  Women, even when separated from their children for a number of years, continue their mission to provide for them and keep their bond alive. Many women considered themselves less capable of assisting children in schools where they were present, in New York City, and thus their presence at parent-teacher conferences and school events was minimal. Transnational motherhood is a more complex and nuanced practice than just having children here and there. Transnational mothers are constantly making decisions and choices that affect the lives of their children in Mexico, their children in New York City, and caregivers in Mexico. On the other side, in Mexico, caregivers struggled with similar issues. Feeling out of place to assist their grandchildren with homework and school, grandmothers described not knowing much about how school worked and did not think they could improve children’s performance or help them in any way. The co-presence of caregivers and children in the same country, city, and home did not necessarily mean that more support would be provided. We saw how and when women borrowed from ideas of what a mother “should” do and put them into practice regardless of distance.

  Children and Youth Perspectives: A Transnational Comparative Lens

  A major task of this research has been to address the experiences of children and youth in migration contexts. Coe et al. (2011) have described children and youth as under theorized “key players” in globalization and transnational processes. Few scholars (see Dreby, 2010, 2015) have been able to overcome the barriers of doing research with children who are affected by the migration of their parents. There is little documentation on the communication between separated siblings or whether their experiences differ in transnational contexts. This book has addressed not only how mothers relate to the different groups of children in their lives, but also how children and youth relate to one another. Focusing on siblings allows us to understand how kinship travels across borders and how these relationships are formed and questioned.

  Children and youth used a transnational comparative lens to form their thoughts and impressions about migration, separated families and their siblings on the other side, inequality within the family, and their sense of belonging in the family. Physical resemblance was important when children and youth discussed their siblings, grandmothers, and mothers. In addition to their emotions, children and youth on both sides of the border imagined their siblings in different times and spaces, almost as if they were “stuck” in these imaginaries. Describing the other side, children and youth started with an economic perspective of how the “rest” of the family lived and used those ideas to build character concepts of these family members and their lives. Using inequality as a lens to analyze how siblings lived on the other side was a common practice among children in this study. Siblings in New York City worried about the well-being of their siblings in Mexico and considered Mexico a “harder” or “tougher” place to live. At the same time, there were examples of children in New York City who used the situation of their siblings in Mexico as leverage to demand more material gifts from their mothers.

  Siblings Separated by Migration

  Members of the transnational constellation have also come to expect mothers to assist them with remittances, material gifts, and emotional support. 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 home. Children and youth in New York City had much more varied experiences regarding schooling experiences than their siblings in Mexico. The varied socioeconomic and educational backgrounds of immigrant families can affect a child’s opportunities and experiences in different ways. Migrant mothers with more resources may find ways to settle in more affluent neighborhoods with better schools. Migrant mothers with fewer resources may have to settle where housing is cheaper, and send their children to overcrowded, low-quality schools.

  Mothers often justified migration by saying it would lead to better opportunities. However, as we have seen, boys and girls in Mexico reacted differently to the educational expectations of their mothers. There was a mismatch in terms of expectations when it came to mothers and their sons, as boys tended to underperform academically and drop out in the middle of their studies. Children born in the United States were significantly influenced by the quality of the school they attended. Even though mothers in Sunset Park and the South Bronx faced similar issues with being unable to assist their children with homework and feeling the pressure of work and money, children in the South Bronx had a harder time at school. Mothers in the South Bronx felt that there was very little space for them to participate in their children’s schooling, and the living situation in the neighborhood contributed to the lack of trust mothers had in teachers at the school and vice-versa. Further, mothers in the South Bronx were consistently unable to enroll their children in after-school programs and felt that there was little help from principals or school staff regarding opportunities for their children. Even though the city government assigned free tutors, the professionals did not show up, stayed for a shorter number of hours than expected, and ultimately did not help the children with homework. Also, families in the South Bronx relied on government assistance like food stamps and child support. They made substantially less money than the families in Sunset Park and Queens. Sunset Park was also different in that there was a large, supportive Mexican population, whereas families in the South Bronx experienced challenges with violence, racial/ethnic tension, and poor housing.

  There is a narrative of struggle and sacrificed lives in transnational mothers’ worlds, but I observed them working on building different types of practices as a way to remain present in their children’s lives in Mexico. The child-rearing practices in New York City varied significantly, depending on these mothers’ location and financial situation. The pressure of being the provider when women owed money to loan sharks, had unstable partners, or lived in cramped, small apartments had enormous influence on how they treated their US-born children. Violence and poverty exacerbated the already tenuous situations of women who worried about their legal status and lack of English knowledge.

  Gender, Migration, and Education

  Girls’ superior educational performance may be linked to narratives of possible reunification with mothers and hopes that academic performance would bring them together. Girls also discussed their expectations of receiving material gifts. In addition, “doing well” in school allowed girls to use school as a space to forget about problems. It is important to mention that these ideas are not mutually exclusive; instead, they are fluid and overlap at times. I have ar
gued that maternal expectations and gender role expectations sometimes complicate notions of performing well in school, thus creating different experiences for boys and girls.

  Different motivations informed the educational expectations of mothers and grandmothers. On the one hand, mothers in New York wanted their daughters to excel not only to reinforce their justification of why they left Mexico, but also so they could experience a life that they themselves did not have. On the other hand, even though grandmothers reinforced the message conveyed by mothers, they did so to show allegiance and loyalty to their own daughters in New York. A final gendered pattern that emerged was that grandmothers used school and education also as a way to “keep an eye” on girls and have more control of their whereabouts.

  Policy and Practice

  Under the Obama administration, the United States saw an increase in removals of undocumented immigrants instead of returns. The goal was to prevent multiple attempts by the same person to enter the country. Even though the Obama administration removed more than 3 million people1 (Chishti, Pierce, & Bolter, 2017) during its tenure, the number of apprehensions was much lower than during the Clinton or Bush administrations. In early 2017, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders promising wide-ranging expansions of the enforcement system, including priorities that focus on removing not only noncitizens with criminal records, but also those who have committed potentially criminal acts or who have abused public benefits. It will not be possible, however, to assess how different the administrations will be until we have numbers to compare.